Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. 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. King spoke that afternoon about And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. endstream It was titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence." King criticized the war in Vietnam, calling on those of draft age to seek status as conscientious objectors and saying, "we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war." This February, the Humanities curriculum for Grade 7 is focused on the Vietnam War. In that address he articulated his reasons for his opposition to the Southeast Asian conflict. Now 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. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Published January 12, 2023. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, Too late. There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. About the Sermon "Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence" The "Beyond Vietnam" sermon was drafted by historian and activist Vincent Gordon Harding. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.. Follow along with the transcript, below. 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. . Martin Luther King Jr. was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who embraced nonviolence to combat the country's most violent segregationists. Dr. King's purpose is to make the church leaders he is speaking to aware that We were sending young Black men 8,000 miles away to die for freedoms they don't have at home. Soldier of the 25th Infantry Division, c., 1969. They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. 54 0 obj It is not addressed to China or to Russia. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. America will be! The Washington Post criticized his "sheer inventions of unsupported fantasy" and lamented how "many who have listened to him with respect will never again accord him the same confidence . These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. The neo-gothic Riverside Church in New York City has a long history of progressive leaders and activism, dating back to its opening in October, 1930. The AMERICAN War had come to define AMERICA in the second half of the 20th century. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nations homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on lifes roadside, but that will be only an initial act. On 4 April 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. 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 until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. A year to the day before his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. was in New York City, at the Riverside Church on Manhattan's Upper West Side, talking about Vietnam. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on lifes highway. << /Contents 62 0 R /MediaBox [ 0 0 612 792 ] /Parent 115 0 R /Resources << /ExtGState << /G3 75 0 R >> /Font << /F4 76 0 R /F5 77 0 R /F6 78 0 R /F7 79 0 R /F9 80 0 R >> /ProcSet [ /PDF /Text /ImageB /ImageC /ImageI ] /XObject << /X10 57 0 R /X12 59 0 R /X14 61 0 R /X8 56 0 R >> >> /StructParents 0 /Type /Page >> 56 0 obj King, Interview on Face the Nation, 29 August 1965, RRML-TxTyU. 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 South 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. Kings Error,New York Times, 7 April 1967. !1V"7AQau2TUqt#46BRrs35b$e%CSFc&d ? His speech appears below. 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. Dr. King's purpose is to make the church leaders he is speaking to aware that Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. Harding, a native of Harlem, NYC, received his BA from City College of New York and Masters in Journalism from Columbia University before serving in the US Army (1953-55) and receiving a PhD in History at the University in Chicago in 1965. King had stepped up his anti-war proclamations on February 25, 1967, when he appeared at a convention in Beverly Hills, California. endobj or 404 526-8968. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr ., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivers a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam" in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: A time comes when silence is betrayal. And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. P. 206-215. Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ), the Republican Party presidential nominee in 1964, said the speech could border a bit on treason., Civil Rights activist and U.S. Representative John Lewis (GA), who was among the 3,800 in the audience when King gave the speech, told the New Yorker Magazine in 2017 that the speech was a speech for all humanityfor the world community. It decided to send money, supplies, and military advisers to help the South Vietnamese g. Infant mortality rates fell from 32.6 per 1,000 live births in 1993 to 16.7 in 2020. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. One speech to show he did this is the "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence" speech. Answer (1 of 9): There is little evidence that the US sent troops to Vietnam for economic considerations. After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. 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 1954; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize 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 Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. King specified seven major reasons for brining the war to an end based on moral vision, allowing for a further tie between . He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. We must rapidly beginwe must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is a civil rights legend. After more than a decade in the public eye fighting racism and inequality in America, King plunged himself into another searing, divisive issue in America with his speech, Beyond Vietnam: A. Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. Please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. atlicensing@i-p-m.comor 404 526-8968. Soon, the only solid solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Many people believed that America had no reason to interfere, Dr. King being one of those people. Vietnam's Amended Constitution 1992 recognized the role of private sector in the economy. Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. We have cooperated in the crushing in the crushing of the nations only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. endstream They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. America never was America to me, Harding recalled in an interview with Tavis Smiley, Free at Last: Martin Luther King Jr. (streaming on THIRTEEN Specials). In Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond VietnamA Time to Break Silence" (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. He disagreed with America going to war in Vietnam in 1955 and to voice his thoughts he wrote and delivered his speech "Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence." which took place at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967 to let his audience know that the Vietnam War is unjust. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence Rev. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. 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. Table of Content. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond ones tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. << /Linearized 1 /L 585080 /H [ 1225 310 ] /O 55 /E 123247 /N 10 /T 584505 >> The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. Is it among these voiceless ones? The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote). I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. endobj In addition to Martin Luther King, Jr., the church has hosted many prominent speakers, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was executed in 1945 at a German concentration camp; Cesar Chavez, the Mexican-American civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association; and Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and former president of South Africa. And 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. Relevance to U.S. Wars and Militarism Today By Mary Hladky, American Friends Service Committee, KC Program Committee Clerk and United for Peace and Justice, Coordinating Committee Member 50 years ago, on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church, in NYC, Martin Luther King delivered his powerful and most . 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. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. It was used in journalism as a euphemism for recognized lies told to the public by . Declaringmy conscience leaves me no other choice,King described the wars deleterious effects on both Americas poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war through nonviolent means (King, Beyond Vietnam, 139). Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. #6 Low Expenses. 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. #3 Government Support. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never . 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. They will be concerned about Guatemala Guatemala and Peru. 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. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. 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. Some of the incidents . America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. On March 29, 1973, the last U.S. military unit left Vietnam. What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? But they ask and rightly so what about Vietnam? Giu 11, 2022 | narcissistic withdrawal. For 7 reasons: 1. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. King, Statement on voter registration in Alabama, 9 March 1965, MLKJP-GAMK. Recent flashpoints. Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. JFIF C 825 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10019, WNET is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Kings address emphasized his responsibility to the American people and explained that conversations with young black men in the ghettos reinforced his own commitment to nonviolence. Similarly, both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Ralph Bunche accused King of linking two disparate issues, Vietnam and civil rights. Photo: Ad Meskens. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today my own government. stream I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights dont mix, they say. And the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. 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. There is at the outset a very obvious and The United States was most involved in the war from 1959 to 1973 which coincided with the Civil Rights movement. #7 Infrastructure Development. Please c, ontact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at. The church maintains an active social justice mission today. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. In Dr. Martin Luther King's speech "Beyond VietnamA Time to Break Silence" (1967), Dr. King asserts that the war in Vietnam is totally immoral and has far reaching negative implications not only for Vietnam, but for The United States and the rest of the World as well. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. 3 Pages. What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? 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? Some great cause, Gods new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, MLK: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change 251K views 7 years ago William Pepper - The Execution of Martin Luther King. 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. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: Let us love one another, for love is God. Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. And of course its always good to come back to Riverside church. (Doi Moi) from 1986 to 2006. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. So, too, with Hanoi. Fall of Saigon during Vietnam War. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.