martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he also rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." 0000002025 00000 n W. E. B. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life? Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemys point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. Dr. 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. Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. It was the speech he labored over the most. Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. Full text of speech. Why are you joining the voices of dissent? 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 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-concerned committees for the next generation. Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. Some, like civil rights leader Ralph Bunche, the NAACP, and the editorial page writers of The Washington Post[3] and The New York Times[4] called the Riverside Church speech a mistake on King's part. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. But Carson makes a powerful point in the special that you just identified, about whether or not Martin King himself would be welcome in some of these mega-churches, at certain political gatherings. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 And that is precisely what concerned Dr. King so much, that these young boys were being sent halfway around the world to fight a war that was unwinnable, that resources were being used there that should've been used here at home. And King gives a great speech out of that hospital called "If I Had Sneezed." In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. 0000008326 00000 n Seeking to reduce the potential backlash by framing his speech within the context of religious objection to war, King addressed a crowd of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York City. In December 1966, testifying before a congressional subcommittee on budget priorities, King argued for a rebalancing of fiscal priorities away from Americas obsession with Vietnam and toward greater support for anti-poverty programs at home (Semple, Dr. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. This is Howard, which you know me. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real changeespecially in terms of their need for land and peace. 0000007566 00000 n This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. 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. But LBJ disinvites him to the White House. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. This is an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. These too are our brothers. V)U5v\@apkk;#WF. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. 0000002694 00000 n Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government. Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". 0000002964 00000 n Later that year King framed the issue of war in Vietnam as a moral issue: As a minister of the gospel, he said, I consider war an evil. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? Not only that, but then-President Lyndon Johnson disinvited King to the White House. 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. Carson and Shepard, 2001. One of his great advisers and great admirers, Stanley Levison, who was always with Dr. King in his corner, was against Martin giving this speech. That night Dr. King shocked the world and his followers when . "[9] He stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands", and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children. 0000002605 00000 n NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. And when you see the piece on "Lens" tonight that's the part of the speech that set off so many of those who are in King's inner circle, so many scholars who have written about King. 2/QB(yQVz^*oU.FW PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. Please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. atlicensing@i-p-m.comor 404 526-8968. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. So you got a Nobel laureate named King, a war president with a Nobel Prize named Obama, for all that we have done over the last two years to wed King and Obama together on T- shirts and everywhere else, were King alive today at 81, he and Obama would have a tension point, Neal, on this issue. But when he turns the corner and then says, essentially, that Martin's philosophy wouldn't work in today's world, he goes on to say that Dr. King didn't know al-Qaida, as if to suggest that Martin didn't understand evil, that Martin didn't understand violence, that he himself had not been subjected to it. 39 0 obj << /Linearized 1 /O 44 /H [ 1739 286 ] /L 149455 /E 105346 /N 8 /T 148557 >> endobj xref 39 54 0000000016 00000 n During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. So when the president suggests - and whether directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally diminishes in that Nobel speech Martin's powerful, nonviolent philosophy, it tweaked some people, and you'll see that in the presentation Wednesday night. James L. Bevel dies at 72; civil rights activist and top lieutenant to King", "Martin Luther King Jr. made our nation uncomfortable", "The Uncompromising Anti-Capitalism of Martin Luther King Jr", "Why Martin Luther King Didn't Run for President", "Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master and Political Reformer, Dies at 95", "The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech", "Dragons, legos, and solitary: Ai Weiwei's transformative Alcatraz exhibition", Full transcript of the speech from Commondreams.org. 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. He rarely gave speeches from a text. 0000030467 00000 n They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. So practically everybody was opposed to him giving this speech. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence? $25.00. After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. As we all know, Neal, before he died, Robert McNamara, the Defense secretary that had Walt and others over in Vietnam, before he died, of course, announced that he was wrong. The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. War is not the answer. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. 800-989-8255. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. 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." A complete unit of instruction - include ALL answer documents - comparing and contrasting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X's early lives & speeches.This unit of study, which can be taught as a complete unit, or separated into 13 distinct activities . 0000040748 00000 n 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. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. We must stop now. Robert B. Semple, Jr., Dr. 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. 0000017817 00000 n Is it among these voiceless ones? M ost Americans remember Martin Luther King Jr. for his dream of what this country could be, a nation where his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content. 0000003503 00000 n All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. King delivered the speech, sponsored by the group Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, after committing to participate in New York's April 15, 1967 anti-Vietnam war march from Central Park to the United Nations, sponsored by the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. [12] We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. But they chose Riverside because King was going to be speaking some days later at a huge rally and march in New York City, and they knew that that rally was going to bring out a different kind of element, a more controversial element. 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. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches. "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. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. [citation needed]. That's the problem with it. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. But there was a great turnout for the speech. I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. 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. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. (Unintelligible) on this program about, you know, the chances he took and even, you know, speaking truth to power to LBJ helped him so much in civil rights. [27], In 2010, PBS commentator Tavis Smiley said that the speech was the most controversial speech of King's career, and the one he "labored over the most". Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. So practically everybody in his inner circle was against him giving it - one, because they knew the kind of pushback he was going to get. In so many words, powerful interests told him: "Mind your own business.". On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. It includes a portion of his speech. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. It makes for an excellent teaching tool for a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, Cold War and Vietnam, or as a bridge to combine the two! Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. 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. All rights reserved. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. His tireless work advocating for the end of. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. %PDF-1.3 % On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. 0000009964 00000 n They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. 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. "[14] I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries. 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. Some civil rights leaders urged King not to speak out on the Vietnam War, but he said he could not separate issues of economic injustice, racism, war, and militarism. And there was a 18-year-old black Marine that picked me up since I couldn't walk, got me away from bombs and saved my life. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just. It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: This is not just. The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. Twin towers were planned from Afghanistan. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. I've always argue that Dr. King is the greatest American we've ever produced. Email us: talk@npr.org. But what I want - I think the question - I've always thought that Dr. King, that that speech about Vietnam was his best speech in my mind. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. 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? 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. King Scores Poverty). What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. JwNt YHiA:{p . Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? The New York Times editorial suggested that conflating the civil rights movement with the Anti-war movement was an oversimplification that did justice to neither, stating that "linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion." CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? 0000009985 00000 n 0000005717 00000 n Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. 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. In "People and Peace, not Profits and War," Shirley Chisholm repeats the words "two more years" (42). CONAN: Howard, thanks very much for the call. So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. 0000004855 00000 n Martin Luther King, Jr. utilizes figurative to emphasize the inhumanity and immorality of the war. It was, to your earlier point, the most controversial speech he ever gave. Carson and Holloran, 1998. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. But it ends up being the most controversial speech. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in New York. Afghanistan, not so much. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. [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. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. AFP/AFP/Getty Images If Americas soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. The initiative to stop it must be ours. Thanks, as always for your time. 0000010534 00000 n Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. Nevertheless, I am in a different position as the president of the United States. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diems methods had aroused. Shall we say the odds are too great? And I think most Americans know the "I Have A Dream" speech. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Scott) King,My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., 1969. Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi",[9] and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people. Mr. SMILEY: We - let me just tell you this. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. A small donation would help us keep this available to all. And so I think most Americans, Neal, know the "I Have A Dream" speech.

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