Krista Tippett, host of the radio show and podcast On Being, will host a public conversation with Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson at Riverside Church in New York City on Saturday, April 4, 2026. The event, titled “Is America Possible?”, will take place 59 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Delivered his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at the same location.
Tippett announced the event in a special edition of her newsletter, The Pause, noting that both Alexander and Johnson were students of Vincent Harding, a civil rights leader who played a key role in drafting King’s anti-war sermon. Harding, who led the Mennonite House in Atlanta, focused on the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence. Tippett’s 2011 conversation with Harding, she wrote, “holds wisdom that is with me again in these times.”
The April 4th event will begin at 3 p.m., with doors opening at 2:30 p.m. It will feature a dramatic reading of King’s 1967 speech by as-yet-unnamed guests, followed by a conversation between Tippett, Alexander, and Johnson. No tickets are required, and organizers state there is ample space for attendees.
King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, delivered on April 4, 1967, was a significant moment in the civil rights movement, as it connected the struggle for racial justice in the United States with opposition to the Vietnam War. According to Columbia University’s Bac Alumni, the speech shocked many of King’s followers. Harding authored the primary draft of the speech, and King also referenced the work of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh in the address.
Tippett is currently in residence at Union Theological Seminary, serving as a public theologian and the Founding Fellow of “Into the Crowd,” a five-year project aimed at connecting Christian leaders and storytellers to promote healing. Union Theological Seminary is sponsoring the event in part, and students from the seminary originally invited King to speak at Riverside Church in 1967.
In 2017, Riverside Church, in collaboration with Iliff School of Theology, revisited the historic moment of King’s sermon, featuring a conversation between Michelle Alexander and activist Ruby Nell Sales. Sales emphasized that King’s presentation was a sermon, a “witness” delivered as a preacher, not a politician, and essential to “redeem the soul of America.”
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