Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? This is Howard, which you know me. 0000003199 00000 n 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. 0000013330 00000 n The initiative to stop it must be ours. On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a controversial sermon opposing the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights, then helped lead a large antiwar march from Central Park to the United Nations later that month. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a speech that may have helped put a target on . They must see Americans as strange liberators. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence . Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 0000004834 00000 n It includes a portion of his speech. Afghanistan, not so much. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. 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. 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. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. A few years ago there was a shining moment. Q%F70%iR! dH(*b(jGB@'k1zTR~{dA9|\b. 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. He did say he was going to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, so he's kept that promise. 0000002694 00000 n Some, like civil rights leader Ralph Bunche, the NAACP, and the editorial page writers of The Washington Post[3] and The New York Times[4] called the Riverside Church speech a mistake on King's part. King Leads Chicago Peace Rally, New York Times, 26 March 1967. 0000047501 00000 n 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. So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done. 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. Email us: talk@npr.org. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. 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. What liberators? 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. 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. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. He passed the Civil Rights Act. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. While his legacy is commonly remembered by his famous "I Have A Dream" speech, we've sourced four powerful, lesser-known speeches from Dr. King to listen to and commemorate . That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Not only that, but then-President Lyndon Johnson disinvited King to the White House. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. 0000005717 00000 n Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. 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. And after I was wounded, we had four or five 100-pound bomb dropped on us, and 10 Marines were killed outright and 24 were wounded. 0000001739 00000 n 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. And thirdly, I think the main point here in this MLK "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that there is another way. [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". For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. 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. 0000012562 00000 n And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream 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. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Mr. SMILEY: It's a powerful point made by Clayborne Carson at Stanford who is in charge, as you know, Neal, of the King papers. Less than two weeks after leading his first Vietnam demonstration, on 4 April 1967, King made his best known and most comprehensive statement against the war. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. King contemplated but ultimately decided against the proposal on the grounds that he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited for his morally unambiguous role as an activist.[25]. [citation needed]. [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. 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. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. WALT (Caller): Yes. 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. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. "[22] The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. 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. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. CONAN: And one thing that I was unaware of was the timing of the speech in that he had wanted to say something along these lines. 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? But certainly one of the greatest orators of our time. "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. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed he did, Neal. 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. 800-989-8255. 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." And he starts out in the opening line at Riverside Church by saying: I am here tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. 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. 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. 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. In 1967, in the shadows of Columbia, Dr. King shifted the world again. As the head of state, I cannot necessarily embrace the same principles that, as you point out, Martin Luther King, a prophet, an outsider could embrace. Had the president stopped by giving Martin King his just respect - as he did, to his credit - it would have been okay. 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. In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. Fifty-years ago in April 1967, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered one of his most memorable, if not controversial sermons, at Riverside Church just steps away from the Columbia University campus. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. Howard's calling us from South Bend. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. 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. 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. 0000002784 00000 n Watch a newsfilm clip of the speech . (2)] Mr. SMILEY: That's right. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? 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. ) fuG {*pZ//e,QTx)%TuS%@^2j/?Nf7nx!]OvqJG=_oD3?VUMs+tM95X )G~1b'g])!`]:|OwHh-J6ZHg{Z9N3b!\#9"zhT\]sp2WtTal =YvkO8yu 6^,n,v$+u$|^1wUF}GGc=p!e#F\]xx6l~NTYSmc /ut^*WTPO Cp =-FQW.]y#F6NsQ2Qzqz=|v94+JC?w4,|yi4T0eIaaeD2-Y1 n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on lifes roadside; but that will be only an initial act. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech opposing the Vietnam War in April 1967. 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 . This speech was written and basically read word for word so that they could have a copy to give to mainstream newspapers across the country for their consideration, because King did not want to be misquoted Mr. SMILEY: or misunderstood, although that didn't work. 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. 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? or 404 526-8968. 0000008326 00000 n We appreciate that. The great initiative in this war is ours. 0000040748 00000 n Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 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. We had to do a whole lot of work in the booth trying to get that audio right. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. 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. 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. 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. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. 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. Twin towers were planned from Afghanistan. He would no longer be respected. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. 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. Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. 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. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? 0000009964 00000 n Paul A. Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence at Police-Guarded Howard Hall, Washington Post, 3 March 1965. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. Do you find this information helpful? 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 have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. 159. He was stabbed at one time. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future.