In our hazy recollection, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s was a cohesive collective helmed by one charismatic leader and a supporting cast. In reality, it included a vast number of people who worked with countless organizations that coordinated with Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The many vocal factions included clergymen, women who steered major organizations and others. By the time Dr. King gave his final speech in Memphis in 1968 , he was attempting to forge unity where there was discord on two fronts: with the civil rights leaders who had revolted when he began his antiwar campaign and those who wanted to abandon peaceful protest for more militant action.

Exactly one year before his assassination, Dr. King delivered a blistering speech on the Vietnam War in which he chastised a nation for “taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”

Positioning racial equality as part of the antiwar movement was a stark shift. And it was met with immediate pushback by civil rights leaders.