martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

Afghanistan, not so much. In December 1966, testifying before a congressional subcommittee on budget priorities, King argued for a rebalancing of fiscal priorities away from Americas obsession with Vietnam and toward greater support for anti-poverty programs at home (Semple, Dr. 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. 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. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. CONAN: Howard, thanks very much for the call. Check your local listings. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. CONAN: Oh, the audio is terrible, though. 0000002694 00000 n 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. 0000004855 00000 n 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. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. 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). I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S 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. And I think most Americans know the "I Have A Dream" speech. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. 0000013408 00000 n 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. 0000001427 00000 n They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. 0000046786 00000 n On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. 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. We have destroyed their land and their crops. 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 . I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. 0000011437 00000 n 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. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. 5. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their governments policy, especially in time of war. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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. 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? 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. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 0000008347 00000 n Carson and Shepard, 2001. CONAN: "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. 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? This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. 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. 0000044282 00000 n The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. We must move past indecision to action. hide caption. At what cost? Appreciate it. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". And thirdly, I think the main point here in this MLK "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that there is another way. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. 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. CONAN: And I think a lot of people will see your parallels regarding Iraq, where, indeed, the United States was the aggressor in that conflict. Of course, he's assassinated in Memphis a year to the day later after giving this speech. But it ends up being the most controversial speech. 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. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. The initiative to stop it must be ours. And that's the issue that King was raising. 0000002427 00000 n 0000030467 00000 n After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. 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. [27] Thich Nhat Hanh, who publicly held a news conference in Chicago with King in 1966, was acknowledged for urging King to oppose the Vietnam War. I've always argue that Dr. King is the greatest American we've ever produced. There were a lot of people inside. 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. Martin Luther King, Jr. utilizes figurative to emphasize the inhumanity and immorality of the war. And King was prescient on this. 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. 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. 0000001616 00000 n In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautifulstruggle for a new world. 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. 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. For as popular as King was, he was a Nobel laureate, there were only one or two news crews who actually came to see the speech that night, Neal. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. 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. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. 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. Martin built his speech that night, Neal, around three major points: around increasing militarism, around escalating poverty and around the issue of racism. A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history. (1997). 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. Thanks, as always for your time. So, too, with Hanoi. 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. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. 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. 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. 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. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. Martin Luther King April 4, 1967 Riverside Church, New York City . They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. PDF. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. War is not the answer. Let's go to Walt(ph). [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 it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. 0000003996 00000 n So practically everybody in his inner circle was against him giving it - one, because they knew the kind of pushback he was going to get. (Scott) King,My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., 1969. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence (Declaration Against the Vietnam War) M artin L uther K ing, J r. Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City [Photo Credit: John C. Goodwin] [AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted conceptso readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly forcehas now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. 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. 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 . Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. 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. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. 0000002605 00000 n And at that march, he knew there would be people, as you point out in the film, waving Vietnamese flags and chanting CONAN: Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going to win, and that sort of thing and it would clearly be taken in a very different context. 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. 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. And there was a 18-year-old black Marine that picked me up since I couldn't walk, got me away from bombs and saved my life. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. 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." All Rights Reserved. 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. Not only that, but then-President Lyndon Johnson disinvited King to the White House. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream So it was a great turnout. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. 39 0 obj << /Linearized 1 /O 44 /H [ 1739 286 ] /L 149455 /E 105346 /N 8 /T 148557 >> endobj xref 39 54 0000000016 00000 n The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. 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. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience). I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict: 1. If you remember the speech, tell us what it meant at that time, and does the principle of nonviolence apply in the age of al-Qaida? Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. [citation needed] Content [ edit] 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. So they go primarily women and children and the aged. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . 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]. 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. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. 0000007566 00000 n What liberators? Check your local listings. Answering press questions after addressing a Howard University audience on 2 March 1965, King asserted that the war in Vietnam was accomplishing nothing and called for a negotiated settlement (Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence). The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. [18] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. 0000001645 00000 n Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? ) fuG {*pZ//e,QTx)%TuS%@^2j/?Nf7nx!]OvqJG=_oD3?VUMs+tM95X )G~1b'g])!`]:|OwHh-J6ZHg{Z9N3b!\#9"zhT\]sp2WtTal =YvkO8yu 6^,n,v$+u$|^1wUF}GGc=p!e#F\]xx6l~NTYSmc /ut^*WTPO Cp =-FQW.]y#F6NsQ2Qzqz=|v94+JC?w4,|yi4T0eIaaeD2-Y1

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