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DON’T OVERLOOK CORETTA SCOTT KING  
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Matthew Delmont
January 19, 2026
Jacobin
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_ Coretta Scott King condemned the brutality of the Vietnam War and
criticized how it drained money from housing, health care, and jobs. _


Vice President-elect Hubert H. Humphrey (left), alongside Coretta
Scott King (center), and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr (right), at a rally
at Harlem's 369th Regiment Armory on December 17, 1964. , Library of
Congress

 

In June 8, 1965, Coretta Scott King spoke at the Emergency Rally on
Vietnam, which drew 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden.

“Ultimately, there can be no peace without justice, and no justice
without peace,” she declared, deeming peace and human rights the
“two great moral issues of our time.”

This is the opening scene of historian Matthew F. Delmont’s _Until
the Last Gun Is Silent _— a fitting way to set the stage before the
book delves into the inseparable histories of the civil rights and
antiwar movements of the 1960s.

Following the Vietnam War–era activism of Scott King in parallel to
the life of Dwight “Skip” Johnson — a black Vietnam veteran who
received the Medal of Honor during the conflict, only to come to a
tragic end after returning to the United States — the book feels
disturbingly pertinent to our current moment. Today, as American
interventionism continues to persist alongside grievous attacks
against civil rights, _Until the Last Gun Is Silent _comes off less as
an exploration of the past than a warning about the present.

A professor of history at Dartmouth, Delmont has penned several
historical texts tied to civil rights, most recently _Half American_,
which looked at the contributions of black Americans during World War
II. Now with his latest, Delmont presents a stirring portrait of a
young black man laid waste by inequity and violence, and the renowned
activist who fought on behalf of not only men like him, but for the
very soul of her country and the security of the world.

_Jacobin _spoke with Delmont about the book, the struggles of Coretta
Scott King and Skip Johnson, and their relevance today. In 2026, when
American imperialism and racism are raging like wildfire, there is
much to be learned from those who preceded us in confronting them.

Nick Hilden

What role did Coretta Scott King have in pushing her husband, Martin
Luther King, toward peace activism?

Matthew Delmont

Even in doing the research myself, I was surprised by how early she
was out on the anti‑nuclear position and then on the Vietnam War,
and how much Martin recognized her important role there.

Part of it was gendered — there was more space for women activists
in the antiwar movement in the early sixties. Part of it was
strategic: Martin, as a civil rights leader, felt the risk of losing
civil rights support if he spoke out against the war was greater than
Coretta. So within their household, she became the spokesperson on the
war while he kept focus on civil rights longer. Part of it was what
they brought to the relationship: her politics were more invested in
global antiwar questions earlier than his, by virtue of her engagement
with Bayard Rustin, Paul Robeson, and the Progressive Party. After his
Riverside speech
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they became coleaders, often speaking on different coasts. Then after
he was assassinated, Coretta took on both roles, speaking for herself
and taking on invitations that would have gone to Martin.

One interesting thing as a historian: if you search historical
newspaper databases for “Coretta Scott King,” you get relatively
few results. If you search “Mrs Martin Luther King Jr,” you get
many more. Part of the reason that she hasn’t gotten as much
attention as she should have is just because you have to get creative
in how you look for it.

Jean Theoharis’s work has been really pathbreaking here, so I’m
certainly not the first historian to talk about her role. But I hope
what my book does is trace a longer and fuller trajectory of
Coretta’s antiwar voice. She was at almost every major mainstream
anti‑war protest in the sixties and early seventies, and that’s an
important thing not to lose.

 

 

Nick Hilden

How do you think the stories of Coretta Scott King and Skip Johnson
are relevant today?

Matthew Delmont

On the Coretta Scott King side, I think one thing that’s so powerful
about her story is how clear and early she was about the dangers posed
by US military intervention in Vietnam, and how she understood the
broader contours of colonialism and what it meant for the United
States to be engaged not just in Vietnam, but in the Dominican
Republic and elsewhere. And then the broader resonances with the
possibilities of nuclear war, and how she was unafraid to challenge
politicians about it, and how she worked to rally Americans across
many different demographic lines to fight against the war and to
activate for peace.

When I think about the present — obviously Coretta and Martin Luther
King and their allies were adamantly opposed to the kind of gunboat
diplomacy we’re seeing in Venezuela, and to the broader sense that
the United States can impose its will wherever it chooses in other
countries, and that it can do that without thinking through the
long‑term consequences.

I think for Coretta, she always thought about it in economic terms, so
she was opposed to Vietnam both in terms of the moral aspect of it,
but also because she was always making the case that the money being
spent fighting the Vietnam War would be much better spent here in the
United States taking care of the needs of American citizens —
housing, health care. Those issues obviously have not gone away, and
they remain front and center for most average Americans. People are
concerned across party lines about day‑to‑day economics, and
that’s something Coretta Scott King was always on the forefront of
thinking about. As the Vietnam War was winding down, she was really
interested in what it meant to have a peacetime economy that could
serve the needs of average Americans.

On the Dwight Johnson side, I think Dwight Johnson looked like what
the American military looks like today — not just a young black man,
but someone from a lower socioeconomic status for whom the military
offered some opportunities but also dangers. Dwight was drafted, as
many men were in Vietnam. We have an all‑volunteer military today,
but the racial and socioeconomic demographics of the military resonate
strongly with Dwight Johnson’s profile and experiences.

Coretta’s big contribution was getting average people across race,
gender, income, region, and religion to get out in the streets with
their church and neighborhood groups and speak out against the war.

One part of that story that’s important to think about is the human
costs and consequences of American military deployments. It’s easy
for presidents, politicians, policymakers, and average citizens to
talk about whether the United States should be in Venezuela or Nigeria
or wherever as if moving pieces around on a board, but there are real
lives at stake. If the country moves into a situation where we are
actively engaged in another war, it’s going to be men and women with
profiles like Skip Johnson who bear the brunt.

Nick Hilden

You mentioned that these issues transcend party lines, and today you
see people across the political spectrum arguing against spending tax
dollars on war, which is a big change from not that long ago.

Matthew Delmont

Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s one of the things history can
help us think through — what different people were able to think
about and say, and how they tried to reach different constituencies
with different arguments at different points in time. We talk a lot
about divides and polarization, but this might be a case where people
can find some common ground across party lines by asking basic
questions: What is this costing us? Yes, geopolitical situations are
complex and dynamic, but what is it costing our nation to be engaged
in new potential conflicts every week? Some of these consequences can
be anticipated, some are unknown. But if we look back to Iraq and
Afghanistan, it’s not hard to imagine where some of these things
might lead. And I keep coming back to the question of costs —
economic costs and the potential lives at stake.

 

 

Nick Hilden

You write that Coretta’s antiwar activism and the wave of solidarity
she inspired had a real impact in ending the Vietnam War. What was
that impact?

Matthew Delmont

A big part of the impact was getting what I would call more
middle‑of‑the‑road people to come out and protest publicly. When
we think about the Vietnam War, we sometimes think about the most
radical voices. Those were extremely important voices; they pushed the
envelope in terms of what could be said and what actions could take
place. But Coretta’s big contribution was getting average people
across race, gender, income, region, and religion to take a big step
— many had never publicly protested anything before — and to get
out in the streets with their church and neighborhood groups and speak
out against the war.

That was important, because Presidents [Lyndon] Johnson and later
[Richard] Nixon were always paying close attention to public
sentiment. They felt their ability to move in different ways in the
war was either enabled or constrained by public support. Coretta Scott
King’s contribution was helping move the center of the country on
the antiwar question. And being consistent, speaking earlier and more
vocally and more often than many others, including her husband.

Nick Hilden

You wrote about March on Washington organizer Sanford Gottlieb trying
to silo off more radical messaging at protests. Why did they want to
do that?

Matthew Delmont

There are historically — and today — important debates about the
best way to approach these things. There’s never a single best
political approach to making change. But for Gottlieb and Coretta
Scott King, their thinking was that there was a bigger middle of the
country that they wanted to engage and get more proactive on the war
question, and their worry was that allowing the media and the White
House to frame radical voices as the only perspectives on the war
would risk turning off that middle part of the country.

Speaking more in terms of Coretta’s history than Gottlieb’s, I
think she was aware of the give‑and‑take between mainstream
oppositional politics and more radical oppositional politics. She
never saw it as an either‑or. She was strongly influenced by Paul
Robeson, and many of her views were radical in some ways, but for her
it was about strategies that would lead to more people being engaged.
She thought her biggest success was getting people who wouldn’t have
previously thought of themselves as politicized on an issue like the
Vietnam War to be comfortable speaking in their communities and
participating in public protests.

Nick Hilden

You wrote that she recognized “the legislative gains of the Civil
Rights era were incomplete and could be rolled back by determined
politicians and ambivalent voters.” Do you feel that fear has come
true today?

 

 

Matthew Delmont

Absolutely. One of the classes I teach is on the history of civil
rights. I haven’t taught it since Trump was reelected, and the next
time I teach it, it’s going to be an entirely different class,
because a lot of the key legislative gains of the Civil Rights era
have been rolled back.

Obviously not just in the last year — it’s been a long, slow
slide, and fast at times. One of the things we can learn from the
history is that, even while people were celebrating gains, they
recognized the foundation was shaky and required ongoing political
work — both to make sure legislation translated into real change,
and to build coalitions and keep voting blocks in place that would
keep supporting key policies, or at least not allow backlash voices to
undermine and rollback those policies.

A truism in American history is that each time we’ve had a key
moment of movement toward racial equality, there’s been an equal and
sometimes larger movement of backlash. For Coretta and Martin, the
so‑called “Golden Age of Civil Rights” was followed by the
Nixon‑era backlash. Today we’re experiencing similar movements
against the perceived gains of the 2010s and 2020. There’s a story
that Americans like to tell ourselves about Martin Luther King Jr. and
the iconic movements of Civil Rights Movement as if to say, “job
well done, it’s safely in the past.” But looking back at the
messiness of the time, you can see that Martin and Coretta were
worried about how quickly these things could be undone. And sadly,
we’re living through a time period where a lot of the work that they
and thousands of other activists had pushed for is being undone.

Nick Hilden

You write about how black Americans were affected by the war, how
their service rates were higher and so on. How did the war affect
black Americans specifically?

Matthew Delmont

I’m really interested in military history from the black American
perspective, because it’s been such a fraught story. There’s long
been a hope that serving in the military would improve life conditions
and opportunities for black people in the United States, and Vietnam
is when a lot of that came to a head. The military, in some ways
rightly, patted itself on the back by the Vietnam era for being one of
the most racially integrated organizations in American society. They
had made intentional efforts between World War II and Vietnam to
desegregate the military and create more viable pathways for black
Americans to serve and take on leadership roles. So that was one thing
that a number of black Americans were looking to, including political
leaders, saying the military is a space where we’ve got some
footholds.

At the same time, much of that was segmented by class. For young
working‑class men like Dwight Johnson, that wasn’t what Vietnam
meant for them. Vietnam meant being drafted, almost always being sent
into infantry roles, not having the opportunity for a college
deferment because college was almost entirely out of the question for
them. And it meant, certainly early in the war, that they were at a
higher risk of becoming casualties. That galvanized many black
Americans, particularly groups like SNCC and other more radical black
and student organizations.

As I was writing the book, I realized that Skip Johnson’s experience
isn’t just a black American experience — it speaks to a
working‑class experience more broadly. The military increasingly
looked like Skip Johnson: a lot of working‑class guys from the Rust
Belt, from farming communities. A white guy from Kentucky or Arizona
or California had a more similar pathway into the military and similar
experience in the military than a college‑educated white person.
That’s why his story speaks to a broader experience of the war.

Nick Hilden

You wrote that Dr Benjamin Spock asserted during one of his
testimonials that “the war will blacken the reputation of my country
for decades, if not centuries to come.”  Do you think it’s legacy
is still felt today?

Matthew Delmont

I think the legacy is felt, but I think it depends a lot on generation
and where one falls on the political spectrum. I’m forty-eight, so I
didn’t live through this myself, but I think for the generation
older than us who lived through the Vietnam era, absolutely it’s
still there.

The reason I’m not sure it resonates more broadly is because the
lessons I would think the country’s political leadership would have
learned from the Vietnam era don’t seem to have stuck. Politicians
from both parties have led us into military engagements that seem
optional rather than urgently necessary — which I would have taken
to be one of the lessons from Vietnam: to think very seriously about
when to deploy military forces, and to think downstream about the
consequences. It’s hard to look at the last twenty-five years and
not think that we didn’t learn those lessons.

Nick Hilden

In the end, what do you hope people take away from _Until the Last Gun
Is Silent_?

 

Matthew Delmont

Two things. The big one for me is that I want people to understand
that dissent and patriotism can be intertwined — and they are
intertwined. One can and should ask serious questions about the
direction our country is going, and that doesn’t mean one doesn’t
care about one’s country. One can still have aspirations for the
kind of country America can be while asking serious, pointed,
protesting questions about it.

And the second is taking seriously what the military looks like today.
The military is part of the labor market, as I understand it, and at
the enlisted ranks it draws on folks for whom military service is
often the best economic pathway that they see among relatively limited
options in the private sector.

That’s something all Americans need to care about. We can’t say,
“Oh, this is only a conservative issue,” or “only a Republican
issue,” even if a larger percentage of service members might vote a
certain way. The military is part of American society, and an
important component that all Americans — regardless of political
party — need to be mindful of, both in terms of the service people
are taking on and the obligations we have to care for veterans when
they return.

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Matthew Delmont is the Frank J. Guarini associate dean of
international studies and interdisciplinary studies and the Sherman
Fairchild distinguished professor of history at Dartmouth College. He
is the author, most recently, of Until the Last Gun Is Silent: A Story
of Patriotism, the Vietnam War and the Fight to Save America’s Soul.

Nick Hilden writes about art, science, and politics. He produces
the Writers Talking Writers interview series at Publishers Weekly.

* Coretta Scott King
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