Email us: talk@npr.org. Martin Luther King April 4, 1967 Riverside Church, New York City . 800-989-8255. He rarely gave speeches from a text. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. Carson and Holloran, 1998. 0000002427 00000 n People And Peace Not Profits And War Rhetorical Devices HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? Twin towers were planned from Afghanistan. Read The Full Text And Listen To Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" Speech. The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press. Carson and Shepard, 2001. [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. These too are our brothers. hide caption. 0000013330 00000 n 0000001739 00000 n Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. Paul A. Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall, Washington Post, 3 March 1965. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. 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. 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. 0000002784 00000 n 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. But they didn't stay for the speech in its entirety. James L. Bevel dies at 72; civil rights activist and top lieutenant to King", "Martin Luther King Jr. made our nation uncomfortable", "The Uncompromising Anti-Capitalism of Martin Luther King Jr", "Why Martin Luther King Didn't Run for President", "Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master and Political Reformer, Dies at 95", "The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech", "Dragons, legos, and solitary: Ai Weiwei's transformative Alcatraz exhibition", Full transcript of the speech from Commondreams.org. 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? But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? He would no longer be respected. [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. 20072023 Blackpast.org. Martin Luther King Jr. announced his strong opposition to the war in Vietnam, the media attacked him for straying outside of his civil rights mandate. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for 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". NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. And King was prescient on this. between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us not their fellow Vietnamese the real enemy. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. 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? 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! There were a lot of people inside. Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. 3. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. 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. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Vietnam War Speech Analysis 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). (Scott) King,My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., 1969. 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. 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. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. 0000002516 00000 n Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. "[9] He stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands", and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children. 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. 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. And that's the issue that King was raising. He passed the Civil Rights Act. King Leads Chicago). Mr. SMILEY: And therein lies the rub. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. Sorry, I'm a little bit emotional here. W. E. B. MLK: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence - YouTube 0000012541 00000 n So he was no longer on that particular list. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. 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. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. 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. In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, issued a statement against merging the civil rights and peace movements. 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. PDF A TIME TO BREAK THE SILENCE - nps.gov Hundreds of folks listened outside on loudspeakers. 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. 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. 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 Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence? King, Excerpts, Address at mass rally on 12 August 1965, 13 August 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Undeterred, King, Spock, and Harry Belafonte led 10,000 demonstrators on an anti-war march to the United Nations on 15 April 1967. 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. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. One of the things, I hope, Neal, will happen here is that when people get a chance to see the special, they will be moved - I think they will be - to Google or Bing, whatever search engine you use, to go online, because the speech is so readily available, Neal, as you know. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today my own government. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence - American Rhetoric King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. That's what set so many of them off. War is not the answer. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks out against the war - HISTORY Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years especially the last three summers. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point (Opposes Vietnam War). [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. Dr. Martin Luther King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech - HistoryNet The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. Full text of speech. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. A few years ago there was a shining moment. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. We appreciate that. 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. 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. I guess the question now is whether or not Afghanistan is a war of necessity or a war of choice. Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in New York. In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. So, too, with Hanoi. 0000005696 00000 n 2/QB(yQVz^*oU.FW The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr ., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivers a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam" in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in. Check your local listings. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. His house was bombed. 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. Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemys point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. 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. 0000001645 00000 n These are the times for real choices and not false ones. Later that year King framed the issue of war in Vietnam as a moral issue: As a minister of the gospel, he said, I consider war an evil. 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. . President Obama, this is one campaign promise that he has kept. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. 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.

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