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. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience). 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. But the entire speech, of course, thankfully, was recorded on audio. Jazmyn Ford. We're talking with Tavis Smiley. He rarely gave speeches from a text. 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. 0000003415 00000 n 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 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. 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? Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. 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. That's my own personal assessment. 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. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam and Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 90th Cong., 2d sess., Congressional Record 114 (9 April 1968): 93919397. Excuse me. 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. 0000002004 00000 n 0000013408 00000 n In this speech, he opposes violence and militarism, particularly the war in 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]. Is it among these voiceless ones? It basically ruined their working relationship. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. There were a lot of people inside. 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. 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. ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. And number two, at what cost? 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. "[23], King also stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. 0000002874 00000 n So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. 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. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. 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. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. 0000012562 00000 n A small donation would help us keep this available to all. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. So it was a great turnout. Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. And I think most Americans know the "I Have A Dream" speech. 0000004834 00000 n Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence . . Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 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. 0000040748 00000 n But they asked and rightly so what about Vietnam? And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. 0000006515 00000 n [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. A Comparative Study of Martin Luther King Jr & Malcolm X. by. "I've Been to the Mountaintop" is the popular name of the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. King spoke on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters) in Memphis, Tennessee. CONAN: Howard, thanks very much for the call. 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. 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. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Mr. SMILEY: We - let me just tell you this. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? The New York Times calls it wasteful and self-defeating. 0000002605 00000 n There is.a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. 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 they go primarily women and children and the aged. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. 0000017817 00000 n But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both. On April 15, 1967, King participated and spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the United Nations. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement. 4. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point (Opposes Vietnam War). 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. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. I'm Neal Conan. 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. M ost Americans remember Martin Luther King Jr. for his dream of what this country could be, a nation where his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content. 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. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. 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. Read The Full Text And Listen To Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" Speech. 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. 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. Martin built his speech that night, Neal, around three major points: around increasing militarism, around escalating poverty and around the issue of racism. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. Thank you. Rev. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. 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. And he said these three issues of racism and poverty and militarism are going to destroy this nation. %PDF-1.3 % HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? But Carson makes a powerful point in the special that you just identified, about whether or not Martin King himself would be welcome in some of these mega-churches, at certain political gatherings. hide caption. 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. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. The Riverside Church donated largely with Rockefeller money. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries. And that's the issue that King was raising. 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. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat.

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