Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. 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. 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. Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. But certainly one of the greatest orators of our time. Thanks, as always for your time. CONAN: We (unintelligible) to see it. In the 1950s and 1960s, his words led the Civil Rights Movement and helped change society. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Five years ago he said, Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.. Martin Luther King, Jr. 4 April 1967. That's what I feel. 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. King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech was delivered at the Riverside Church in New York exactly one year before his assassination. These too are our brothers. I guess the question now is whether or not Afghanistan is a war of necessity or a war of choice. "[14][15], The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated. 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. 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. Dr. King in a March 25, 1967 antiwar march in Chicago. Of course, the Nobel Peace Laureate, a man who clearly believed in nonviolence down to his very soul CONAN: but he'd wanted to give that speech two years earlier. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. Mr. TAVIS SMILEY (Host, "The Tavis Smiley Show"): Neal, always an honor to be on with you. CONAN: And the place - choice of place is very interesting too. Tomorrow, the latest installment with the political junkie. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 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. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. Check your local listings. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. 0000002605 00000 n On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. 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. 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. So even McNamara eventually comes around to that point. 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. It was written by activist and historian Vincent Harding. "[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. Let me say this right quick: The comparisons between what King was addressing then about militarism, poverty and racism sound familiar 45 years later. A few other Americans know, of course, the "Mountaintop" speech given the night before he's assassinated in Memphis. Exactly one year before his assassination, on April 4, 1967, Rev. 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. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. Arent you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? Fifty years ago in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr.. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. 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. No, Howard, I thank you for your phone call. 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. 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. 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. But the entire speech, of course, thankfully, was recorded on audio. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech in New York. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence" addressing the Vietnam War. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? 0000046786 00000 n And thirdly, I think the main point here in this MLK "Beyond Vietnam" speech is that there is another way. As Arnold Toynbee says : Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. 2/QB(yQVz^*oU.FW All rights reserved. 0000001739 00000 n Opposes Vietnam War, New York Times, 11 November 1965. 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. Grossfield, Stan. The question is, is it a war of necessity or a war of choice at this point? Could we blame them for such thoughts? Martin Luther King Jr. held his acceptance speech in the auditorium of the University of Oslo on 10 December 1964. 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. CONAN: Howard, thanks very much for the call. [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. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. Because he received a letter from a little white girl who said, Dr. King, I read the newspaper that had you sneezed that blade would've moved, ruptured your aorta and you would've drowned in your own blood. This is an excellent Common Core-aligned primary source from Martin Luther King speaking about his stance on the Vietnam War. 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. So they go primarily women and children and the aged. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.. King, Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. Of course, again, that philosophy, when the papers got a hold of him the next day, that strategy didn't work so well. If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. 0000040748 00000 n Answering press questions after addressing a Howard University audience on 2 March 1965, King asserted that the war in Vietnam was accomplishing nothing and called for a negotiated settlement (Schuette, King Preaches on Non-Violence). These are revolutionary times. 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 ). This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. 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. [citation needed]. 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. 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). That Vietnam was a mistake. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. They must see Americans as strange liberators. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. Tavis Smiley joins us today from the Sheryl Flowers Studios in Los Angeles. ", After King delivered the speech, Smiley reports, "168 major newspapers the next day denounced him." King spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. "[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. King Scores Poverty Budget, New York Times, 16 December 1966. 0000009985 00000 n 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. Dr. King is trying to get the point across that our country is being unfair to others. I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. 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. 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. 0000011437 00000 n How are you, sir? 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. Had the president stopped by giving Martin King his just respect - as he did, to his credit - it would have been okay. 20072023 Blackpast.org. 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. Well, it was taken in that context, anyway. Finally, as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. PBS talk show. 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. Your donation is fully tax-deductible. 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 . It was the speech he labored over the most. The speech and its echoes for Afghanistan and Iraq are the subject of "Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience.". Let's get Howard(ph) on the line. And we are spending money for a war abroad that ought to be spent for the war on poverty here at home. CONAN: Walt, thank you. 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.
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