Visiting scholar to discuss King's opposition to Vietnam War

Skidmore College will observe the anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, Feb. 7, with a lecture by Stewart Burns on the impact of King's 1968 decision to oppose the Vietnam War.   Free and open to the public, the talk will begin at 7 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall.

Burns will describe the relationship of King's religious convictions to his decision and trace its effect on his leadership of the civil rights movement and on the country as a whole.   This act of conscience was perfectly consistent with King's foundational, non-violent philosophy, although it complicated the politics of his fight for civil rights.

Burns is the author most recently of To the Mountaintop (Harper, 2007), a spiritual history - in the broadest sense - of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, a history of King's "sacred mission to save America," as King himself put it.   The book is an epic tale told in intimate detail and reads like a fast-paced novel. Burns also wrote in 1997 Daybreak of Freedom, the only published history of the Montgomery bus boycott, upon which the HBO dramatic film Boycott was based.   Burns has taught at Stanford University, where he edited the third volume of King's papers, Birth of a New Age, and College of the Redwoods in northern California.   He now teaches at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and Williams College.

The lecture is co-sponsored by Office of Student Diversity Programs, the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, the Intercultural Center, the departments of American Studies and Religion, and Ujima. It is presented also as part of the "Theater of War in a House of Peace" series.