Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. 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. These are revolutionary times. "[9], King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. How are you, sir? And thirdly, I think the main point here in this MLK "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that there is another way. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence? Procrastination is still the thief of time. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed he did, Neal. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S 39 0 obj << /Linearized 1 /O 44 /H [ 1739 286 ] /L 149455 /E 105346 /N 8 /T 148557 >> endobj xref 39 54 0000000016 00000 n 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? In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. 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. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. 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. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. [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. . Q%F70%iR! 0000003454 00000 n They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. "[14] In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). Mr. SMILEY: That's right. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. CONAN: Indeed. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. And King had preached at this church any number of times before, of course. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. "It basically ruins their relationship," says Smiley. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. [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. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. Do you find this information helpful? Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: "Beyond Vietnam" - Zinn Education Project He gave a famous speech about the fact that he - when stabbed in New York at a book signing, the blade was just a scintilla away from his aorta. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, issued a statement against merging the civil rights and peace movements. 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. In this speech, he opposes violence and militarism, particularly the war in Vietnam. 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. "[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. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. Martin Luther King's Most Controversial Speech: Beyond Vietnam - THIRTEEN 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. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. PDF. Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. Full text of speech. capitalism, and the Vietnam War. "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. So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. 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. AFP/AFP/Getty Images I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. His tireless work advocating for the end of. That Vietnam was a mistake. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. 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. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. 4 Powerful Martin Luther King, Jr. Speeches That Aren't 'I Have A Dream' This speech was enormously controversial. I Have a Dream | Date, Quotations, & Facts | Britannica 0000004621 00000 n He passed the Voting Rights Act. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. 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. 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. PBS talk show. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. Dr. 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. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence . Martin Luther King's Speech Against the Vietnam War Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. 0000044282 00000 n But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? 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. Martin Luther King Jr - n/a - Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King 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? 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. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both. [24], King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 United States presidential election. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. The initiative to stop it must be ours. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 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. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. 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. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr ., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivers a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam" in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in. 0000043425 00000 n This is Howard, which you know me. 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. 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. 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. April 30, 1967: "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" Speech Mr. TAVIS SMILEY (Host, "The Tavis Smiley Show"): Neal, always an honor to be on with you. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. Somehow this madness must cease. It was a wonderful, I think, place to give the speech in the sense that it's pretty cavernous. 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. And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. Mr. SMILEY: He'd wanted to give it two years earlier and had attempted a dry run at this speech, to your appoint, Neal, a couple of years prior to when he gave it. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. We had to do a whole lot of work in the booth trying to get that audio right. 16, 1967 in New York. King spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Martin Luther King Jr. Records Collection Act, King: A Filmed Record Montgomery to Memphis, The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, Joseph Schwantner: New Morning for the World; Nicolas Flagello: The Passion of Martin Luther King. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? "Beyond Vietnam" - The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. 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 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 . 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. 0000001645 00000 n ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." 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. Martin Luther King, Jr. 4 April 1967. King, Beyond Vietnam, in A Call to Conscience, ed. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. 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. 159. 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. Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet tis truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong: Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above his own. MLK: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence - YouTube As the head of state, I cannot necessarily embrace the same principles that, as you point out, Martin Luther King, a prophet, an outsider could embrace. They must see Americans as strange liberators. 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. 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. 800-989-8255, email us talk@npr.org. Carson and Holloran, 1998. Could we blame them for such thoughts? So even McNamara eventually comes around to that point. 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. 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. He did say he was going to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, so he's kept that promise. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that peace and economic justice were critical to his fight for human rights. 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. He passed the Civil Rights Act. 0000003503 00000 n 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. (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. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. And he said these three issues of racism and poverty and militarism are going to destroy this nation. Check your local listings. 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. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. 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. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement. 0000003996 00000 n Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. King Leads Chicago Peace Rally, New York Times, 26 March 1967. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. If Americas soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. And about a month after that speech was given, I was wounded. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. Dr. King in a March 25, 1967 antiwar march in Chicago. Appreciate it. 0000004855 00000 n A few other Americans know, of course, the "Mountaintop" speech given the night before he's assassinated in Memphis. CONAN: Oh, the audio is terrible, though. [19][20], In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic"[21] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. 0000011068 00000 n We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. King Leads Chicago). The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. I'm Neal Conan. People And Peace Not Profits And War Rhetorical Devices Before he was assassinated at age 39, the Rev. 0000002605 00000 n between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. 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. MLK Opposed "Poverty, Racism & Militarism" in Speech One Year Before 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. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. (Scott) King,My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., 1969. It was the speech he labored over the most. Seeking to reduce the potential backlash by framing his speech within the context of religious objection to war, King addressed a crowd of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York City. 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. We appreciate that. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. So far we may have killed a million of them mostly children. This is an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. So it was a great turnout. 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. And that's just the Times and the Post. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. 0000002874 00000 n The great initiative in this war is ours. 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. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. So practically everybody was opposed to him giving this speech. 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. Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? Howard's calling us from South Bend. 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? 0000002516 00000 n I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict: 1. However, you argue strongly in the film that it was completely consistent with the nature and the character of Dr. King and something he needed to say. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. Paul A. Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall, Washington Post, 3 March 1965. 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. Dr. Martin Luther King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech - HistoryNet [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. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. 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).