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. 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. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. 2. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. 0000009168 00000 n 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. HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. 0000040748 00000 n In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. "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. He had fallen off already the list, as you mentioned, had already fallen off the list of the most admired Americans as tallied by Gallup every year. 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. "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", also referred as the Riverside Church speech,[1] is an antiVietnam War and prosocial justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? Of course, he's assassinated in Memphis a year to the day later after giving this speech. 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. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. 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. 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. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 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. Is it among these voiceless ones? A few days later, King made it clear that his peace work was not undertaken as the leader of the SCLC, but as an individual, as a clergyman, as one who is greatly concerned about peace (Dr. "[23], King also stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. Do you find this information helpful? 0000010534 00000 n What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. "[22] And King had preached at this church any number of times before, of course. 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. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. 0000009147 00000 n 0000009964 00000 n 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. 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). What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? How are you, sir? He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. "This was a huge, huge speech," he continues, "that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. But there was a great turnout for the speech. His speech appears below. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Carson and Holloran, 1998. What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. trailer << /Size 93 /Info 36 0 R /Root 40 0 R /Prev 148547 /ID[<8f2b4dd6f2f061944c7ff807c44fcc1f><651247ae294a1a197a948cb3bc3f8412>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 40 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 38 0 R /Metadata 37 0 R /Threads 41 0 R /Names 43 0 R /OpenAction [ 44 0 R /XYZ null null null ] /PageMode /UseNone /PageLabels 35 0 R >> endobj 41 0 obj [ 42 0 R ] endobj 42 0 obj << /I << /Title (A)>> /F 45 0 R >> endobj 43 0 obj << /Dests 33 0 R >> endobj 91 0 obj << /S 76 /E 200 /L 216 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 92 0 R >> stream The Riverside Church donated largely with Rockefeller money. Martin built his speech that night, Neal, around three major points: around increasing militarism, around escalating poverty and around the issue of racism. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point (Opposes Vietnam War). 800-989-8255, email us talk@npr.org. 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: 0000002247 00000 n Beyond Vietnam2 in that . 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. 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. At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. We have destroyed their land and their crops. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. In this speech, he opposes violence and militarism, particularly the war in Vietnam. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. A Comparative Study of Martin Luther King Jr & Malcolm X. by. 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. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. [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. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. 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. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. Dr. And he said these three issues of racism and poverty and militarism are going to destroy this nation. And so he does in New York City. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. And Walt's with us from Cortez in Colorado. Twin towers were planned from Afghanistan. King Scores Poverty). Mr. SMILEY: We - let me just tell you this. I'm Neal Conan. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. President Obama, this is one campaign promise that he has kept. CONAN: And there's an interesting point you also make in the film that - or at least some of the participants in your film make - that were he alive today and saying the kinds of things you would expect him to say, given that speech, he probably would not be invited to many Martin Luther King Day celebrations. In describing the ways in which the . Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. 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. 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. Mr. TAVIS SMILEY (Host, "The Tavis Smiley Show"): Neal, always an honor to be on with you. CONAN: Indeed. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. [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. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. "The press is being stacked against me", King said,[13] Smiley continues, "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. 0000013408 00000 n P: (650) 723-2092 | F: (650) 723-2093 | kinginstitute@stanford.edu| Campus Map. And so I think most Americans, Neal, know the "I Have A Dream" speech. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nations role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. We're talking with Tavis Smiley. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. %PDF-1.3 % King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. [19][20], In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic"[21] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. W. E. B. King linked his anti-war and civil rights work in speeches throughout the country, where he described the three problems he saw plaguing the nation: racism, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." 0000013330 00000 n On the evening of April 4, 1967, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King lent his full-throated oratory to a growing chorus of opposition to the rapidly expanding American role in the Vietnam War. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence? It was, to your earlier point, the most controversial speech he ever gave. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Martin Luther King, Jr. 4 April 1967. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. CONAN: Tavis Smiley, author, journalist, political commentator, host of his talk show on PBS, joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side; Some great cause, Gods new Messiah, Offring each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever Twixt that darkness and that light. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poorboth black . 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. 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. 0000001700 00000 n Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. So it was a great turnout. 0000003199 00000 n Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. In so many words, powerful interests told him: "Mind your own business.". 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. And King gives a great speech out of that hospital called "If I Had Sneezed." 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. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. Dr. King is trying to get the point across that our country is being unfair to others. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. [28], A portion of this speech is used in the track "Wisdom, Justice, and Love" by Linkin Park, from their 2010 album A Thousand Suns. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. 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. 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. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. 0000044282 00000 n 0000005717 00000 n The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them the only party in real touch with the peasants. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. 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. When you read the speech, if you replace the word Vietnam, every time it pops up, with the word Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, you will be - it will blow your mind at how King, where he alive today at 81, could really stand up and give that same speech and just replace, again, Vietnam with Iraq and Afghanistan. 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. 3. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. 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. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. 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. 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. 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. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. 0000002337 00000 n It makes for an excellent teaching tool for a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, Cold War and Vietnam, or as a bridge to combine the two! 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. 0000002605 00000 n Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. 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. But it ends up being the most controversial speech. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Though he avoided condemning the war outright, at the August 1965 annual Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) convention King called for a halt to bombing in North Vietnam, urged that the United Nations be empowered to mediate the conflict, and told the crowd that what is required is a small first step that may establish a new spirit of mutual confidence a step capable of breaking the cycle of mistrust, violence and war (King, 12 August 1965). 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. 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. 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. (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. 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. But when he turns the corner and then says, essentially, that Martin's philosophy wouldn't work in today's world, he goes on to say that Dr. King didn't know al-Qaida, as if to suggest that Martin didn't understand evil, that Martin didn't understand violence, that he himself had not been subjected to it. Accuracy and availability may vary. And his argument, basically, was that I cannot, as a practitioner and a true believer in nonviolence, espouse that nonviolent philosophy in our movement and then somehow sit idly by when I see violence being engaged around the world. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. (Scott) King,My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., 1969. That's the problem with it. 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. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. 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. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is known for being one of the greatest orators of the twentieth century, and perhaps in all of American history. So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. He is best known for helping achieve civil equality for African Americans, but these speeches--selected because they were each presented at a turning point in the . King delivered a speech entitled Beyond Vietnam, pointing out that the war effort was 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 (King, Beyond Vietnam, 143). A complete unit of instruction - include ALL answer documents - comparing and contrasting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcom X's early lives & speeches.This unit of study, which can be taught as a complete unit, or separated into 13 distinct activities . They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.. CONAN: Walt, thank you. 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. So, too, with Hanoi.
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