martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript

Screenshots are considered by the King Estate a violation of this notice. The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. And Tavis, nice to have you back in the program. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. Is it among these voiceless ones? Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. 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. At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. It basically ruined their working relationship. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them the only party in real touch with the peasants. 0000013408 00000 n 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. 0000001700 00000 n So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. It's a powerful refrain, Neal, about what would've happened in his life, what he would've missed if he had sneezed at that very moment. Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 King Leads Chicago). Had the president stopped by giving Martin King his just respect - as he did, to his credit - it would have been okay. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah, Walt, I thank you for sharing that story as well, for being courageous to tell it, number one. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. That's what set so many of them off. CONAN: Indeed. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. 0000003199 00000 n [28], A portion of this speech is used in the track "Wisdom, Justice, and Love" by Linkin Park, from their 2010 album A Thousand Suns. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. As we all know, Neal, before he died, Robert McNamara, the Defense secretary that had Walt and others over in Vietnam, before he died, of course, announced that he was wrong. He was one of the most important and influential Civil Rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. CONAN: We're talking with Tavis Smiley about his PBS special, "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is known for being one of the greatest orators of the twentieth century, and perhaps in all of American history. Why are you joining the voices of dissent? 0000001427 00000 n Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 0000002874 00000 n 0000009168 00000 n The initiative to stop it must be ours. So, too, with Hanoi. What liberators? So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. 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. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. HT0WJ3 O$L 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. 0000046786 00000 n (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. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King at Ebenezer Church. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. Mr. SMILEY: Well, I think the question is whether or not - I hear your point, Neal, and I take it. A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. "MLK: A Call to Conscience" premieres on PBS tomorrow night. 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. trailer << /Size 93 /Info 36 0 R /Root 40 0 R /Prev 148547 /ID[<8f2b4dd6f2f061944c7ff807c44fcc1f><651247ae294a1a197a948cb3bc3f8412>] >> startxref 0 %%EOF 40 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 38 0 R /Metadata 37 0 R /Threads 41 0 R /Names 43 0 R /OpenAction [ 44 0 R /XYZ null null null ] /PageMode /UseNone /PageLabels 35 0 R >> endobj 41 0 obj [ 42 0 R ] endobj 42 0 obj << /I << /Title (A)>> /F 45 0 R >> endobj 43 0 obj << /Dests 33 0 R >> endobj 91 0 obj << /S 76 /E 200 /L 216 /Filter /FlateDecode /Length 92 0 R >> stream I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. A few years ago there was a shining moment. Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. Robert B. Semple, Jr., Dr. And so he does in New York City. Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on lifes roadside; but that will be only an initial act. And King was prescient on this. 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. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. So when the president suggests - and whether directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally diminishes in that Nobel speech Martin's powerful, nonviolent philosophy, it tweaked some people, and you'll see that in the presentation Wednesday night. [citation needed]. 0000023610 00000 n 159. I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. [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. 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. 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. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done. 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. In so many words, powerful interests told him: "Mind your own business.". 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 . And they, as news crews tend to do, they stayed to get just enough B-roll, as we call it Mr. SMILEY: for the news that night. But what I want - I think the question - I've always thought that Dr. King, that that speech about Vietnam was his best speech in my mind. PBS talk show. 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. While King was personally opposed to the war, he was concerned that publicly criticizing U.S. foreign policy would damage his relationship with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had been instrumental in passing civil rights legislation and who had declared in April 1965 that he was willing to negotiate a diplomatic end to the war in Vietnam. 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. He was stabbed at one time. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. 0000003415 00000 n And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. 0000009147 00000 n A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. Martin Luther King, who was already beginning to lose some of his influence, nevertheless made a huge challenge to the establishment. His wife, Coretta Scott King, on the other hand, critiqued the war publicly for years before her husband did. WALT (Caller): Yes. 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. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. Sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. "Vincent Harding dies at 82; historian wrote controversial King speech", "Vincent Harding, author of Martin Luther King Jr.'s antiwar speech, dies", "The Rev. 0000005717 00000 n When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. 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. 0000002964 00000 n The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point (Opposes Vietnam War). 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. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. 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. Because, to your point now, one, I want people to go online and read the speech so you can see the text for yourself. 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. 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. [24], King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 United States presidential election. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. 5. $25.00. 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. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he also rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism.