martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

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A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. 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. 0000002337 00000 n 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. He turned that into a great speech when he got out of the hospital. 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. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history. 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 Jr. announced his strong opposition to the war in Vietnam, the media attacked him for straying outside of his civil rights mandate. And that's just the Times and the Post. 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. And so I think most Americans, Neal, know the "I Have A Dream" speech. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. 0000008347 00000 n 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. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. Undeterred, King, Spock, and Harry Belafonte led 10,000 demonstrators on an anti-war march to the United Nations on 15 April 1967. [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". King Leads Chicago Peace Rally, New York Times, 26 March 1967. Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on 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. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. MLK Opposed "Poverty, Racism & Militarism" in Speech One Year Before We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. They brought in extra chairs. 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. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? 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. Martin Luther King's Beyond Vietnam Speech is in many ways even more relevant today than in 1967. . Mr. SMILEY: That's right. That's my own personal assessment. 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. 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. We must move past indecision to action. 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. 0000009985 00000 n Is it among these voiceless ones? 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. Martin built his speech that night, Neal, around three major points: around increasing militarism, around escalating poverty and around the issue of racism. 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. 0000011437 00000 n 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. Check your local listings. What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? His tireless work advocating for the end of. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. 800-989-8255. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? HT0WJ3 O$L Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Fearful of being labeled a Communist, which would diminish the impact of his civil rights work, King tempered his criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam through late 1965 and 1966. Mr. SMILEY: We - let me just tell you this. The question is, is it a war of necessity or a war of choice at this point? One of the things, I hope, Neal, will happen here is that when people get a chance to see the special, they will be moved - I think they will be - to Google or Bing, whatever search engine you use, to go online, because the speech is so readily available, Neal, as you know. In so many words, powerful interests told him: "Mind your own business.". 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. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. AFP/AFP/Getty Images Now let us begin. 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. CONAN: We're talking with Tavis Smiley about his PBS special, "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience." On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. CONAN: Walt, thank you. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poorboth black . 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. Martin Luther King's Most Controversial Speech: Beyond Vietnam - THIRTEEN Your donation is fully tax-deductible. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. 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. 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." 1967 speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. When you read the speech, if you replace the word Vietnam, every time it pops up, with the word Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, you will be - it will blow your mind at how King, where he alive today at 81, could really stand up and give that same speech and just replace, again, Vietnam with Iraq and Afghanistan. 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. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. 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. Martin Luther King Beyond Vietnam Speech Full Text and Video On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. He is best known for helping achieve civil equality for African Americans, but these speeches--selected because they were each presented at a turning point in the . In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. 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. 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 . Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech : NPR [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. CONAN: Indeed. 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. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. 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. 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. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. 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. But they didn't stay for the speech in its entirety. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. Hundreds of folks listened outside on loudspeakers. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed. 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. 0000002004 00000 n 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. 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. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. 0000047501 00000 n The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. [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. Why are you joining the voices of dissent? It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. 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 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. After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. 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. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. 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: His house was bombed. CONAN: And there's an interesting point you also make in the film that - or at least some of the participants in your film make - that were he alive today and saying the kinds of things you would expect him to say, given that speech, he probably would not be invited to many Martin Luther King Day celebrations. [citation needed]. 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 . Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. 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, too, with Hanoi. 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. CONAN: And the place - choice of place is very interesting too. King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. (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. 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. 0000043425 00000 n 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]. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. I feel that Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali are two of the, you know, greatest Americans we've ever had. "[14] Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. We appreciate that. That's what I feel. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. 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. It was written by activist and historian Vincent Harding. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. 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. All rights reserved. P: (650) 723-2092 | F: (650) 723-2093 | kinginstitute@stanford.edu| Campus Map. 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. 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. 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. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Do you find this information helpful? His speech appears below. [citation needed] Content [ edit] 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. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. 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. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. The MLK Speech We Need Today Is Not the One We Remember Most Mr. SMILEY: Yeah, Walt, I thank you for sharing that story as well, for being courageous to tell it, number one. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. And number two, at what cost? They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). PBS talk show. 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. So he was no longer on that particular list. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? 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. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. "It basically ruins their relationship," says Smiley. Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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