martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript
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. On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. We had to do a whole lot of work in the booth trying to get that audio right. n/a martin luther king jr. (born michael king january 15, 1929 april 1968) was an american baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in . 0000012562 00000 n
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. 3. His speech appears below. 0000008347 00000 n
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. 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. CONAN: Well, take us back to 1967. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . 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. He rarely gave speeches from a text. 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 . This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. 0000047501 00000 n
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. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. This speech was enormously controversial. These are revolutionary times. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. 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. King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. 0000030467 00000 n
Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Mr. SMILEY: And therein lies the rub. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. 0000002874 00000 n
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. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches. King Leads Chicago). They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. Watch a newsfilm clip of the speech . 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. 0000011437 00000 n
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. 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! 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. King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. But they didn't stay for the speech in its entirety. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. 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. 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. 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. 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. $25.00. In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them the only party in real touch with the peasants. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. 0000005696 00000 n
When the Rev. 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. And they, as news crews tend to do, they stayed to get just enough B-roll, as we call it Mr. SMILEY: for the news that night. 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. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. Fifty-years ago in April 1967, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered one of his most memorable, if not controversial sermons, at Riverside Church just steps away from the Columbia University campus. They brought in extra chairs. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. 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. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. 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. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. A few years ago there was a shining moment. Five years ago he said, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.. 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. Now let us begin. complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By the time King made the "Beyond Vietnam" speech, Smiley tells host Neal Conan, "he had fallen off already the list of most-admired Americans as tallied by Gallup every year." 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. No, Howard, I thank you for your phone call. 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. It was, to your earlier point, the most controversial speech he ever gave. . Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. 0000013309 00000 n
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. 0000046786 00000 n
(1997). Let's get Howard(ph) on the line. In "People and Peace, not Profits and War," Shirley Chisholm repeats the words "two more years" (42). He criticized the Vietnam War and praised Muhammad Ali for being a conscientious objector. King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. CONAN: Oh, the audio is terrible, though. So he was no longer on that particular list. 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. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. %PDF-1.3
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Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. Afghanistan, not so much. A small donation would help us keep this available to all. Carson and Shepard, 2001. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? 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. Benjamin Hedin on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, anti-Vietnam War speech at Riverside Church in New York, which risked King's relationship with Lyndon Johnson. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. Check your local listings. His speech appears below. 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. Though he avoided condemning the war outright, at the August 1965 annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) convention King called for a halt to bombing in North Vietnam, urged that the United Nations be empowered to mediate the conflict, and told the crowd that what is required is a small first step that may establish a new spirit of mutual confidence a step capable of breaking the cycle of mistrust, violence and war (King, 12 August 1965). 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. 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. But there was a great turnout for the speech. You can also join the conversation at our Web site. (2)] We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. We were 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. Somehow this madness must cease. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. "[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. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poorboth black . Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within ones own bosom and in the surrounding world. 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. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. 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. 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. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress International News/Alerts/Announcements
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