martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. 0000001645 00000 n 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. 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 0000002874 00000 n So all that we have is less than 10 minutes of video of the speech. Howard's calling us from South Bend. Thanks, as always for your time. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed he did, Neal. Rev. PBS talk show. The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. 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. [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". 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. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. He turned that into a great speech when he got out of the hospital. 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. 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. His speech appears below. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech opposing the Vietnam War in April 1967. He passed the Civil Rights Act. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in . A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. 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. It was the speech he labored over the most. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. 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). CONAN: Indeed, it was Oslo. (2)] Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. Beyond Vietnam: The MLK speech that caused an uproar. 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. Beyond Vietnam2 in that . The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. 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. Paul A. Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall, Washington Post, 3 March 1965. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. 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. 0000005696 00000 n Afghanistan, not so much. 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.. So practically everybody was opposed to him giving this speech. between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. King, Beyond Vietnam, in A Call to Conscience, ed. 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. 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. 0000046786 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. It was the speech he labored over the most. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. 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. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. Nearly five years after Kings assassination, American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other. 0000013330 00000 n Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within ones own bosom and in the surrounding world. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. It basically ruined their working relationship. King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. 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. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. 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. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. [6], 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. Let's go to Walt(ph). 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. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. Smiley continues, "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. 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. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. Mr. SMILEY: That's right. So he was no longer on that particular list. [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. 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 are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. If Americas soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence (Declaration Against the Vietnam War) M artin L uther K ing, J r. Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City [Photo Credit: John C. Goodwin] [AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. But they didn't stay for the speech in its entirety. In "People and Peace, not Profits and War," Shirley Chisholm repeats the words "two more years" (42). 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 . 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. Let me say this right quick: The comparisons between what King was addressing then about militarism, poverty and racism sound familiar 45 years later. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. 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. But it ends up being the most controversial speech. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [26], The same year, King nominated Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. War is not the answer. 2. Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. 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). It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. 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. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. [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. [27] Thich Nhat Hanh, who publicly held a news conference in Chicago with King in 1966, was acknowledged for urging King to oppose the Vietnam War. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. King Scores Poverty). 0000004621 00000 n 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. [citation needed] Content [ edit] NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. "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. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. 0000003199 00000 n 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: Twin towers were planned from Afghanistan. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, issued a statement against merging the civil rights and peace movements. 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. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. Could we blame them for such thoughts? This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond ones tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted conceptso readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly forcehas now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: Too late. There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. 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. But LBJ disinvites him to the White House. 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. 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. 0000007566 00000 n CONAN: Oh, the audio is terrible, though. And the last poll taken in his life by Harris, the Harris Poll, Neal, found that nearly three quarters of the American people, nearly three quarters, had turned against Martin on this issue, and 55 percent of his own people, black folk, had turned against him. 159. 0000004834 00000 n 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. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft. 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. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. PDF. They brought in extra chairs. And King was prescient on this. After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. The initiative to stop it must be ours. ", In 1967, a year to the day before his death, Martin Luther King, Jr. departed from his message of civil rights to deliver a speech that denounced America's war in Vietnam.