(1997). 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. 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? They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. Of course, the Nobel Peace Laureate, a man who clearly believed in nonviolence down to his very soul CONAN: but he'd wanted to give that speech two years earlier. [citation needed]. 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. So practically everybody was opposed to him giving this speech. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. Martin Luther King's Speech Against the Vietnam War by David Bromwich May 16, 2008 O ne of the greatest speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break Silence," was delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, on April 4, 1967. *];\n~~/iQ|h Q I want to thank you, as I know listeners do as well, for your service to this country. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. 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. 0000030467 00000 n I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. And so he does in New York City. In so many words, powerful interests told him: "Mind your own business.". So even McNamara eventually comes around to that point. Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. So they go primarily women and children and the aged. Rev. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? 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. 0000009168 00000 n "[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. I guess the question now is whether or not Afghanistan is a war of necessity or a war of choice. Of course, he's assassinated in Memphis a year to the day later after giving this speech. CONAN: Well, take us back to 1967. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. 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. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. I've always argue that Dr. King is the greatest American we've ever produced. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. 800-989-8255. 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? The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. 0000003503 00000 n And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. But LBJ disinvites him to the White House. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. 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. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of aggression from the north as if there were nothing more essential to the war? In his 1967 speech on the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr. employs figurative language and syntactical elements to construct his argument against the hypocrisy and cruelty of American involvement in the war. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? The major speech at Riverside Church in New York City, followed several interviews[2] and several other public speeches in which King came out against the Vietnam War and the policies that created it. 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. And Tavis, nice to have you back in the program. So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. 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. If you remember the speech, tell us what it meant at that time, and does the principle of nonviolence apply in the age of al-Qaida? While King was personally opposed to the war, he was concerned that publicly criticizing U.S. foreign policy would damage his relationship with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been instrumental in passing civil rights legislation and who had declared in April 1965 that he was willing to negotiate a diplomatic end to the war in Vietnam. It was the speech he labored over the most. 0000002605 00000 n There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. The initiative to stop it must be ours. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. Dr. "I've Been to the Mountaintop" is the popular name of the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. King spoke on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) in Memphis, Tennessee. 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. He passed the Voting Rights Act. 0000008326 00000 n And what really got him to the point of figuring that he really, really had to address this again back to the children, he couldn't say to young folks in this country who were being denied, that they should engage nonviolence as a philosophy when he saw the children, when he saw these pictures of these Vietnamese children being bombed and the impact - the effect that napalm was having on their bodies. And Walt's with us from Cortez in Colorado. And that's the issue that King was raising. Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? 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. In describing the ways in which the . 0000009147 00000 n 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. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. So, too, with Hanoi. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. 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? Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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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. 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. 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. 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. dH(*b(jGB@'k1zTR~{dA9|\b. 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 . King Leads Chicago Peace Rally, New York Times, 26 March 1967. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poorboth black . The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. 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. 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. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. That Vietnam was a mistake. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. But certainly one of the greatest orators of our time. That's what set so many of them off. 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. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. 0000002427 00000 n Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on. 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. PDF. 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. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. But there was a great turnout for the speech. You can also join the conversation at our Web site. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. 0000003415 00000 n They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. 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. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their governments policy, especially in time of war. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. hide caption. CONAN: "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. Why are you joining the voices of dissent? [12] 0000001616 00000 n Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . 0000011068 00000 n At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. Because he received a letter from a little white girl who said, Dr. King, I read the newspaper that had you sneezed that blade would've moved, ruptured your aorta and you would've drowned in your own blood. It basically ruined their working relationship. Howard's calling us from South Bend. So far we may have killed a million of them mostly children. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. He passed the Civil Rights Act. CONAN: Howard, thanks very much for the call. 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. Afghanistan, not so much. 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. 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. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 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. between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. He was one of the most important and influential Civil Rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. They brought in extra chairs. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. How are you, sir? Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. Watch a newsfilm clip of the speech . We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. I feel that Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali are two of the, you know, greatest Americans we've ever had. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. Thank you. 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. (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. 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. It was the speech he labored over the most. 0000013309 00000 n So Martin's advisors basically said, if you are intent on giving the speech, at least allow us to craft a speech and to create a setting that will allow you to speak to clergy members and laity so at least before you get to this rally that we know is going to be controversial, we could at least roll this thing out with a different kind of a crowd. 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. 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. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Paul A. Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall, Washington Post, 3 March 1965. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was, to your earlier point, the most controversial speech he ever gave. I just wanted to say that I was an 18-year-old Marine in Vietnam when the speech was given, and I didn't hear it until three or four years ago. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. 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. I'm Neal Conan. 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.

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