But this is, again, precisely what King was concerned about, putting the lives of everyday Americans on the line in a fight that was not winnable and a war that was unjust. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968) Mr. SMILEY: Yeah, Walt, I thank you for sharing that story as well, for being courageous to tell it, number one. 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. 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: Before he was assassinated at age 39, the Rev. 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. 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. Mr. SMILEY: Neal, thank you for the opportunity. "[14][15], The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated. Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later 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. [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. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. 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. 0000003996 00000 n The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Thank you. Dr. Read The Full Text And Listen To Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" Speech. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. 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. So they go primarily women and children and the aged. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. We appreciate that. 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. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. 0000007161 00000 n 1967 speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Vietnam War Speech Analysis And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. "[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. April 4, 1967: Martin Luther King Jr. Delivers "Beyond Vietnam" Speech V)U5v\@apkk;#WF. 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. PDF A TIME TO BREAK THE SILENCE - nps.gov 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. Nevertheless, I am in a different position as the president of the United States. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb. 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. 0000008326 00000 n 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. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. 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. Martin Luther King, Jr. - Challenges of the final years | Britannica I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? 2/QB(yQVz^*oU.FW And that's the issue that King was raising. 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. So, that's all I had to say. The major speech at Riverside Church in New York City, followed several interviews[2] and several other public speeches in which King came out against the Vietnam War and the policies that created it. (1997). Let me say this right quick: The comparisons between what King was addressing then about militarism, poverty and racism sound familiar 45 years later. Smiley continues, "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. Could we blame them for such thoughts? Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. Hundreds of folks listened outside on loudspeakers. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War "The greatest irony and tragedy of all is that our nation, which initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world, is now cast in the. 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. King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. 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 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. His wife, Coretta Scott King, took a more active role in opposing the war, speaking at a rally at the Washington Monument on 27 November 1965 with Benjamin Spock, the renowned pediatrician and anti-war activist, and joined in other demonstrations. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. 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. President Obama, this is one campaign promise that he has kept. 0000003503 00000 n I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. I Have a Dream | Date, Quotations, & Facts | Britannica 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. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. 0000009985 00000 n His speech appears below. Dr. The speech primarily concerns the Memphis sanitation strike.King calls for unity, economic actions, boycotts, and nonviolent protest, while challenging the United States to live . What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? "It basically ruins their relationship," says Smiley. WALT (Caller): Yes. And so I think most Americans, Neal, know the "I Have A Dream" speech. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that peace and economic justice were critical to his fight for human rights. And so the question was, Martin, why would you antagonize the president who has been our friend? 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. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist that led the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements until his assassination in 1968. At what cost? They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. It basically ruined their working relationship. 159. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, organized the 1963 March on Washington, advocated for civil disobedience and. 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. 0000002784 00000 n But it ends up being the most controversial speech. 0000030467 00000 n 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. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. There were a lot of people inside. He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. So even McNamara eventually comes around to that point. Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. And what really got him to the point of figuring that he really, really had to address this again back to the children, he couldn't say to young folks in this country who were being denied, that they should engage nonviolence as a philosophy when he saw the children, when he saw these pictures of these Vietnamese children being bombed and the impact - the effect that napalm was having on their bodies. Somehow this madness must cease. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. 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? These too are our brothers. Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar. That's the problem with it. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. 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. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War - The Atlantic [6] At the urging of people such as SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, and inspired by the outspokenness of Muhammad Ali,[7] King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war as opposition was growing among the American public. We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. 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). Mr. TAVIS SMILEY (Host, "The Tavis Smiley Show"): Neal, always an honor to be on with you. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word..