Mary Frances Berry spoke Friday of how Martin Luther King Jr. influenced the anti-Vietnam war movement. Berry lived in Vietnam as a journalist after hearing King’s speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
The teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. are as relevant today as they were in the 1960s, Speakers Board lecturer Mary Frances Berry said Friday night.
Although Berry never met King, she said she heard him speak and she specifically remembers his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
That speech inspired many young people to join the anti-war movement in April 1967, she said.
But Berry took it one step further. She moved to Vietnam for a summer to witness the troops’ progress.
At the time, the U.S. government allowed only journalists and military personnel to go to Vietnam, she said. So Berry, then a college student at the University of Michigan, became a journalist.
She asked her college newspaper and several other small newspapers to write letters affirming that she worked for them so she could get her press credentials.
“That shows what you can do if you’re determined,” Berry said. “You can always find a way.”
In return for the letters, Berry said she wrote a weekly column for the publications. Each week’s story began the same way: “Today I am in (insert city here), and we are not winning the war.”
Although King’s words might not influence current Oklahoma State students so directly four decades later, Berry told the audience of about 60 people that they still can follow the minister’s example.
“I learned and all of us can learn a great deal from Martin Luther King’s life,” she said.
Most important, King taught that change does not come easily, she said.
“Protest is essential if you want to make changes,” Berry said.
Reporters call every year to find out what King would do if he were still alive, Berry said.
She tells them she doesn’t know what he would say, but she said she imagines that King would encourage people to help someone they do not have to help.
King lived by the motto “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” and he hoped others would, too, Berry said.
“If you want to be true to the legacy of Martin Luther King, question everything; analyze everything; question authority; and be skeptical of authority,” she said.
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