Martin Luther King, Jr. 4 April 1967. He was one of the most important and influential Civil Rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). Rev. One of the things, I hope, Neal, will happen here is that when people get a chance to see the special, they will be moved - I think they will be - to Google or Bing, whatever search engine you use, to go online, because the speech is so readily available, Neal, as you know. Vietnam War - The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute I've always thought that was, to me, his best speech, his most consequential speech, even better than I have a dream in the mountain top speech. Mr. SMILEY: It's a powerful point made by Clayborne Carson at Stanford who is in charge, as you know, Neal, of the King papers. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children. Martin Luther King's Speech Against the Vietnam War Of course, he's assassinated in Memphis a year to the day later after giving this speech. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. And after I was wounded, we had four or five 100-pound bomb dropped on us, and 10 Marines were killed outright and 24 were wounded. And Walt's with us from Cortez in Colorado. 0000006515 00000 n How are you, sir? The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press. 0000046786 00000 n And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nations homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination - HISTORY Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. 0000002964 00000 n 0000007161 00000 n Though he avoided condemning the war outright, at the August 1965 annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) convention King called for a halt to bombing in North Vietnam, urged that the United Nations be empowered to mediate the conflict, and told the crowd that what is required is a small first step that may establish a new spirit of mutual confidence a step capable of breaking the cycle of mistrust, violence and war (King, 12 August 1965). It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. Nearly five years after Kings assassination, American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. Martin Luther King Jr. announced his strong opposition to the war in Vietnam, the media attacked him for straying outside of his civil rights mandate. 0000011068 00000 n But I'm hoping that people will get a chance, once they see the speech, they'll be moved to go read the speech and to make comparisons, Neal. Full text of speech. Sorry, I'm a little bit emotional here. Less than two weeks after leading his first Vietnam demonstration, on 4 April 1967, King made his best known and most comprehensive statement against the war. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. The first signs of opposition to King's tactics from within the civil rights movement surfaced during the March 1965 demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, which were aimed at dramatizing the need for a federal voting-rights law that would provide legal support for the enfranchisement of . In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier: O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath America will be! Nevertheless, I am in a different position as the president of the United States. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. And about a month after that speech was given, I was wounded. AFP/AFP/Getty Images There is.a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators our chosen man, Premier Diem. Dr. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. And King gives a great speech out of that hospital called "If I Had Sneezed." They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond ones tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. [19][20], In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic"[21] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Mr. SMILEY: And therein lies the rub. Let me say this right quick: The comparisons between what King was addressing then about militarism, poverty and racism sound familiar 45 years later. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen . The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. A few days later, King made it clear that his peace work was not undertaken as the leader of the SCLC, but as an individual, as a clergyman, as one who is greatly concerned about peace (Dr. King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal on the grounds that he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited for his morally unambiguous role as an activist.[25]. 0000008326 00000 n 0000003454 00000 n By the time King made the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, Smiley tells host Neal Conan, "he had fallen off already the list of most-admired Americans as tallied by Gallup every year." He had fallen off already the list, as you mentioned, had already fallen off the list of the most admired Americans as tallied by Gallup every year. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr ., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivers a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam" in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in. 0000009147 00000 n Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. For those who ask the question, Arent you a civil rights leader? and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. MLK Opposed "Poverty, Racism & Militarism" in Speech One Year Before Why are you joining the voices of dissent? MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. V)U5v\@apkk;#WF. The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. W. E. B. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. dH(*b(jGB@'k1zTR~{dA9|\b. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within ones own bosom and in the surrounding world. CONAN: Tavis Smiley, author, journalist, political commentator, host of his talk show on PBS, joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. *];\n~~/iQ|h Q He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, organized the 1963 March on Washington, advocated for civil disobedience and. 0000001645 00000 n At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence (Declaration Against the Vietnam War) M artin L uther K ing, J r. Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City [Photo Credit: John C. Goodwin] [AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in New York City at Riverside Church on the occasion of his becoming co-chairperson of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (subsequently renamed Clergy and Laity Concerned ). Martin Luther King, Jr. - Challenges of the final years | Britannica Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment. So he was no longer on that particular list. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. Let's get Howard(ph) on the line. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. If Dr. King were to say to the organizers of these events, I'd like to show up at your church on Sunday morning, at your rally this weekend, and here's what I want to say, there is a good argument to be made that Dr. King himself might not be welcome - might not be allowed to say what was in his heart, what his conscience really was, given the political correctness of the world that we live in today. 0000012562 00000 n It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. MLK: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence - YouTube In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as the Riverside Church speech,[1] is an antiVietnam War and prosocial justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated. 0000010534 00000 n A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. This quote is from a sermon by Dr. King on April 30, 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, drawing from his infamous April 4 sermon at Riverside Church. 0000013408 00000 n I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. CONAN: And the place - choice of place is very interesting too. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? 0000002427 00000 n 0000001700 00000 n And I think that if nothing else what we need to wrestle with in a contemporary sense, Neal, is the question of whether or not there is another way that King would have us consider were he allowed to do. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience). It was the speech he labored over the most. That's what I feel. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. Martin Luther King's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 10 December 1964 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: When he saw those pictures, there's a very famous picture, Neal, that we all know of a Vietnamese girl running naked in the streets who had just been, you know, had been victimized as had her village by these napalm attacks. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. CONAN: "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. Before he was assassinated at age 39, the Rev. Fearful of being labeled a Communist, which would diminish the impact of his civil rights work, King tempered his criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam through late 1965 and 1966. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. CONAN: And one thing that I was unaware of was the timing of the speech in that he had wanted to say something along these lines. CONAN: And there's an interesting point you also make in the film that - or at least some of the participants in your film make - that were he alive today and saying the kinds of things you would expect him to say, given that speech, he probably would not be invited to many Martin Luther King Day celebrations. When you read the speech, if you replace the word Vietnam, every time it pops up, with the word Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, you will be - it will blow your mind at how King, where he alive today at 81, could really stand up and give that same speech and just replace, again, Vietnam with Iraq and Afghanistan. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. He criticized the Vietnam War and praised Muhammad Ali for being a conscientious objector. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. And that's the issue that King was raising. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. Martin Luther King's Beyond Vietnam Speech is in many ways even more relevant today than in 1967. . How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? In describing the ways in which the . Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. [citation needed]. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. In his last Sunday sermon, delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968, King said that he was convinced that [Vietnam] is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world (King, Remaining Awake, 219). King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. Four years after President John F. Kennedy sent the first American troops into Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Jr., issued his first public statement on the war. His speech appears below. After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. It was, to your earlier point, the most controversial speech he ever gave. So, too, with Hanoi. trailer << /Size 93 /Info 36 0 R /Root 40 0 R /Prev 148547 /ID[<8f2b4dd6f2f061944c7ff807c44fcc1f><651247ae294a1a197a948cb3bc3f8412>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 40 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 38 0 R /Metadata 37 0 R /Threads 41 0 R /Names 43 0 R /OpenAction [ 44 0 R /XYZ null null null ] /PageMode /UseNone /PageLabels 35 0 R >> endobj 41 0 obj [ 42 0 R ] endobj 42 0 obj << /I << /Title (A)>> /F 45 0 R >> endobj 43 0 obj << /Dests 33 0 R >> endobj 91 0 obj << /S 76 /E 200 /L 216 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 92 0 R >> stream That's my own personal assessment. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today my own government. There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late. There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Procrastination is still the thief of time. All rights reserved. Martin Luther King Jr. - Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. "The press is being stacked against me", King said,[13] Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Zinn Education Project 2. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. [citation needed], One of the eight "sound cells" in @Large, Ai Weiwei's 201415 exhibit at Alcatraz, features King's voice giving the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. Benjamin Hedin on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, anti-Vietnam War speech at Riverside Church in New York, which risked King's relationship with Lyndon Johnson. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. What liberators? As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side; Some great cause, Gods new Messiah, Offring each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever Twixt that darkness and that light. Excuse me. But this is, again, precisely what King was concerned about, putting the lives of everyday Americans on the line in a fight that was not winnable and a war that was unjust. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. The problem was that practically everyone in his inner circle - not all, there was James Bevel and a couple of others - but practically everyone in his inner circle advised him strongly not to give this speech. This speech was written and basically read word for word so that they could have a copy to give to mainstream newspapers across the country for their consideration, because King did not want to be misquoted Mr. SMILEY: or misunderstood, although that didn't work. His tireless work advocating for the end of. [24], King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 United States presidential election. [16][17] King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice.
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