martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

No, Howard, I thank you for your phone call. "[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. 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. 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. CONAN: And there's an interesting point you also make in the film that - or at least some of the participants in your film make - that were he alive today and saying the kinds of things you would expect him to say, given that speech, he probably would not be invited to many Martin Luther King Day celebrations. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. 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. 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. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. One of his great advisers and great admirers, Stanley Levison, who was always with Dr. King in his corner, was against Martin giving this speech. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both. Hundreds of folks listened outside on loudspeakers. 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. So Martin's advisors basically said, if you are intent on giving the speech, at least allow us to craft a speech and to create a setting that will allow you to speak to clergy members and laity so at least before you get to this rally that we know is going to be controversial, we could at least roll this thing out with a different kind of a crowd. 0000003503 00000 n In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. In his 1967 speech on the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr. employs figurative language and syntactical elements to construct his argument against the hypocrisy and cruelty of American involvement in the war. But the entire speech, of course, thankfully, was recorded on audio. I just wanted to say that I was an 18-year-old Marine in Vietnam when the speech was given, and I didn't hear it until three or four years ago. 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. [citation needed], One of the eight "sound cells" in @Large, Ai Weiwei's 201415 exhibit at Alcatraz, features King's voice giving the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. 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). In describing the ways in which the . We had to do a whole lot of work in the booth trying to get that audio right. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. Thank you. complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children. He was stabbed at one time. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. 0000011068 00000 n *];\n~~/iQ|h Q Watch a newsfilm clip of the speech . 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. But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? 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. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, organized the 1963 March on Washington, advocated for civil disobedience and. ) 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 You can also join the conversation at our Web site. 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). 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. Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. We have destroyed their land and their crops. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? When the Rev. Seeking to reduce the potential backlash by framing his speech within the context of religious objection to war, King addressed a crowd of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York City. 0000002874 00000 n 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. 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. King Leads Chicago Peace Rally, New York Times, 26 March 1967. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. This is Howard, which you know me. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. 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. 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. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. 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. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. 0000002004 00000 n Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. 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. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 0000023610 00000 n 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 . On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. This is an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. The great initiative in this war is ours. If Americas soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. 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. Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? (1947) Moranda Smith Addresses The Congress Of Industrial Organizations Annual Convention, Boston, (1974) Congresswoman Barbara Jordans Statement: The Richard Nixon Impeachment Hearings, African American History: Research Guides & Websites, Global African History: Research Guides & Websites, African American Scientists and Technicians of the Manhattan Project, Envoys, Diplomatic Ministers, & Ambassadors, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html, Foundation, Organization, and Corporate Supporters. These are revolutionary times. 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. WALT (Caller): Yes. Dr. King in a March 25, 1967 antiwar march in Chicago. In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. 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. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poorboth black . 0000009147 00000 n Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. 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? And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. And he said these three issues of racism and poverty and militarism are going to destroy this nation. Q%F70%iR! Check your local listings. During the last year of his life, King worked with Spock to develop Vietnam Summer, a volunteer project to increase grassroots peace activism in time for the 1968 elections. So King understood violence. Afghanistan, not so much. Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. The cornerstones of his activism were based on non-violence and civil disobedience, both of which were inspired by his Christian faith and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. 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. "[22] The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press. The initiative to stop it must be ours. 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? We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. They brought in extra chairs. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. [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. It was a wonderful, I think, place to give the speech in the sense that it's pretty cavernous. 0000012562 00000 n 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 . Of course, he's assassinated in Memphis a year to the day later after giving this speech. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. 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. 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. I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence . I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. 0000010534 00000 n So practically everybody was opposed to him giving this speech. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. 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. And I think most Americans know the "I Have A Dream" speech. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. 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. But LBJ disinvites him to the White House. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nations only non-Communist revolutionary political force the unified Buddhist church. In Martin Luther King Jr.'s Vietnam speech, lines 413-416, he repeats the phrase "this is not just" (161). 16, 1967 in New York. So it was a great turnout. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? 2/QB(yQVz^*oU.FW The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. 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. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. Beyond Vietnam2 in that . A few years ago there was a shining moment. 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. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. 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. 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.

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