martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

(2)] Martin Luther King, Jr. utilizes figurative to emphasize the inhumanity and immorality of the war. 0000001427 00000 n 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. We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. 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. 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. King delivered the speech, sponsored by the group Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, after committing to participate in New York's April 15, 1967 anti-Vietnam war march from Central Park to the United Nations, sponsored by the Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. "[14] What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? So, that's all I had to say. 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. Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. But when he turns the corner and then says, essentially, that Martin's philosophy wouldn't work in today's world, he goes on to say that Dr. King didn't know al-Qaida, as if to suggest that Martin didn't understand evil, that Martin didn't understand violence, that he himself had not been subjected to it. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? 0000003996 00000 n Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. X@ h(]1fbap d``al`zds1;/(d_f)"#EC+s3Vp{4P2Vb`uL@ ` endstream endobj 92 0 obj 167 endobj 44 0 obj << /Type /Page /Parent 38 0 R /Resources 53 0 R /Contents [ 61 0 R 63 0 R 67 0 R 69 0 R 71 0 R 77 0 R 79 0 R 89 0 R ] /CropBox [ 0 0 612 792 ] /B [ 45 0 R ] /MediaBox [ 0 0 612 792 ] /Rotate 0 >> endobj 45 0 obj << /T 42 0 R /P 44 0 R /R [ 45 45 567 747 ] /V 46 0 R /N 47 0 R >> endobj 46 0 obj <> endobj 47 0 obj <> endobj 48 0 obj <> endobj 49 0 obj <> endobj 50 0 obj <> endobj 51 0 obj <> endobj 52 0 obj <> endobj 53 0 obj << /ProcSet [ /PDF /Text /ImageC /ImageI ] /Font << /F1 58 0 R /F2 65 0 R /F3 73 0 R /F4 74 0 R /TT2 54 0 R >> /XObject << /Im1 90 0 R >> /ExtGState << /GS1 81 0 R >> /ColorSpace << /Cs6 55 0 R /Cs8 56 0 R >> >> endobj 54 0 obj << /Type /Font /Subtype /TrueType /FirstChar 49 /LastChar 56 /Widths [ 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 ] /Encoding /WinAnsiEncoding /BaseFont /CAPGPE+TimesNewRoman /FontDescriptor 59 0 R >> endobj 55 0 obj [ /ICCBased 86 0 R ] endobj 56 0 obj [ /Indexed 55 0 R 255 87 0 R ] endobj 57 0 obj << /Type /FontDescriptor /Ascent 733 /CapHeight 692 /Descent -281 /Flags 34 /FontBBox [ -166 -283 1021 927 ] /FontName /CAPHEN+Palatino-Roman /ItalicAngle 0 /StemV 84 /XHeight 469 /StemH 84 /CharSet (/I/space/c/o/m/e/t/h/i/s/a/g/n/f/u/w/r/p/b/y/l/v/period/j/d/k/z/colon/C/\ L/V/T/x/quotedbl/A/E/comma/quoteright/N/M/semicolon/S/W/P/O/q/D/B/emdash\ /H/F/R/U/G/one/nine/five/seven/six/four/J/question/hyphen/parenleft/pare\ nright/two/three/K) /FontFile3 84 0 R >> endobj 58 0 obj << /Type /Font /Subtype /Type1 /FirstChar 32 /LastChar 151 /Widths [ 250 278 371 500 500 840 778 208 333 333 389 606 250 333 250 606 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 500 250 250 606 606 606 444 747 778 611 709 774 611 556 763 832 337 333 726 611 946 831 786 604 786 668 525 613 778 722 1000 667 667 667 333 606 333 606 500 333 500 553 444 611 479 333 556 582 291 234 556 291 883 582 546 601 560 395 424 326 603 565 834 516 556 500 333 606 333 606 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 278 0 0 0 0 1000 ] /Encoding /WinAnsiEncoding /BaseFont /CAPHEN+Palatino-Roman /FontDescriptor 57 0 R >> endobj 59 0 obj << /Type /FontDescriptor /Ascent 891 /CapHeight 0 /Descent -216 /Flags 34 /FontBBox [ -568 -307 2028 1007 ] /FontName /CAPGPE+TimesNewRoman /ItalicAngle 0 /StemV 0 /FontFile2 85 0 R >> endobj 60 0 obj 763 endobj 61 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 60 0 R >> stream 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. 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. It was a tactical mistake. King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. 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 . So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. 0000001700 00000 n between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to 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. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. trailer << /Size 93 /Info 36 0 R /Root 40 0 R /Prev 148547 /ID[<8f2b4dd6f2f061944c7ff807c44fcc1f><651247ae294a1a197a948cb3bc3f8412>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 40 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 38 0 R /Metadata 37 0 R /Threads 41 0 R /Names 43 0 R /OpenAction [ 44 0 R /XYZ null null null ] /PageMode /UseNone /PageLabels 35 0 R >> endobj 41 0 obj [ 42 0 R ] endobj 42 0 obj <> /F 45 0 R >> endobj 43 0 obj << /Dests 33 0 R >> endobj 91 0 obj << /S 76 /E 200 /L 216 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 92 0 R >> stream That night Dr. King shocked the world and his followers when . I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. 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. 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. 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? 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. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. 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 ). Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. But the entire speech, of course, thankfully, was recorded on audio. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. Read The Full Text And Listen To Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" Speech. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Why are you joining the voices of dissent? In describing the ways in which the . As we all know, Neal, before he died, Robert McNamara, the Defense secretary that had Walt and others over in Vietnam, before he died, of course, announced that he was wrong. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. 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. Thanks, as always for your time. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today my own government. Afghanistan, not so much. This speech was enormously controversial. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nations history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. 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. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nations self-defined goals and positions. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators our chosen man, Premier Diem. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. [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. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. "It basically ruins their relationship," says Smiley. They must see Americans as strange liberators. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. So, too, with Hanoi. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. A small donation would help us keep this available to all. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in . We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. 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. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. 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. Please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. [email protected] 404 526-8968. 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. 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. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. Thank you. He rarely gave speeches from a text. He did say he was going to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, so he's kept that promise. 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. 0000002784 00000 n JwNt YHiA:{p . They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. 0000003199 00000 n 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. Q%F70%iR! 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. So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. 0000001739 00000 n HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? 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. 1967 speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. He was one of the most important and influential Civil Rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. But most Americans, I think, do not know this speech, "Beyond Vietnam.". Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. 0000011068 00000 n The initiative to stop it must be ours. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. [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. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. And King gives a great speech out of that hospital called "If I Had Sneezed." It basically ruined their working relationship. 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? 0000002004 00000 n What liberators? MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. 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]. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? At what cost? HT0WJ3 O$L 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. . 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? "[24] King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution. 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. 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. (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. And it was on that occasion that he - when he saw those pictures, said, I have to speak out about this. 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. CONAN: Indeed, it was Oslo. 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. 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! A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. 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. We're talking with Tavis Smiley. 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. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. PDF. Robert B. Semple, Jr., Dr. Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? 0000011437 00000 n "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. But certainly one of the greatest orators of our time. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence . 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. Sorry, I'm a little bit emotional here. $25.00. 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.