And thirdly, I think the main point here in this MLK "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that there is another way. Full text of speech. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. 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. 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? 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. 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. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. 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. 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. Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. Mr. SMILEY: And therein lies the rub. We have destroyed their land and their crops. His speech appears below. Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. 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]. Afghanistan, not so much. Had the president stopped by giving Martin King his just respect - as he did, to his credit - it would have been okay. [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". I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. But anyway, where he says, I am mindful of those who spoke at this podium, this spot before me, including Martin Luther King and that I stand on his shoulders as a champion of civil rights. Dr. King in a March 25, 1967 antiwar march in Chicago. But there was a great turnout for the speech. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Dr. King And Malcolm X Teaching Resources | TPT Q%F70%iR! We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. 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 order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. He was stabbed at one time. [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. These are revolutionary times. That night Dr. King shocked the world and his followers when . between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. That's what I feel. He passed the Voting Rights Act. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . It was the speech he labored over the most. 0000003199 00000 n
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. So even McNamara eventually comes around to that point. 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. The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech : NPR CONAN: Walt, thank you. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. 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. 5. Watch a newsfilm clip of the speech . This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. 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. 0000009147 00000 n
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. Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. 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. 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. 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? 3. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in New York. In this speech, he opposes violence and militarism, particularly the war in Vietnam. 0000001616 00000 n
WALT (Caller): Yes. 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. (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. 0000006536 00000 n
Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. A few years ago there was a shining moment. So he was no longer on that particular list. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. 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. 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. Mr. SMILEY: Well, I think the question is whether or not - I hear your point, Neal, and I take it. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? Do you find this information helpful? I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. We had to do a whole lot of work in the booth trying to get that audio right. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. For as popular as King was, he was a Nobel laureate, there were only one or two news crews who actually came to see the speech that night, Neal. They brought in extra chairs. JwNt
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. It was the speech he labored over the most. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 The question is, is it a war of necessity or a war of choice at this point? 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. The cornerstones of his activism were based on non-violence and civil disobedience, both of which were inspired by his Christian faith and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. 0000012541 00000 n
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. 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 authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. 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. Five years ago he said, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. 0000002605 00000 n
Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. And Tavis, nice to have you back in the program. The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. Check your local listings. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Undeterred, King, Spock, and Harry Belafonte led 10,000 demonstrators on an anti-war march to the United Nations on 15 April 1967. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. 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. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. 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. 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. 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. 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). 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. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. Beyond Vietnam A Time To Break Silence Rhetorical Precis 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. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. 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. 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. Fifty-years ago in April 1967, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered one of his most memorable, if not controversial sermons, at Riverside Church just steps away from the Columbia University campus. They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. 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. CONAN: Indeed. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. 0000040748 00000 n
I want to thank you, as I know listeners do as well, for your service to this country. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. CONAN: Well, take us back to 1967. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. "[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. 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. And King had preached at this church any number of times before, of course. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. All Rights Reserved. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. 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. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. 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. "[22] 0000002694 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 am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? 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. CONAN: And the place - choice of place is very interesting too. These too are our brothers. 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. 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. 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. Check your local listings. And he said these three issues of racism and poverty and militarism are going to destroy this nation. Rev. 0000046786 00000 n
So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. Howard's calling us from South Bend. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. 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. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. 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. Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. [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. Nearly five years after Kings assassination, American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other. 1967 speech delivered by 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. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. "[14] 800-989-8255, email us talk@npr.org. 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. His house was bombed. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nations only non-Communist revolutionary political force the unified Buddhist church. 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. 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. 0000001645 00000 n
And about a month after that speech was given, I was wounded. April 30, 1967: "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" Speech 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. His tireless work advocating for the end of. 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. Sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. "Vincent Harding dies at 82; historian wrote controversial King speech", "Vincent Harding, author of Martin Luther King Jr.'s antiwar speech, dies", "The Rev. Carson and Holloran, 1998. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination - HISTORY 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 . dH(*b(jGB@'k1zTR~{dA9|\b. 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. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. His wife, Coretta Scott King, took a more active role in opposing the war, speaking at a rally at the Washington Monument on 27 November 1965 with Benjamin Spock, the renowned pediatrician and anti-war activist, and joined in other demonstrations. Martin Luther King Jr. - Acceptance Speech - NobelPrize.org Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. 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. 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! It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. 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. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. 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. Martin Luther King's Most Controversial Speech: Beyond Vietnam - THIRTEEN Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. 0000047501 00000 n
Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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 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? But it ends up being the most controversial speech. 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 . Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed. 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. 0000002784 00000 n
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 it was a great turnout. 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? King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. 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 the entire speech, of course, thankfully, was recorded on audio. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. The great initiative in this war is ours. CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. 0000017817 00000 n
CONAN: We're talking with Tavis Smiley about his PBS special, "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience." 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. Vietnam War | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute Vietnam War Event May 11, 1961 to April 30, 1975 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. 159. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. 0000011437 00000 n
In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. [28], A portion of this speech is used in the track "Wisdom, Justice, and Love" by Linkin Park, from their 2010 album A Thousand Suns. 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. 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. Appreciate it. . On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King gave his first major public address on the war in Vietnam at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City. Dr. HT0WJ3 O$L [1][5], King was long opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War, but at first avoided the topic in public speeches in order to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created. 39 0 obj
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BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence? 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). And at that march, he knew there would be people, as you point out in the film, waving Vietnamese flags and chanting CONAN: Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going to win, and that sort of thing and it would clearly be taken in a very different context.