martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

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The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". And I can't tell young black men, who are being denied right here in the streets of America, that they should offer themselves up and to sign themselves up to go - to do harm to people around the world who they do not know. We have destroyed their land and their crops. The Riverside Church donated largely with Rockefeller money. Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. As Arnold Toynbee says : Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. 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. 0000006536 00000 n 0000013408 00000 n Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Rev. All Rights Reserved. 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. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. But what I want - I think the question - I've always thought that Dr. King, that that speech about Vietnam was his best speech in my mind. And I think most Americans know the "I Have A Dream" 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. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. This is Howard, which you know me. The New York Times editorial suggested that conflating the civil rights movement with the Anti-war movement was an oversimplification that did justice to neither, stating that "linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. was deeply troubled by the Vietnam War for years, but the "Beyond Vietnam" speech was his first major policy statement on the issue. 0000010534 00000 n We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. 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. And it was on that occasion that he - when he saw those pictures, said, I have to speak out about this. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah, Walt, I thank you for sharing that story as well, for being courageous to tell it, number one. . We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. 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 ). When the Rev. Watch a newsfilm clip of the speech . And Walt's with us from Cortez in Colorado. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. 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. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. "[8] He connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change: A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. And secondly, so many civil rights leaders were opposed to him giving it because LBJ had been the best president to black people on civil rights. 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. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. 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. All rights reserved. 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. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. "[14] 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. One of his great advisers and great admirers, Stanley Levison, who was always with Dr. King in his corner, was against Martin giving this speech. Martin Luther King, Jr. 4 April 1967. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. We appreciate that. [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. dH(*b(jGB@'k1zTR~{dA9|\b. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on lifes highway. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. It was the speech he labored over the most. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. [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. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? 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. And thirdly, I think the main point here in this MLK "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that there is another way. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. 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. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. 0000002427 00000 n We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. He would no longer be respected. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. War is not the answer. 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. "The press is being stacked against me", King said,[13] 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. WALT (Caller): Yes. 0000006515 00000 n After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? 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. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream He passed the Civil Rights Act. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. And about a month after that speech was given, I was wounded. "It basically ruins their relationship," says Smiley. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. Mr. SMILEY: Well, I think the question is whether or not - I hear your point, Neal, and I take it. That's what I feel. (Unintelligible) on this program about, you know, the chances he took and even, you know, speaking truth to power to LBJ helped him so much in civil rights. 0000003199 00000 n 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. But LBJ disinvites him to the White House. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. Robert B. Semple, Jr., Dr. AFP/AFP/Getty Images 0000047501 00000 n King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done. 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. [citation needed], One of the eight "sound cells" in @Large, Ai Weiwei's 201415 exhibit at Alcatraz, features King's voice giving the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. 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. 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. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. So it was a great turnout. 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. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. 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.