0000009985 00000 n What liberators? The question is, is it a war of necessity or a war of choice at this point? We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. 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. 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. 0000030467 00000 n But most Americans, I think, do not know this speech, "Beyond Vietnam.". I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. [1][5], King was long opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War, but at first avoided the topic in public speeches in order to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created. This speech was enormously controversial. Rev. Is it among these voiceless ones? 0000010534 00000 n And so I think most Americans, Neal, know the "I Have A Dream" speech. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on lifes roadside; but that will be only an initial act. 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. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. 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. 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. In "People and Peace, not Profits and War," Shirley Chisholm repeats the words "two more years" (42). Grossfield, Stan. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. PDF Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence ~ MLK Speech 1967 - CRM Vet 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! 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. CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. [27], In 2010, PBS commentator Tavis Smiley said that the speech was the most controversial speech of King's career, and the one he "labored over the most". 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. 0000001427 00000 n Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb. 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 are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. Martin built his speech that night, Neal, around three major points: around increasing militarism, around escalating poverty and around the issue of racism. Martin Luther King's Speech Against the Vietnam War by David Bromwich May 16, 2008 O ne of the greatest speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break Silence," was delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, on April 4, 1967. 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. 16, 1967 in New York. Nevertheless, I am in a different position as the president of the United States. Of course, the Nobel Peace Laureate, a man who clearly believed in nonviolence down to his very soul CONAN: but he'd wanted to give that speech two years earlier. dH(*b(jGB@'k1zTR~{dA9|\b. Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. And number two, at what cost? 0000002516 00000 n Dr. King in a March 25, 1967 antiwar march in Chicago. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. 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. 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 an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. 0000002337 00000 n So when the president suggests - and whether directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally diminishes in that Nobel speech Martin's powerful, nonviolent philosophy, it tweaked some people, and you'll see that in the presentation Wednesday night. 0000007161 00000 n It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. 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. 0000008347 00000 n We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. It's a powerful refrain, Neal, about what would've happened in his life, what he would've missed if he had sneezed at that very moment. 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? As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. 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. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, issued a statement against merging the civil rights and peace movements. JwNt YHiA:{p . 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 he starts out in the opening line at Riverside Church by saying: I am here tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. 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. Afghanistan, not so much. 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? [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. Vietnam War | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute Vietnam War Event May 11, 1961 to April 30, 1975 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. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. "This was a huge, huge speech," he continues, "that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. But the entire speech, of course, thankfully, was recorded on audio. 0000002004 00000 n That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. So they go primarily women and children and the aged. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. Email us: talk@npr.org. capitalism, and the Vietnam War. Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. And so he does in New York City. 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." We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. 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. 0000003454 00000 n On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. 0000008326 00000 n 0000003996 00000 n Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. 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. Check your local listings. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. And King gives a great speech out of that hospital called "If I Had Sneezed." A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. 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. Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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