Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb. 0000009168 00000 n Let's get Howard(ph) on the line. And thirdly, I think the main point here in this MLK "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that there is another way. These too are our brothers. I guess the question now is whether or not Afghanistan is a war of necessity or a war of choice. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 n/a martin luther king jr. (born michael king january 15, 1929 april 1968) was an american baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in . So they go primarily women and children and the aged. The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. 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 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? This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. Before he was assassinated at age 39, the Rev. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. And that's just the Times and the Post. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. 0000017817 00000 n They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. This speech was enormously controversial. But Martin understood very clearly that what we ought to be doing at home is being - we are being distracted, rather, by our engagement around the world. 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. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech opposing the Vietnam War in April 1967. The first signs of opposition to King's tactics from within the civil rights movement surfaced during the March 1965 demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, which were aimed at dramatizing the need for a federal voting-rights law that would provide legal support for the enfranchisement of . "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. King led his first anti-war march in Chicago on 25 March 1967, and reinforced the connection between war abroad and injustice at home: The bombs in Vietnam explode at homethey destroy the dream and possibility for a decent America (Dr. *];\n~~/iQ|h Q [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. Carson and Shepard, 2001. That Vietnam was a mistake. I want to thank you, as I know listeners do as well, for your service to this country. 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. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. 0000002247 00000 n 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. "[14] The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. 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. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. . I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. 0000001616 00000 n 0000009147 00000 n PDF. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. 0000009964 00000 n 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. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. Email us: talk@npr.org. 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. Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. 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. Grossfield, Stan. And I think most Americans know the "I Have A Dream" speech. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. It was a wonderful, I think, place to give the speech in the sense that it's pretty cavernous. 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." 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. 0000003415 00000 n I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point (Opposes Vietnam War). What of the National Liberation Front that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? 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. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. 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. 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. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. Due to the Vietnam War is that plenty of individuals, both Americans and Vietnamese were killed. King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. 0000011739 00000 n 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. If Dr. King were to say to the organizers of these events, I'd like to show up at your church on Sunday morning, at your rally this weekend, and here's what I want to say, there is a good argument to be made that Dr. King himself might not be welcome - might not be allowed to say what was in his heart, what his conscience really was, given the political correctness of the world that we live in today. 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. So practically everybody was opposed to him giving this speech. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. "[14][15], The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated. WALT (Caller): Yes. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. %PDF-1.3 % In describing the ways in which the . 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 are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. 0000005717 00000 n Mr. SMILEY: Neal, thank you for the opportunity. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. 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. He did say he was going to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, so he's kept that promise. That's what set so many of them off. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. CONAN: Oh, the audio is terrible, though. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. JwNt YHiA:{p . That's my own personal assessment. (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. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. 0000004855 00000 n And he said these three issues of racism and poverty and militarism are going to destroy this nation. Thanks, as always for your time. 0000030467 00000 n Freedom's Ring: King's "I Have a Dream" Speech, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views, Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam (CALCAV). Let's go to Walt(ph). The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. 0000006515 00000 n 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. Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. And I think that if nothing else what we need to wrestle with in a contemporary sense, Neal, is the question of whether or not there is another way that King would have us consider were he allowed to do. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream Martin Luther King, Jr., giving his speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence at Riverside Church in NYC, April 4, 1967. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on lifes roadside; but that will be only an initial act. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. 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. 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. Accuracy and availability may vary. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. So far we may have killed a million of them mostly children. 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. 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! He rarely gave speeches from a text. 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. 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. 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. King, Beyond Vietnam, in A Call to Conscience, ed. [18] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism. Hundreds of folks listened outside on loudspeakers. 0000003503 00000 n 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. For as popular as King was, he was a Nobel laureate, there were only one or two news crews who actually came to see the speech that night, Neal. Carson and Holloran, 1998. 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. 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. Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Dr. Benjamin Spock (2nd-L), Martin Luther King, Jr. (C), Father Frederick Reed and Cleveland Robinson lead a huge pacifist rally protesting U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, Mar. He supported Johnsons calls for diplomatic negotiations and economic development as the beginnings of such a step. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. Mr. SMILEY: Well, I think the question is whether or not - I hear your point, Neal, and I take it. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Dr. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. 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. 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. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. 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. 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. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. Kings opposition to the war provoked criticism from members of Congress, the press, and from his civil rights colleagues who argued that expanding his civil rights message to include foreign affairs would harm the black freedom struggle in America. A few other Americans know, of course, the "Mountaintop" speech given the night before he's assassinated in Memphis. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. 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. 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. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. I'm Neal Conan. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nations only non-Communist revolutionary political force the unified Buddhist church. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. 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. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. Answering press questions after addressing a Howard University audience on 2 March 1965, King asserted that the war in Vietnam was accomplishing nothing and called for a negotiated settlement (Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence). 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? Mr. SMILEY: Yeah, Walt, I thank you for sharing that story as well, for being courageous to tell it, number one. In "People and Peace, not Profits and War," Shirley Chisholm repeats the words "two more years" (42). King spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. 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." 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. But LBJ disinvites him to the White House. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. 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.
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