martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later 0000001427 00000 n Martin Luther King Jr - n/a - Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King In December 1966, testifying before a congressional subcommittee on budget priorities, King argued for a rebalancing of fiscal priorities away from Americas obsession with Vietnam and toward greater support for anti-poverty programs at home (Semple, Dr. He gave a famous speech about the fact that he - when stabbed in New York at a book signing, the blade was just a scintilla away from his aorta. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. CONAN: Walt, thank you. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. "Beyond Vietnam" - The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. 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. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The question is, is it a war of necessity or a war of choice at this point? 0000004621 00000 n 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. Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), African American founding fathers of the United States, Statue of Martin Luther King Jr. (Pueblo, Colorado), Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, San Francisco. Martin Luther King Jr. - Acceptance Speech - NobelPrize.org 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. How are you, sir? Your donation is fully tax-deductible. 0000002874 00000 n 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. Appreciate it. We must stop now. 0000004834 00000 n Fearful of being labeled a Communist, which would diminish the impact of his civil rights work, King tempered his criticism of U.S. policy in Vietnam through late 1965 and 1966. 800-989-8255. And his argument, basically, was that I cannot, as a practitioner and a true believer in nonviolence, espouse that nonviolent philosophy in our movement and then somehow sit idly by when I see violence being engaged around the world. The great initiative in this war is ours. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. 0000008347 00000 n They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nations only non-Communist revolutionary political force the unified Buddhist church. 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. %PDF-1.3 % King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. So, that's all I had to say. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. 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. Jazmyn Ford. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. We were 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. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream 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. 159. He criticized the Vietnam War and praised Muhammad Ali for being a conscientious objector. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. 0000003996 00000 n 0000008326 00000 n America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. 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. I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in New York. April 4, 1967: Martin Luther King Jr. Delivers "Beyond Vietnam" Speech 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. 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. 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 believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. 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. Mr. SMILEY: That's right. MLK: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence - YouTube 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. "[24] King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution. And it was on that occasion that he - when he saw those pictures, said, I have to speak out about this. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. 0000002337 00000 n WALT (Caller): Yes. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. Although the peace community lauded Kings willingness to take a public stand against the war in Vietnam, many within the civil rights movement further distanced themselves from his stance. How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? Nearly five years after Kings assassination, American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. Dr. Martin Luther King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech - HistoryNet Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. I feel that Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali are two of the, you know, greatest Americans we've ever had. 0000044282 00000 n 0000012562 00000 n Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. 0000001616 00000 n Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. But it ends up being the most controversial speech. CONAN: Well, take us back to 1967. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. How Did Martin Luther King Jr Use Of Figurative Language Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. "The press is being stacked against me", King said,[13] 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. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. [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. Copyright 2010 NPR. The message directly challenged the president who'd taken great political risks to support civil rights legislation and also challenged many of his colleagues in the movement who've called it a tactical mistake. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. His speech appears below. 0000043425 00000 n CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. 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. And what really got him to the point of figuring that he really, really had to address this again back to the children, he couldn't say to young folks in this country who were being denied, that they should engage nonviolence as a philosophy when he saw the children, when he saw these pictures of these Vietnamese children being bombed and the impact - the effect that napalm was having on their bodies. He rarely gave speeches from a text. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. We had to do a whole lot of work in the booth trying to get that audio right. These are revolutionary times. At what cost? 0000002427 00000 n 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. Legendary civil rights leader Rev. [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". We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible. 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). 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. 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. 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. HT0WJ3 O$L Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Zinn Education Project Some civil rights leaders urged King not to speak out on the Vietnam War, but he said he could not separate issues of economic injustice, racism, war, and militarism. A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. 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. 20072023 Blackpast.org. 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 . ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. 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. 0000013330 00000 n Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. "[9], King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. This is an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. It was a wonderful, I think, place to give the speech in the sense that it's pretty cavernous. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. 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. Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. Is it among these voiceless ones? He would no longer be respected. It was the speech he labored over the most. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. But they chose Riverside because King was going to be speaking some days later at a huge rally and march in New York City, and they knew that that rally was going to bring out a different kind of element, a more controversial element. 4 Powerful Martin Luther King, Jr. Speeches That Aren't 'I Have A Dream' 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? 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. Excuse me. 1967 speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. 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. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war.