We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. [26], The same year, King nominated Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year. 0000008326 00000 n There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. 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. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. We must stop now. 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. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. CONAN: Well, take us back to 1967. But there was a great turnout for the speech. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. Appreciate it. 0000001616 00000 n Freedom's Ring: King's "I Have a Dream" Speech, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views, Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam (CALCAV). A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. The great initiative in this war is ours. And so I think most Americans, Neal, know the "I Have A Dream" speech. Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. These are revolutionary times. 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 Dr. [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. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us not their fellow Vietnamese the real enemy. As the head of state, I cannot necessarily embrace the same principles that, as you point out, Martin Luther King, a prophet, an outsider could embrace. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nations self-defined goals and positions. No, Howard, I thank you for your phone call. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? 0000005717 00000 n 0000002694 00000 n ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." 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. What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? 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. What liberators? America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. 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. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poorboth black . So far we may have killed a million of them mostly children. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them the only party in real touch with the peasants. 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. Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict: 1. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. And the last poll taken in his life by Harris, the Harris Poll, Neal, found that nearly three quarters of the American people, nearly three quarters, had turned against Martin on this issue, and 55 percent of his own people, black folk, had turned against him. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. And so he does in New York City. 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. 5. 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. We appreciate that. And it was on that occasion that he - when he saw those pictures, said, I have to speak out about this. 0000003996 00000 n Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. . I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. 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. Nearly five years after Kings assassination, American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other. Dr. And they, as news crews tend to do, they stayed to get just enough B-roll, as we call it Mr. SMILEY: for the news that night. 0000004855 00000 n If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. 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. On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a controversial sermon opposing the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, then helped lead a large antiwar march from Central Park to the United Nations later that month. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. CONAN: Howard, thanks very much for the call. Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar. 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. 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. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. 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: Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? 0000047501 00000 n King 's work to eradicate racial segregation was abruptly halted when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. [12] While his legacy is commonly remembered by his famous "I Have A Dream" speech, we've sourced four powerful, lesser-known speeches from Dr. King to listen to and commemorate . Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. Twin towers were planned from Afghanistan. *];\n~~/iQ|h Q Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. P: (650) 723-2092 | F: (650) 723-2093 | kinginstitute@stanford.edu| Campus Map. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War "The greatest irony and tragedy of all is that our nation, which initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world, is now cast in the. 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. King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. 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? 0000002247 00000 n It was a tactical mistake. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. 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. So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. (2)] 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. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in . BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress International News/Alerts/Announcements , Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering speech. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor. 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. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. PDF. n/a martin luther king jr. (born michael king january 15, 1929 april 1968) was an american baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in . I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. As Arnold Toynbee says : Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. "[22] 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. And I can't tell young black men, who are being denied right here in the streets of America, that they should offer themselves up and to sign themselves up to go - to do harm to people around the world who they do not know. "[23], King also stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? So it was a great turnout. Thank you. King linked his anti-war and civil rights work in speeches throughout the country, where he described the three problems he saw plaguing the nation: racism, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed he did, Neal. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . 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. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? 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. 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. He would no longer be respected. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. His speech appears below. Jazmyn Ford. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. CONAN: Oh, the audio is terrible, though. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? Recently one of them wrote these words: Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. 0000044282 00000 n 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. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. 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. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. %PDF-1.3 % The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, issued a statement against merging the civil rights and peace movements. Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. CONAN: And the place - choice of place is very interesting too. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. All Rights Reserved. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. This speech was enormously controversial. 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." Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Copyright 2010 NPR. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 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? 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. (1997). King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home.