The United States got involved in the Vietnam War because they wanted to stop the spread of communism. These are revolutionary times. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. 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. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. AFP/AFP/Getty Images CONAN: Well, take us back to 1967. It makes for an excellent teaching tool for a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, Cold War and Vietnam, or as a bridge to combine the two! On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. But they didn't stay for the speech in its entirety. King to Weigh Civil Disobedience). The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". How Did Martin Luther King Jr Use Of Figurative Language 0000013309 00000 n So, that's all I had to say. 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. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators our chosen man, Premier Diem. 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. 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. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, organized the 1963 March on Washington, advocated for civil disobedience and. 0000002247 00000 n Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. 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. 4. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nations self-defined goals and positions. 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. Excuse me. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. 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! That's what set so many of them off. Smiley continues, "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. P: (650) 723-2092 | F: (650) 723-2093 | kinginstitute@stanford.edu| Campus Map. Dr. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. 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. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist that led the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements until his assassination in 1968. So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done. King Leads Chicago). It was a tactical mistake. "[10], King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms. The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. 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. 0000010534 00000 n 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. Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? 0000008326 00000 n 0000017817 00000 n How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? 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. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence - Wikipedia And King was prescient on this. 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. "It basically ruins their relationship," says Smiley. [27] Thich Nhat Hanh, who publicly held a news conference in Chicago with King in 1966, was acknowledged for urging King to oppose the Vietnam War. 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. His tireless work advocating for the end of. And when you see the piece on "Lens" tonight that's the part of the speech that set off so many of those who are in King's inner circle, so many scholars who have written about King. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on lifes roadside; but that will be only an initial act. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. He passed the Civil Rights Act. The True Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Free Press. King Scores Poverty). Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts. How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of aggression from the north as if there were nothing more essential to the war? And that is precisely what concerned Dr. King so much, that these young boys were being sent halfway around the world to fight a war that was unwinnable, that resources were being used there that should've been used here at home. 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. 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. Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. Attachment 2: Definitions Attachment 3: King Opposed Vietnam War; We Must Oppose US War in Iraq. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Thank you. 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. 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. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. 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. 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. 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. Nearly five years after Kings assassination, American troops withdrew from Vietnam and a peace treaty declared South and North Vietnam independent of each other. And I can't tell young black men, who are being denied right here in the streets of America, that they should offer themselves up and to sign themselves up to go - to do harm to people around the world who they do not know. The first signs of opposition to King's tactics from within the civil rights movement surfaced during the March 1965 demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, which were aimed at dramatizing the need for a federal voting-rights law that would provide legal support for the enfranchisement of . And Walt's with us from Cortez in Colorado. And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. 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. 2/QB(yQVz^*oU.FW CONAN: Indeed, it was Oslo. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. 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. And King had preached at this church any number of times before, of course. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just. It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: This is not just. The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
martin luther king jr vietnam war speech transcript