martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

"[24] King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. It basically ruined their working relationship. 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. 0000044282 00000 n 0000030467 00000 n Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. Shall we say the odds are too great? Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. He was stabbed at one time. Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. 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. 0000009147 00000 n 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. 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. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted conceptso readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly forcehas now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. CONAN: "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. 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. 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? King Leads Chicago). So far we may have killed a million of them mostly children. 0000006515 00000 n 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. 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. 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. CONAN: Indeed, it was Oslo. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. Answering press questions after addressing a Howard University audience on 2 March 1965, King asserted that the war in Vietnam was accomplishing nothing and called for a negotiated settlement (Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence). True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. So he was no longer on that particular list. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on lifes highway. His speech appears below. The message directly challenged the president who'd taken great political risks to support civil rights legislation and also challenged many of his colleagues in the movement who've called it a tactical mistake. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. 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. [citation needed]. The initiative to stop it must be ours. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. "[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. 0000002694 00000 n And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nations history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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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! 0000013309 00000 n They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And thank you for sharing what had to be a difficult story to tell. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. Check your local listings. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? 0000011739 00000 n Do you find this information helpful? The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. But most Americans, I think, do not know this speech, "Beyond Vietnam.". For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition. 0000003503 00000 n Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. 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? 800-989-8255, email us talk@npr.org. 0000009168 00000 n (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? 0000003415 00000 n The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nations role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. What liberators? I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. 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. Dr. Benjamin Spock (2nd-L), Martin Luther King, Jr. (C), Father Frederick Reed and Cleveland Robinson lead a huge pacifist rally protesting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, Mar. That's what set so many of them off. Carson and Holloran, 1998. I feel that Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali are two of the, you know, greatest Americans we've ever had. "[22] 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. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." 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. I want to thank you, as I know listeners do as well, for your service to this country. 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. 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. 2/QB(yQVz^*oU.FW [citation needed] Content [ edit] And his argument, basically, was that I cannot, as a practitioner and a true believer in nonviolence, espouse that nonviolent philosophy in our movement and then somehow sit idly by when I see violence being engaged around the world. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? We have cooperated in the crushing of the nations only non-Communist revolutionary political force the unified Buddhist church. 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. 16, 1967 in New York. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. These are revolutionary times. 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. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. 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. 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. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that peace and economic justice were critical to his fight for human rights. 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. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years especially the last three summers. The great initiative in this war is ours. 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. He passed the Voting Rights Act. And secondly, so many civil rights leaders were opposed to him giving it because LBJ had been the best president to black people on civil rights. Not only that, but then-President Lyndon Johnson disinvited King to the White House. 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. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . 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. 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). 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. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. Five years ago he said, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.. 0000013408 00000 n between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. Although the peace community lauded Kings willingness to take a public stand against the war in Vietnam, many within the civil rights movement further distanced themselves from his stance. 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. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: To save the soul of America. We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. He was one of the most important and influential Civil Rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. This is an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. And he starts out in the opening line at Riverside Church by saying: I am here tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. Check your local listings. Martin Luther King Jr. was deeply troubled by the Vietnam War for years, but the "Beyond Vietnam" speech was his first major policy statement on the issue. 0000002004 00000 n These too are our brothers. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? 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. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. But Martin understood very clearly that what we ought to be doing at home is being - we are being distracted, rather, by our engagement around the world. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us not their fellow Vietnamese the real enemy. All rights reserved. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. Martin Luther King, Jr. utilizes figurative to emphasize the inhumanity and immorality of the war. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News in Washington. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. Could we blame them for such thoughts? 0000004621 00000 n Martin Luther King's Beyond Vietnam Speech is in many ways even more relevant today than in 1967. . 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. 0000040748 00000 n 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. 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 . Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. That Vietnam was a mistake. [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". PBS talk show. 0000004834 00000 n I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. And that's just the Times and the Post. Paul A. Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall, Washington Post, 3 March 1965. And King was prescient on this. 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! We must move past indecision to action. Howard's calling us from South Bend. Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. 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. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, issued a statement against merging the civil rights and peace movements. During the last year of his life, King worked with Spock to develop Vietnam Summer, a volunteer project to increase grassroots peace activism in time for the 1968 elections. Mr. TAVIS SMILEY (Host, "The Tavis Smiley Show"): Neal, always an honor to be on with you. 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. Had the president stopped by giving Martin King his just respect - as he did, to his credit - it would have been okay. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement. I'm Neal Conan. This is Howard, which you know me. 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 . In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. They brought in extra chairs. And Tavis, nice to have you back in the program. Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. How are you, sir? 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. What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. 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. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft. But there was a great turnout for the speech. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. Rev. Kings opposition to the war provoked criticism from members of Congress, the press, and from his civil rights colleagues who argued that expanding his civil rights message to include foreign affairs would harm the black freedom struggle in America. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. And I think most Americans know the "I Have A Dream" speech. [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. 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. 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. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, organized the 1963 March on Washington, advocated for civil disobedience and.
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