Hundreds of folks listened outside on loudspeakers. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. And Walt's with us from Cortez in Colorado. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us not their fellow Vietnamese the real enemy. 0000001427 00000 n Check your local listings. I guess the question now is whether or not Afghanistan is a war of necessity or a war of choice. 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). Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. The message directly challenged the president who'd taken great political risks to support civil rights legislation and also challenged many of his colleagues in the movement who've called it a tactical mistake. The Riverside Church donated largely with Rockefeller money. CONAN: Indeed, it was Oslo. 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. 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? 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. 0000023610 00000 n 0000003415 00000 n 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. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. 4. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. 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. 0000003199 00000 n In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. And King gives a great speech out of that hospital called "If I Had Sneezed." Let's go to Walt(ph). In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. "[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. But anyway, where he says, I am mindful of those who spoke at this podium, this spot before me, including Martin Luther King and that I stand on his shoulders as a champion of civil rights. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. He criticized the Vietnam War and praised Muhammad Ali for being a conscientious objector. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. Appreciate it. Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. That's my own personal assessment. 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-concerned committees for the next generation. 0000005717 00000 n You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. It basically ruined their working relationship. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. 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. 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. That's what set so many of them off. 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 ). At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft. 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. Nevertheless, I am in a different position as the president of the United States. 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. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. 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. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. 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. 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. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. King Leads Chicago Peace Rally, New York Times, 26 March 1967. 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. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. We must stop now. On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a controversial sermon opposing the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, then helped lead a large antiwar march from Central Park to the United Nations later that month. 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. 0000002784 00000 n I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. That night Dr. King shocked the world and his followers when . Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. King 's work to eradicate racial segregation was abruptly halted when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. Jazmyn Ford. It includes a portion of his speech. 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. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. Martin built his speech that night, Neal, around three major points: around increasing militarism, around escalating poverty and around the issue of racism. 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. King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah, Walt, I thank you for sharing that story as well, for being courageous to tell it, number one. Could we blame them for such thoughts? 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. Twin towers were planned from Afghanistan. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. "[24] King quoted a United States official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution. So he was no longer on that particular list. 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: Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist that led the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements until his assassination in 1968. Email us: talk@npr.org. Thanks, as always for your time. Mr. SMILEY: That's right. But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as the Riverside Church speech,[1] is an antiVietnam War and prosocial justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated. 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. 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. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. 0000009985 00000 n How are you, sir? 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.. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. So, too, with Hanoi. 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. So far we may have killed a million of them mostly children. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. "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. 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. 0000002025 00000 n After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. And thank you for sharing what had to be a difficult story to tell. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. 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. 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 << /I << /Title (A)>> /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 What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? He did say he was going to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, so he's kept that promise. And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. 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. 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? They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. Sorry, I'm a little bit emotional here. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. 0000001700 00000 n We must move past indecision to action. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. 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. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? 0000012562 00000 n And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. *];\n~~/iQ|h Q This speech was enormously controversial. 0000006536 00000 n I've always argue that Dr. King is the greatest American we've ever produced. Q%F70%iR! [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. CONAN: And one thing that I was unaware of was the timing of the speech in that he had wanted to say something along these lines. His speech appears below. 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. 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. 0000001616 00000 n 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. 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. King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he also rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism. All Rights Reserved. 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. He turned that into a great speech when he got out of the hospital. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. 0000004621 00000 n I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. 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. This is Howard, which you know me. 0000006515 00000 n The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on lifes roadside; but that will be only an initial act. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. And about a month after that speech was given, I was wounded. 5. 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. He rarely gave speeches from a text. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement. Beyond Vietnam2 in that . Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. ", 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. Please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. atlicensing@i-p-m.comor 404 526-8968. On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. Howard's calling us from South Bend. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. 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? Mr. SMILEY: We - let me just tell you this. Now let us begin. 0000043425 00000 n 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. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that peace and economic justice were critical to his fight for human rights. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. 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. 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. Paul A. Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall, Washington Post, 3 March 1965. 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. Rev. 159. 0000009964 00000 n . In describing the ways in which the . Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. 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.
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