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. If Americas soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Excuse me. 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. 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. When Martin Luther King Jr. Spoke Out Against the Vietnam War So, too, with Hanoi. 50 Years Ago: Dr. King's Anti-War Sermon at Riverside Church Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. 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. 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. On the evening of April 4, 1967, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King lent his full-throated oratory to a growing chorus of opposition to the rapidly expanding American role in the Vietnam War. He passed the Voting Rights Act. Jazmyn Ford. The speech primarily concerns the Memphis sanitation strike.King calls for unity, economic actions, boycotts, and nonviolent protest, while challenging the United States to live . Somehow this madness must cease. 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. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Keep in mind now that 1967, Neal, as you know, is the same year that Muhammad Ali, the world champion, decides to not accept that draft to go and fight in Vietnam. Mr. SMILEY: Neal, thank you for the opportunity. 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. $25.00. Martin Luther King, Jr. 4 April 1967. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News in Washington. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. 1967 speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience). Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life? 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. Robert B. Semple, Jr., Dr. And thank you for sharing what had to be a difficult story to tell. 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. 2. If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. 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. CONAN: "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores. [citation needed]. Check your local listings. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. So you got a Nobel laureate named King, a war president with a Nobel Prize named Obama, for all that we have done over the last two years to wed King and Obama together on T- shirts and everywhere else, were King alive today at 81, he and Obama would have a tension point, Neal, on this issue. [27] Thich Nhat Hanh, who publicly held a news conference in Chicago with King in 1966, was acknowledged for urging King to oppose the Vietnam War. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. We're talking with Tavis Smiley. CONAN: Indeed. (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. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. 0000001616 00000 n I feel that Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali are two of the, you know, greatest Americans we've ever had. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. Read The Full Text And Listen To Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" Speech. Dr. Martin Luther King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech - HistoryNet 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. 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. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in New York City at Riverside Church on the occasion of his becoming co-chairperson of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (subsequently renamed Clergy and Laity Concerned ). So, that's all I had to say. [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb. 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. capitalism, and the Vietnam War. 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. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. But certainly one of the greatest orators of our time. 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. 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. This is Howard, which you know me. King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. This speech was enormously controversial. 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. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. 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. They must see Americans as strange liberators. He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. 0000005717 00000 n That's the problem with it. How are you, sir? Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? [18] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism. King Scores Poverty). There is.a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. Mr. SMILEY: Well, I think the question is whether or not - I hear your point, Neal, and I take it. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence . 0000009964 00000 n 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. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. Mr. TAVIS SMILEY (Host, "The Tavis Smiley Show"): Neal, always an honor to be on with you. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. MLK: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence - YouTube 0000003415 00000 n 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. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. 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. 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. "[22] The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. 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. (1967) Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" 0000030467 00000 n (1997). "[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. "[9], King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. Martin Luther King Beyond Vietnam Speech Full Text and Video He did say he was going to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, so he's kept that promise. And that is precisely what concerned Dr. King so much, that these young boys were being sent halfway around the world to fight a war that was unwinnable, that resources were being used there that should've been used here at home. 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. 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. Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later Of course, he's assassinated in Memphis a year to the day later after giving this speech. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. CONAN: Walt, thank you. 0000001645 00000 n CONAN: And I think a lot of people will see your parallels regarding Iraq, where, indeed, the United States was the aggressor in that conflict. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. PDF Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence - hawaii.edu So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. 4. 0000001739 00000 n 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. Vietnam War - The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. Dr. King And Malcolm X Teaching Resources | TPT 0000004834 00000 n CONAN: Indeed, it was Oslo. 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. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. 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. 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? 3. "[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. PDF A TIME TO BREAK THE SILENCE - nps.gov And there was a 18-year-old black Marine that picked me up since I couldn't walk, got me away from bombs and saved my life. ", In 1967, a year to the day before his death, Martin Luther King, Jr. departed from his message of civil rights to deliver a speech that denounced America's war in Vietnam. 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. Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar - USA TODAY Accuracy and availability may vary. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah, Walt, I thank you for sharing that story as well, for being courageous to tell it, number one. CONAN: We're talking with Tavis Smiley about his PBS special, "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience." 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. 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. Thanks, as always for your time. 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: And Tavis, nice to have you back in the program. 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). This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. 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. 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). The great initiative in this war is ours. It's a powerful refrain, Neal, about what would've happened in his life, what he would've missed if he had sneezed at that very moment. 20072023 Blackpast.org. Martin Luther King April 4, 1967 Riverside Church, New York City . At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. 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. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. For those who ask the question, Arent you a civil rights leader? and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. 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. And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. 800-989-8255. On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. But most Americans, I think, do not know this speech, "Beyond Vietnam.". Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence? End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. 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? They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. 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. 0000002004 00000 n Dr. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. In this speech, he opposes violence and militarism, particularly the war in Vietnam. 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? 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. Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond ones tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point (Opposes Vietnam War). The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. 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.