martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. 0000003454 00000 n We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. 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. 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. "This was a huge, huge speech," he continues, "that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done. Mr. SMILEY: That's right. [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. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. Grossfield, Stan. 0000002337 00000 n Email us: talk@npr.org. 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. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. 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. The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. [citation needed]. Not only that, but then-President Lyndon Johnson disinvited King to the White House. Dr. 0000004855 00000 n What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? That's the problem with it. "[9], King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. 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. [12] No, Howard, I thank you for your phone call. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. "[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. 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. 800-989-8255. 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. Carson and Shepard, 2001. 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. Dr. Dr. King is trying to get the point across that our country is being unfair to others. So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Full text of speech. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. (1947) Moranda Smith Addresses The Congress Of Industrial Organizations Annual Convention, Boston, (1974) Congresswoman Barbara Jordans Statement: The Richard Nixon Impeachment Hearings, African American History: Research Guides & Websites, Global African History: Research Guides & Websites, African American Scientists and Technicians of the Manhattan Project, Envoys, Diplomatic Ministers, & Ambassadors, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html, Foundation, Organization, and Corporate Supporters. King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he also rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. And so the question was, Martin, why would you antagonize the president who has been our friend? The initiative to stop it must be ours. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. And he said these three issues of racism and poverty and militarism are going to destroy this nation. 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. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. What liberators? Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Copyright 2010 NPR. This is Howard, which you know me. 0000017817 00000 n This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. But I'm hoping that people will get a chance, once they see the speech, they'll be moved to go read the speech and to make comparisons, Neal. 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. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us not their fellow Vietnamese the real enemy. 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. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. 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. And so he does in New York City. 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. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . 0000010534 00000 n We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that peace and economic justice were critical to his fight for human rights. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor. 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. M ost Americans remember Martin Luther King Jr. for his dream of what this country could be, a nation where his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. So King understood violence. They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. 1967 speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. So, too, with Hanoi. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. They must see Americans as strange liberators. At what cost? Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. 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. 0000001616 00000 n It was a tactical mistake. 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. 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., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. 0000002605 00000 n While King was personally opposed to the war, he was concerned that publicly criticizing U.S. foreign policy would damage his relationship with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been instrumental in passing civil rights legislation and who had declared in April 1965 that he was willing to negotiate a diplomatic end to the war in Vietnam. 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. 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. Let me say this right quick: The comparisons between what King was addressing then about militarism, poverty and racism sound familiar 45 years later. So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. So you got a Nobel laureate named King, a war president with a Nobel Prize named Obama, for all that we have done over the last two years to wed King and Obama together on T- shirts and everywhere else, were King alive today at 81, he and Obama would have a tension point, Neal, on this issue. 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. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. 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. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. 0000003199 00000 n Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. 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. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed he did, Neal. 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. 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. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. 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? "I've Been to the Mountaintop" is the popular name of the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. King spoke on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) in Memphis, Tennessee. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. 0000047501 00000 n On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. But certainly one of the greatest orators of our time. 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 I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted.