On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence . Before he was assassinated at age 39, the Rev. The great initiative in this war is ours. [11], King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[citation needed] union leaders and powerful publishers. That night Dr. King shocked the world and his followers when . But LBJ disinvites him to the White House. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Recently one of them wrote these words: Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. [citation needed]. 0000040748 00000 n (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. 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. 0000001427 00000 n And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. Q%F70%iR! Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. 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. We had to do a whole lot of work in the booth trying to get that audio right. He turned that into a great speech when he got out of the hospital. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier: O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath America will be! Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi",[9] and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience If War Intensifies, New York Times, 2 April 1967. 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." 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. CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Somehow this madness must cease. "[14] We must stop now. [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. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. 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. They brought in extra chairs. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. At the time, civil rights leaders publicly condemned him for it. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. 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. Mr. TAVIS SMILEY (Host, "The Tavis Smiley Show"): Neal, always an honor to be on with you. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. 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. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. A few days later, King made it clear that his peace work was not undertaken as the leader of the SCLC, but as an individual, as a clergyman, as one who is greatly concerned about peace (Dr. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. In that address, he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. PDF. Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life? Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft. 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. "This was a huge, huge speech," he continues, "that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. 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. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S King Leads Chicago). CONAN: Walt, thank you. 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. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. 1967 speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. [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. In his last Sunday sermon, delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968, King said that he was convinced that [Vietnam] is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world (King, Remaining Awake, 219). It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. 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. 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. CONAN: Indeed. After he gives it, 168 major newspapers the next day denounce him. 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. After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. I've always argue that Dr. King is the greatest American we've ever produced. It was a wonderful, I think, place to give the speech in the sense that it's pretty cavernous. He had fallen off already the list, as you mentioned, had already fallen off the list of the most admired Americans as tallied by Gallup every year. 0000009147 00000 n Shall we say the odds are too great? It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. And so he does in New York City. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, San Jose, April 15, 1967 Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation on Civil Rights, Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, Chicago Freedom Movement/Chicago open housing movement, Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, Council for United Civil Rights Leadership, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)", List of lynching victims in the United States, Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beyond_Vietnam:_A_Time_to_Break_Silence&oldid=1133369048, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from January 2023, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2023, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 13 January 2023, at 12:35. In so many words, powerful interests told him: "Mind your own business.". After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. That's the problem with it. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. It was, to your earlier point, the most controversial speech he ever gave. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. These are revolutionary times. "[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. They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor both black and white through the poverty program. Accuracy and availability may vary. Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. 0000002004 00000 n 0000002694 00000 n I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict: 1. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. CONAN: We're talking with Tavis Smiley about his PBS special, "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience." 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. 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. Vietnam War | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute Vietnam War Event May 11, 1961 to April 30, 1975 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. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. 0000023610 00000 n Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. This is an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. 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. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautifulstruggle for a new world. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. He passed the Civil Rights Act. AFP/AFP/Getty Images JwNt YHiA:{p . I'm Neal Conan. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. A Comparative Study of Martin Luther King Jr & Malcolm X. by. 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. 0000008347 00000 n I feel that Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali are two of the, you know, greatest Americans we've ever had. [19][20], In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic"[21] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us not their fellow Vietnamese the real enemy. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Hb```f``; 6Pco;{Q. 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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 . I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". And Tavis, nice to have you back in the program. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. Had the president stopped by giving Martin King his just respect - as he did, to his credit - it would have been okay. King 's work to eradicate racial segregation was abruptly halted when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. Do you find this information helpful? But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? 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.

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