They came from all over — from hardened neighborhoods where streetwise thugs roam to cozy suburbs often viewed as disconnected — to meet up at Monroe Street United Methodist Church in Toledo’s central city so they could once again relive the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s seminal 1967 speech calling for an end to the Vietnam War. 

For the 100 or so people of diverse faiths, backgrounds, races, and life experiences who attended the moving event Sunday afternoon, it was a replay of an equally powerful one held last year — and, if all goes as planned, will be the second of many more to come.

The Rev. Elizabeth Rand, a Monroe Street United Methodist pastor, said last year’s service was held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” a famous speech in which Reverend King strongly condemned the war while speaking to more than 3,000 people at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967.

That speech came exactly one year to the day before Reverend King was assassinated by James Earl Ray outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Organizers of last year’s event decided to do it again this year in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Reverend King’s assassination. They are hoping to make it an annual service from this point forward, Reverend Rand said.

One by one, representatives of 35 Toledo and northwest Ohio organizations took turns on the altar reciting lines from the speech, then joined the audience as it stood and all recited the ending in unison. That reading was followed by excerpts from Reverend King’s equally famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech of April 3, 1968, in which he eerily predicted the night before he was assassinated that his own death could be imminent. 

According to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, the famous civil rights leader first spoke out publicly about the Vietnam War in 1965, two years before his most famous speech on that issue.

Reverend King’s 1967 Vietnam speech is seen as the crescendo of his involvement in the anti-war movement, which also grew strong from outspoken remarks he made in earlier 1967 speeches in Chicago and Los Angeles.

The Stanford research institute said the immediate reaction to his speech in New York was largely negative, drawing criticism from editorials published in the Washington Post and New York Times.

Unfazed, Reverend King “continued to attack the Vietnam War on both moral and economic grounds,” even while some of his staunchest supporters — including the NAACP and African-American Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ralph Bunche — accused him of blurring lines they saw between the Vietnam War and civil rights, the institute said.

To many people of faith and supporters of the peace movement, though, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” has stood the test of time and needs to be amplified in a world today that appears no less reluctant to go to war.

The eagerness to coalesce over that speech “just shows the beauty of this city,” Reverend Rand told The Blade after the service.

“I hope they find from [Reverend King] a moral framework,” she said, explaining that his efforts to overcome racism, violence, and poverty continue to inspire people from all walks of life.

The event’s chief organizer, Lynne Hamer, of Monroe Street United Methodist, said she’s inspired by the number of groups Toledo has working on social justice issues.

“A lot of people get that sense there is really good, strong work going on,” she said.

Speakers included four veterans of the Vietnam War era, including two-time mayoral candidate Mike Ferner, an environmental activist who’s been part of the local peace movement for decades.

Allen Woods, a Navy veteran stationed in the Mediterranean Sea during the war, said it’s “more important to me to live out words instead of speak them.”

He added: “Faith has worked.”

Clarence Gaffney, a Navy vet who also was at sea during the war, said the takeaway from Sunday’s event and others like it is they remind people they have more in common than they realize.

“You channel Dr. King,” Mr. Gaffney said. “You feel the synergy that it gives you.”

Contact Tom Henry at thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published April 9, 2018, 12:58 a.m.