They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? At what cost? Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. 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. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. Beyond Vietnam2 in that . He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. 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. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. 0000008347 00000 n 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. Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), African American founding fathers of the United States, Statue of Martin Luther King Jr. (Pueblo, Colorado), Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, San Francisco. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real changeespecially in terms of their need for land and peace. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. But it ends up being the most controversial speech. 0000010534 00000 n 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? King delivered a speech entitled Beyond Vietnam, pointing out that the war effort was taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem (King, Beyond Vietnam, 143). 0000017817 00000 n They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier: O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath America will be! A few years ago there was a shining moment. They brought in extra chairs. Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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Their questions are frighteningly relevant. [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. 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. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. 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. So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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? King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. 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. 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. 0000013408 00000 n (2)] And so the question was, Martin, why would you antagonize the president who has been our friend? His tireless work advocating for the end of. 0000012562 00000 n King to Weigh Civil Disobedience). I want to thank you, as I know listeners do as well, for your service to this country. When the Rev. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. And when you see the piece on "Lens" tonight that's the part of the speech that set off so many of those who are in King's inner circle, so many scholars who have written about King. 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. 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. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? You can also join the conversation at our Web site. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. 20072023 Blackpast.org. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News in Washington. 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. 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. 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 . P: (650) 723-2092 | F: (650) 723-2093 | [email protected]| Campus Map. So he was no longer on that particular list. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nations role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. 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. HT0WJ3 O$L 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. [citation needed]. 800-989-8255. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diems methods had aroused. Martin Luther King Jr. was deeply troubled by the Vietnam War for years, but the "Beyond Vietnam" speech was his first major policy statement on the issue. It was the speech he labored over the most. 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. "This was a huge, huge speech," he continues, "that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done. Let's go to Walt(ph). After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both. 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. And so I think most Americans, Neal, know the "I Have A Dream" speech. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? 0000002337 00000 n And that's just the Times and the Post. Smiley continues, "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. 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. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. 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. That's my own personal assessment. We must stop now. [12] 0000046786 00000 n Martin Luther King's Beyond Vietnam Speech is in many ways even more relevant today than in 1967. . It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. 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. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, organized the 1963 March on Washington, advocated for civil disobedience and. Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist that led the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements until his assassination in 1968. 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. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. 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. 0000023610 00000 n Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. Mr. SMILEY: And therein lies the rub. In so many words, powerful interests told him: "Mind your own business.". PDF. 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. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. Copyright 2010 NPR. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. 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. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. 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! 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 . We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? King Leads Chicago). We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. 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. I guess the question now is whether or not Afghanistan is a war of necessity or a war of choice. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. 800-989-8255, email us [email protected]. Martin built his speech that night, Neal, around three major points: around increasing militarism, around escalating poverty and around the issue of racism. It was a tactical mistake. Nevertheless, I am in a different position as the president of the United States. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. So far we may have killed a million of them mostly children. 0000003503 00000 n A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nations homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. 2. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. James L. Bevel dies at 72; civil rights activist and top lieutenant to King", "Martin Luther King Jr. made our nation uncomfortable", "The Uncompromising Anti-Capitalism of Martin Luther King Jr", "Why Martin Luther King Didn't Run for President", "Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master and Political Reformer, Dies at 95", "The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech", "Dragons, legos, and solitary: Ai Weiwei's transformative Alcatraz exhibition", Full transcript of the speech from Commondreams.org. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. CONAN: "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. President Obama, this is one campaign promise that he has kept.
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