"[8] He connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change: A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. 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. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. 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. The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. 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. 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. "[9], King opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. On the evening of April 4, 1967, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King lent his full-throated oratory to a growing chorus of opposition to the rapidly expanding American role in the Vietnam War. And at that march, he knew there would be people, as you point out in the film, waving Vietnamese flags and chanting CONAN: Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going to win, and that sort of thing and it would clearly be taken in a very different context. 0000011437 00000 n 0000009168 00000 n His speech appears below. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. 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. When the Rev. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. Martin Luther King Jr. - Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam 5. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. hide caption. 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. (Unintelligible) on this program about, you know, the chances he took and even, you know, speaking truth to power to LBJ helped him so much in civil rights. PDF A TIME TO BREAK THE SILENCE - nps.gov ml.K-x1x*tcSO p[ endstream endobj 62 0 obj 720 endobj 63 0 obj << /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 62 0 R >> stream Dr. King is trying to get the point across that our country is being unfair to others. Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. 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. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diems methods had aroused. CONAN: Indeed, it was Oslo. Read The Full Text And Listen To Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" Speech. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. 0000001427 00000 n On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech in New York City at Riverside Church on the occasion of his becoming co-chairperson of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (subsequently renamed Clergy and Laity Concerned ). I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. 4. 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. And about a month after that speech was given, I was wounded. Carson and Holloran, 1998. Undeterred, King, Spock, and Harry Belafonte led 10,000 demonstrators on an anti-war march to the United Nations on 15 April 1967. (1967) Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Attachment 4: Are We Ready to Listen to Dr. King? "[24] King quoted a United States official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution. He would no longer be respected. So it was a great turnout. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. Shall we say the odds are too great? Mr. SMILEY: That's right. 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. And that's the issue that King was raising. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about war, Dr. King? The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. 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]. But most Americans, I think, do not know this speech, "Beyond Vietnam.". 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. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. "The press is being stacked against me", King said,[13] It was the speech he labored over the most. Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years especially the last three summers. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. 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. $25.00. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Martin Luther King Jr. Records Collection Act, King: A Filmed Record Montgomery to Memphis, The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, Joseph Schwantner: New Morning for the World; Nicolas Flagello: The Passion of Martin Luther King. "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. We're talking with Tavis Smiley. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both. So King understood violence. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. 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. Martin Luther King, Jr. utilizes figurative to emphasize the inhumanity and immorality of the war. So practically everybody in his inner circle was against him giving it - one, because they knew the kind of pushback he was going to get. They asked if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. 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. Sorry, I'm a little bit emotional here. 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. And King had preached at this church any number of times before, of course. 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. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

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