martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

Q%F70%iR! They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). 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. 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 . 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). [citation needed]. Nearly five years after Kings assassination, American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other. 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. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. 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. [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. [24], King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 United States presidential election. 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. Check your local listings. CONAN: And I think a lot of people will see your parallels regarding Iraq, where, indeed, the United States was the aggressor in that conflict. 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. 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. 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. You can also join the conversation at our Web site. hide caption. And that is precisely what concerned Dr. King so much, that these young boys were being sent halfway around the world to fight a war that was unwinnable, that resources were being used there that should've been used here at home. That night Dr. King shocked the world and his followers when . They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. As Arnold Toynbee says : Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. I've always thought that was, to me, his best speech, his most consequential speech, even better than I have a dream in the mountain top speech. We most provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country if necessary. 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 <> /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 Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. But they didn't stay for the speech in its entirety. 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? (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? 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. But most Americans, I think, do not know this speech, "Beyond Vietnam.". 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. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. (Scott) King,My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., 1969. (1997). Copyright 2010 NPR. 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. 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. Thank you. And I can't tell young black men, who are being denied right here in the streets of America, that they should offer themselves up and to sign themselves up to go - to do harm to people around the world who they do not know. Check your local listings. 0000008347 00000 n Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of aggression from the north as if there were nothing more essential to the war? So King understood violence. They must see Americans as strange liberators. 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 . A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Benjamin Hedin on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, anti-Vietnam War speech at Riverside Church in New York, which risked King's relationship with Lyndon Johnson. 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. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. That's what set so many of them off. V)U5v\@apkk;#WF. 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. 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. CONAN: We're talking with Tavis Smiley about his PBS special, "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience." 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. Sorry, I'm a little bit emotional here. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. He was one of the most important and influential Civil Rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. King, Beyond Vietnam, in A Call to Conscience, ed. We appreciate that. For those who ask the question, Arent you a civil rights leader? and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. 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. 0000009147 00000 n The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. So, that's all I had to say. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: To save the soul of America. We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. CONAN: And the place - choice of place is very interesting too. This quote is from a sermon by Dr. King on April 30, 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, drawing from his infamous April 4 sermon at Riverside Church. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. I want to thank you, as I know listeners do as well, for your service to this country. 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. 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 world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. 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. 800-989-8255, email us talk@npr.org. 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. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautifulstruggle for a new world. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. Hundreds of folks listened outside on loudspeakers. 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. 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. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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. 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 years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. 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. We must move past indecision to action. HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? 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. So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. So even McNamara eventually comes around to that point. The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News in Washington. 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. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. 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. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real changeespecially in terms of their need for land and peace. 0000002004 00000 n He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy.

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martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcriptRelated