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I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. It was a tactical mistake. 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. 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 peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these? I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world a world that borders on our doors. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? He criticized the Vietnam War and praised Muhammad Ali for being a conscientious objector. Dr. How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? In the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. It was, to your earlier point, the most controversial speech he ever gave. Dr. And so he does in New York City. Du Bois to Coretta Scott King: The Untold History of the Movement to Ban the Bomb. Thanks, as always for your time. Q%F70%iR! King linked his anti-war and civil rights work in speeches throughout the country, where he described the three problems he saw plaguing the nation: racism, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. His house was bombed. (AFP via Getty Images) "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? 0000012562 00000 n Cypress Hall D, 466 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305-4146 [29], Excerpts from this speech are used in the songs "Together" and "Spirit" by Nordic Giants. Mr. SMILEY: Indeed, he did. Mr. SMILEY: And therein lies the rub. Mr. SMILEY: Yeah. The problem was that practically everyone in his inner circle - not all, there was James Bevel and a couple of others - but practically everyone in his inner circle advised him strongly not to give this speech. PBS talk show. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government. He passed the Voting Rights Act. or 404 526-8968. . It includes a portion of his speech. 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. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some Communists. So they go primarily women and children and the aged. 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. James L. Bevel dies at 72; civil rights activist and top lieutenant to King", "Martin Luther King Jr. made our nation uncomfortable", "The Uncompromising Anti-Capitalism of Martin Luther King Jr", "Why Martin Luther King Didn't Run for President", "Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master and Political Reformer, Dies at 95", "The Story Of King's 'Beyond Vietnam' Speech", "Dragons, legos, and solitary: Ai Weiwei's transformative Alcatraz exhibition", Full transcript of the speech from Commondreams.org. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. 0000002427 00000 n [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. JwNt YHiA:{p . 0000005717 00000 n He passed the Civil Rights Act. Martin Luther King, Jr. utilizes figurative to emphasize the inhumanity and immorality of the war. I must cry out when I see war escalated at any point (Opposes Vietnam War). I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. 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. Do you find this information helpful? But I'm hoping that people will get a chance, once they see the speech, they'll be moved to go read the speech and to make comparisons, Neal. Martin Luther King Jr. was deeply troubled by the Vietnam War for years, but the "Beyond Vietnam" speech was his first major policy statement on the issue. Howard's calling us from South Bend. But they didn't stay for the speech in its entirety. "[14] Procrastination is still the thief of time. I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches. BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress International News/Alerts/Announcements , Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering speech. CONAN: Well, take us back to 1967. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. 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. For those who ask the question, Arent you a civil rights leader? and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. This quote is from a sermon by Dr. King on April 30, 1967 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, drawing from his infamous April 4 sermon at Riverside Church. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. King delivered a speech entitled Beyond Vietnam, pointing out that the war effort was 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 (King, Beyond Vietnam, 143). The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. $25.00. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side; Some great cause, Gods new Messiah, Offring each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever Twixt that darkness and that light. HOWARD: How are you doing, Tavis? CONAN: And I think a lot of people will see your parallels regarding Iraq, where, indeed, the United States was the aggressor in that conflict. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Smiley spoke with both scholars and friends of King, including Cornel West, Vincent Harding and Susannah Heschel. 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. 0000047501 00000 n 0000030467 00000 n W. E. B. Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. 0000002516 00000 n HdTn0+=3hRnm)zK#-t\|Ha)S 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. Before he was assassinated at age 39, the Rev. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? 0000040748 00000 n Is it among these voiceless ones? Grossfield, Stan. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." War is not the answer. ) fuG {*pZ//e,QTx)%TuS%@^2j/?Nf7nx!]OvqJG=_oD3?VUMs+tM95X )G~1b'g])!`]:|OwHh-J6ZHg{Z9N3b!\#9"zhT\]sp2WtTal =YvkO8yu 6^,n,v$+u$|^1wUF}GGc=p!e#F\]xx6l~NTYSmc /ut^*WTPO Cp =-FQW.]y#F6NsQ2Qzqz=|v94+JC?w4,|yi4T0eIaaeD2-Y1 Appreciate it. 0000002605 00000 n The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. [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. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence? It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poorboth black . 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. That's what I feel. 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. So 60 year(ph) is really, really a hot year here around this particular issue. 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. Copy of full text of the "Beyond Vietnam" speech. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. Smiley continues, "it was the most controversial speech he ever gave. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" was a powerful and angry speech that raged against the war. 0000004621 00000 n Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr. And that's just the Times and the Post. This is Howard, which you know me. 2. Mr. SMILEY: We - let me just tell you this. Undeterred, King, Spock, and Harry Belafonte led 10,000 demonstrators on an anti-war march to the United Nations on 15 April 1967. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen . 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. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. "This was a huge, huge speech," he continues, "that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever seen or done. All Rights Reserved. He rarely gave speeches from a text. 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. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. 0000011068 00000 n It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. 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. 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. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. For as popular as King was, he was a Nobel laureate, there were only one or two news crews who actually came to see the speech that night, Neal. He turned that into a great speech when he got out of the hospital. 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. 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. 0000009985 00000 n The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. Keep in mind now that 1967, Neal, as you know, is the same year that Muhammad Ali, the world champion, decides to not accept that draft to go and fight in Vietnam. Sorry, I'm a little bit emotional here. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. 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. So it was a great turnout. Thank you. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. Why are you joining the voices of dissent? But two, to the audio, there are only less than 10 minutes of this speech that got covered. Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305. Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Manhattan's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 . Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? (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. We must stop now. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. Full text of speech. Let's go to Walt(ph). We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. CONAN: And the place - choice of place is very interesting too. Dr. King is trying to get the point across that our country is being unfair to others. Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? So, that's all I had to say. Had the president stopped by giving Martin King his just respect - as he did, to his credit - it would have been okay. 159. [27], In 2010, PBS commentator Tavis Smiley said that the speech was the most controversial speech of King's career, and the one he "labored over the most". Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. And let's see if we can get another caller on the line. What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? A few years ago there was a shining moment in that. While they both may have justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted conceptso readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly forcehas now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Ken Rudin joins guest host Rebecca Roberts. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. The message directly challenged the president who'd taken great political risks to support civil rights legislation and also challenged many of his colleagues in the movement who've called it a tactical mistake. 0000006515 00000 n 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. 800-989-8255, email us talk@npr.org. While his legacy is commonly remembered by his famous "I Have A Dream" speech, we've sourced four powerful, lesser-known speeches from Dr. King to listen to and commemorate . This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. 0000001427 00000 n 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. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? Check your local listings. Those pictures turned Dr. King's stomach. King Leads Chicago). 0000046786 00000 n MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. 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. Indeed, you play parts of President Obama's speech to the Nobel Committee there in Stockholm where he received the award. 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. Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on January 15th, 1929. 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. And after I was wounded, we had four or five 100-pound bomb dropped on us, and 10 Marines were killed outright and 24 were wounded. In his 1967 speech on the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr. employs figurative language and syntactical elements to construct his argument against the hypocrisy and cruelty of American involvement in the war. [16][17] King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. But they chose Riverside because King was going to be speaking some days later at a huge rally and march in New York City, and they knew that that rally was going to bring out a different kind of element, a more controversial element. 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. 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. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. "[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. %PDF-1.3 % They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. Shall we say the odds are too great? I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. Now there is little left to build onsave bitterness. The film is the second episode of Tavis Smiley Reports. Later that year King framed the issue of war in Vietnam as a moral issue: As a minister of the gospel, he said, I consider war an evil. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. Martin Luther King's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, 10 December 1964 Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. In "People and Peace, not Profits and War," Shirley Chisholm repeats the words "two more years" (42). 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. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley's new documentary, MLK: A Call to Conscience explores King's speech. Somehow this madness must cease. Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist that led the Civil Rights Movement, and other movements until his assassination in 1968. The Washington Post says he has done a discredit to himself, to his people, to his country. So this was a huge, huge speech that got Martin King in more trouble than anything he had ever said or done.