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Books by Martin Luther
King, Jr.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. /
Strength to Love /
The Measure of a Man /
Why We Can't Wait
A Testament of Hope /
A Knock at Midnight /
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1948-1963
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community /
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
* * * * *
Beyond Vietnam: A Time
to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
Speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., on April 4, 1967
at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside
Church in New York City
I come to this
magnificent house of worship tonight because my
conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in
this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the
aims and work of the organization which has brought us
together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The
recent statement 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." That time has come for us in
relation to Vietnam.
The truth of these
words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call
us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the
demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the
task of opposing their government's policy, especially
in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without
great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist
thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding
world. 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.
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. We must speak with all the
humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but
we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely
this is the first time in our nation's history that a
significant number of its religious leaders have chosen
to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to
the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the
mandates of conscience and the reading of history.
Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let
us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner
being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are
deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that
seems so close around us.
Over the past two
years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own
silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart,
as I have called for radical departures from the
destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me
about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their
concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why
are you speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you
joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights
don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of
your people, they ask? And when I hear them, though I
often understand the source of their concern, I am
nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean
that the inquirers have not really known me, my
commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions
suggest that they do not know the world in which they
live.
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.
I come to this
platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved
nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the
National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China
or to Russia.
Nor is it an
attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation
and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of
Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam
or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor
to overlook the role they can play in a successful
resolution of the problem. 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.
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.
The Importance of
Vietnam
Since I am a
preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I
have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the
field of my moral vision. 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. A few years ago there was a shining moment
in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real
promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white --
through the poverty program. There were experiments,
hopes, new beginnings. 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. So I was increasingly
compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to
attack it as such.
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. It was
sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands
to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions
relative to the rest of the population. 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. 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. 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. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel
manipulation of the poor.
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. 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. I
have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while
maintaining my conviction that social change comes most
meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked—and rightly so—what about Vietnam? They asked if
our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to
solve its problems, to bring about the changes it
wanted. 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. 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.
For those who ask
the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and
thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace,
I have this further answer. 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. 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! |
Now, it should be
incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for
the integrity and life of America today can ignore the
present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned,
part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be
saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men
the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet
determined that America will be are led down the path of
protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
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. To me the
relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is
so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me
why I am speaking against the war. 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? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in
obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that
he died for them? What then can I say to the "Vietcong"
or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this
one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share
with them my life?
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. 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.
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 nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are
called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for
victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for
no document from human hands can make these humans any
less our brothers.
Strange Liberators
And as I ponder the
madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to
understand and respond to compassion my mind goes
constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now
not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in
Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living
under the curse of war for almost three continuous
decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to
me that there will be no meaningful solution there until
some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken
cries.
They must see
Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people
proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a
combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the
Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi
Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration
of Independence in their own document of freedom, we
refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to
support France in its reconquest of her former colony.
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. 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. For the peasants this new
government meant real land reform, one of the most
important needs in their lives.
For nine years
following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right
of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported
the French in their abortive effort to recolonize
Vietnam.
Before the end of
the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war
costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien
Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but
we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial
and military supplies to continue the war even after
they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost
the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After the French
were defeated it looked as if independence and land
reform would come again through the Geneva agreements.
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. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem
ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their
extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss
reunification with the north. The peasants watched as
all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by
increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell
the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When
Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the
long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no
real change—especially in terms of their need for
land and peace.
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. All the while the
people read our leaflets and received regular promises
of peace and democracy—and land reform. Now they
languish under our bombs and consider us—not their
fellow Vietnamese—the real enemy. They move sadly and
apathetically as we herd them off the land of their
fathers into concentration camps where minimal social
needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be
destroyed by our bombs. So they go—primarily women
and children and the aged.
They watch as we
poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their
crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through
their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.
They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty
casualties from American firepower for one
"Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a
million of them—mostly children. They wander into the
towns and see thousands of the children, homeless,
without clothes, running in packs on the streets like
animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers
as they beg for food. They see the children selling
their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their
mothers.
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? 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? Where are the roots of the independent
Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these
voiceless ones?
We have destroyed
their two most cherished institutions: the family and
the village. We have destroyed their land and their
crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the
nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political
force—the unified Buddhist church. We have supported
the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted
their women and children and killed their men. What
liberators?
Now there is little
left to build on—save bitterness. Soon the only 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? Could we blame them for such thoughts?
We must speak for them and raise the questions they
cannot raise. These too are our brothers.
Perhaps the more
difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for
those who have been designated as our enemies. What of
the National Liberation Front—that strangely
anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they
think of us in America when they realize that we
permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which
helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in
the south? What do they think of our condoning the
violence which led to their own taking up of arms? 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? 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? Surely
we must understand their feelings even if we do not
condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men
we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we
must see that our own computerized plans of destruction
simply dwarf their greatest acts.
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? What must they be thinking
when they know that we are aware of their control of
major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to
allow national elections in which this highly organized
political parallel government will have no part? They
ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon
press is censored and controlled by the military junta.
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 question our
political goals and they deny the reality of a peace
settlement from which they will be excluded. Their
questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation
planning to build on political myth again and then shore
it up with the power of new violence?
Here is the true
meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it
helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his
questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. 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.
So, too, with
Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the
land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met
by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them
is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words,
and especially their distrust of American intentions
now. 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. It was they who led
a second struggle against French domination at
tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the
land they controlled between the thirteenth and
seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva.
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.
When we ask why
they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be
remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of
Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in
support of the Diem regime to have been the initial
military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning
foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not
begin to send in any large number of supplies or men
until American forces had moved into the tens of
thousands.
Hanoi remembers how
our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the
earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the
president claimed that none existed when they had
clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America
has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he
has surely heard of the increasing international rumors
of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows
the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are
part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only
his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he
hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of
aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak
nation more than eight thousand miles away from its
shores.
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. 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. We are adding
cynicism to the process of death, for they must know
after a short period there that none of the things we
claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before
long they must know that their government has sent them
into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more
sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of
the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the
poor.
This Madness Must
Cease
Somehow this
madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child
of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I
speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose
homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being
subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are
paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and
death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of
the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path
we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of
my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours.
The initiative to stop it must be ours.
This is the message
of the great Buddhist leaders of 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. The Americans are forcing even their friends
into becoming their enemies. 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 image of America will never again
be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but
the image of violence and militarism."
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.
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. 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.
The world now
demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to
achieve. 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. The situation is one in which we must
be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.
In order to atone
for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the
initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. 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:
End all bombing in
North and South Vietnam.
Declare a
unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will
create the atmosphere for negotiation.
Take immediate
steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia
by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our
interference in Laos.
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.
Set a date that we
will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in
accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.
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.
Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage
we have done. We most provide the medical aid that is
badly needed, making it available in this country if
necessary.
Protesting The War
Meanwhile we in the
churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we
urge our government to disengage itself from a
disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our
voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in
Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words
by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.
As we counsel young
men concerning military service we must clarify for them
our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the
alternative of conscientious objection. 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.
Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to
give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as
conscientious objectors. These are the times for real
choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when
our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to
survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions
must decide on the protest that best suits his
convictions, but we must all protest.
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. I say we must enter
the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something
even more disturbing. 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-concerned
committees for the next generation. They will be
concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be
concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be
concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. 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. Such
thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our
calling as sons of the living God.
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. During the past ten years we have seen
emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified
the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela.
This need to maintain social stability for our
investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary
action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why
American helicopters are being used against guerrillas
in Colombia and why American napalm and Green Beret
forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the
late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years
ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution
impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by
choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has
taken—the role of those who make peaceful revolution
impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the
pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas
investment.
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. We must rapidly begin the shift
from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented"
society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights are considered more important than
people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and
militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution
of values will soon cause us to question the fairness
and justice of many of our past and present policies. On
the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on
life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act.
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 life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging
a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial.
It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars
needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will
soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty
and wealth. 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. 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
nation's 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. A nation that continues year after year to spend
more money on military defense than on programs of
social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the
richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well
lead the way in this revolution of values. 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. There is
nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status
quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a
brotherhood.
This kind of
positive revolution of values is our best defense
against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will
never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear
weapons. 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.
These are days which demand wise restraint and calm
reasonableness. 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. We must not engage in a negative
anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for
democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against
communism is to take offensive action in behalf of
justice. 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.
The People Are
Important
These are
revolutionary times. All over the globe men are
revolting against old systems of exploitation and
oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new
systems of justice and equality are being born. The
shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up
as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have
seen a great light." We in the West must support these
revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort,
complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our
proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations
that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of
the modern world have now become the arch
anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that
only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore,
communism is a judgment against our failure to make
democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we
initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to
recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a
sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to
poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful
commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and
unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every
valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill
shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made
straight and the rough places plain."
A genuine
revolution of values means in the final analysis that
our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than
sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding
loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the
best in their individual societies.
This call for a
world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern
beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality
a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for
all men. This oft misunderstood and 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. When I speak
of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak
response. I am speaking of that force which all of the
great religions have seen as the supreme unifying
principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks
the door which leads to ultimate reality. 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. He that loveth not knoweth
not God; for God is love. If we love one another God
dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. |
Let us hope that
this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no
longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before
the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made
turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is
cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals
that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. 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. Therefore the first
hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is
going to have the last word."
We are now faced
with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted
with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding
conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as
being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of
time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and
dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the
affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs.
We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her
passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on.
Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue 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. "The
moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We
still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or
violent co-annihilation.
We must move past
indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for
peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing
world—a world that borders on our doors. If we do not
act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and
shameful corridors of time reserved for those who
possess power without compassion, might without
morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin.
Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world. This is
the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait
eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too
great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will
our message be that the forces of American life militate
against their arrival as full men, and we send our
deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of
longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of
commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice
is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must
choose in this crucial moment of human history.
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, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
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. |
Source:
http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~sw/mlk/brkslnc.htm
The Speech at Galilee
The first full length recorded speech by Martin
Luther King, Jr.
This speech of Dr. King was recorded August 14, 1958, at
the Galilee Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana by
his good friend and colleague Dr. C.O. Simpkins
(Simpkins was a Vice President in the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and a prominent Louisiana figure
in the civil rights movement). Many recordings exist to
document the civil rights movement in the 60's but
little has survived from the formative years of the late
fifties. This piece showcases Dr. King at his finest as
he quotes from the bible, Shakespeare, Ghandi, and other
elements and figures of history to drive home his
message of equality for all people. The speech has the
feel of a classic sermon, and in many respects it was
just that. The Speech at Galilee is a huge contribution
to U.S. history and should be in every civil rights
collection in America.
Filled with rare and special moments, the Galilee speech
represents the FIRST KNOWN FULL LENGTH RECORDING of
Martin Luther King, Jr., then an unknown 29 year-old
Baptist preacher from Georgia with an inspired heart and
a resonant voice. The recording contains many elements
of King's future speeches including the famous "free at
last
The Revolutionary MLK—Jared Ball: Martin
Luther King Jr. stood for revolutionary transformation; he is used
today to support policies that he fought against—In a startling
interview, columnist and communications professor Jared Ball discusses
how the image of Martin Luther King Jr. is distorted every year to
foster compliance with the system King fought against.—CommonDreams
* * *
* *
|
The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me
The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Jonathan Rieder
“You don’t know me,” Martin Luther King, Jr., once declared to those who criticized his denunciation of the Vietnam War, who wanted to confine him to the ghetto of “black” issues. Now, forty years after being felled by an assassin’s bullet, it is still difficult to take the measure of the man: apostle of peace or angry prophet; sublime exponent of a beloved community or fiery Moses leading his people up from bondage; black preacher or translator of blackness to the white world? This book explores the extraordinary performances through which King played with all of these possibilities, and others too, blending and gliding in and out of idioms and identities. Taking us deep into King’s backstage discussions with colleagues, his preaching to black congregations, his exhortations in mass meetings, and his crossover addresses to whites, Jonathan Rieder tells a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of America’s greatest moral and political leaders. A brilliant interpretive endeavor grounded in the sociology of culture, The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me delves into the intricacies of King’s sermons, speeches, storytelling, exhortations, jokes, jeremiads, taunts, repartee, eulogies, confessions, lamentation, and gallows humor, as well as the author’s interviews with members of King’s inner circle. The King who emerges is a distinctively modern figure who, in straddling the boundaries of diverse traditions, ultimately transcended them all.
Beyond Vietnam /
Chronology |
 |
*
* * * *
|
Nina Simone—I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel
To Be Free
I Wish I Knew
How It Would Feel To Be Free
Lyrics by Nina Simone
I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holding me
I wish I could say
All the things that I should say
Say 'em loud say 'em clear
For the whole round world to hear
I wish I could share
All the love that's in my heart
Remove all the bars
That keep us apart
I wish you could know
What it means to be me
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be free
I wish I could give
All I'm longin' to give
I wish I could live
Like I'm longin' to live
I wish I could do
All the things that I can do
And though I'm way over due
I'd be starting a new
Well I wish I could be
Like a bird in the sky
How sweet it would be
If I found I could fly
Oh I'd soar to the sun
And look down at the sea
Than I'd sing cos I know - yea
Then I'd sing cos I know - yea
Then I'd sing cos I know
I'd know how it feels
Oh I抎
know how it feels to be free
Yea Yea! Oh, I know how it feels
Yes I know
Oh, I know
How it feels
How it feels
To be free |
|
King Might Understand Today’s
Wars, Pentagon Lawyer Says
By Terri Moon Cronk
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 13,
2011 – If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were
alive today, would he understand why the
United States is at war?Jeh C. Johnson, the
Defense Department’s general counsel, posed
that question at today’s Pentagon
commemoration of King’s legacy.
In the final year of his life, King became
an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War,
Johnson told a packed auditorium. |
 |
Michael L. Rhodes, the
Defense Department's director of
administration and management, applauds Jeh
C. Johnson, the department's general
counsel, after presenting him a certificate
of appreciation for his keynote address at
the 26th annual observance of the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Pentagon,
Jan. 13, 2011
However,
he added, today’s wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace
Prize winner’s teachings. “I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would
recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that
our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its
arms and leave the American people vulnerable to
terrorist attack,” he said. Johnson is a 1979
graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, where King
graduated in 1948. He also attended school with King’s
son, Martin Luther King III, and was privy to the elder
King’s speaking engagements there. Johnson said
today’s service members might wonder whether the mission
they serve is consistent with King's message and
beliefs. In King’s last speech in Memphis, Tenn., on
April 3, 1968 -- the night before he died—King
evoked the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan,
Johnson noted.
According to the
parable, a traveler was beaten and robbed and left for
dead. Two other travelers passed the man as he lay
alongside the road -- one was a priest. Both ignored the
man and continued on their way. Finally, a Samaritan
traveling the road showed compassion and took the
stranger to an inn and saw to his care. In his speech, King
drew a parallel between those who passed by the man on
the road and those in Memphis who at the time hesitated
to help striking sanitation workers because they feared
for their own jobs.
Johnson said King
criticized those who are compassionate by proxy, noting
the civil rights leader told the audience in Memphis
that night, “The question is not, ‘If I stop to help
this man in need, what will happen to me?’ The question
is, 'If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers,
what will happen to them?'" Johnson compared
today’s troops to the Samaritan, who chose to help
instead of taking an easier path.“I draw the parallel to
our own servicemen and women deployed in Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the comfort of
conventional jobs, their families and their homes,”
Johnson said.
Volunteers in
today’s military, he said, “have made the conscious
decision to travel a dangerous road and personally stop
and administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and
a better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense
of the American people. “Every day, our
servicemen and women practice the dangerousness—the
dangerous unselfishness Dr. King preached on April 3,
1968,” Johnson told the audience.—Defense.gov
|
Behind the Dream
The Making of the Speech that Transformed a
Nation
By
Clarence B. Jones and Stuart Connelly
“I
Have a Dream.”
When those words were spoken on the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, the
crowd stood, electrified, as Martin Luther
King, Jr. brought the plight of African
Americans to the public consciousness and
firmly established himself as one of the
greatest orators of all time.
Behind the Dream is a thrilling,
behind-the-scenes account of the weeks
leading up to the great event, as told by
Clarence Jones, co-writer of the speech and
close confidant to King. Jones was there, on
the road, collaborating with the great minds
of the time, and hammering out the ideas and
the speech that would shape the civil rights
movement and inspire Americans for years to
come.— Palgrave Macmillan |
 |
Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that
Transformed a Nation is a smart, insightful,
enjoyable read about a momentous event in history. It is
the "story behind the story" straight from Clarence
Jones, the attorney, speechwriter, and close friend of
Martin Luther King, Jr. As I read the words on the page,
I felt as if I were having an intimate conversation with
the author. The book helped me to understand the
humanity of Dr. King and the other organizers of the
March on Washington. They were people who saw injustice
and called for change. Despite FBI wiretaps and other
adversity, together they undertook an enormous
logistical effort in hopes that the March would be a
success. Jones himself handwrote the first draft of the
renowned “I Have a Dream”
speech on a yellow legal pad, but it wasn't until King
was inspired to veer from the text that he struck a
chord with the audience, delivering the right words at
the right time. The “I Have a Dream” speech helped to
elevate King from a man to a hero; this book is a
reminder to all to make sure that his Dream lives on.—amazon
customer
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
|
The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me
The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Jonathan Rieder
“You don’t know me,” Martin Luther King, Jr., once declared to those who criticized his denunciation of the Vietnam War, who wanted to confine him to the ghetto of “black” issues. Now, forty years after being felled by an assassin’s bullet, it is still difficult to take the measure of the man: apostle of peace or angry prophet; sublime exponent of a beloved community or fiery Moses leading his people up from bondage; black preacher or translator of blackness to the white world? This book explores the extraordinary performances through which King played with all of these possibilities, and others too, blending and gliding in and out of idioms and identities. Taking us deep into King’s backstage discussions with colleagues, his preaching to black congregations, his exhortations in mass meetings, and his crossover addresses to whites, Jonathan Rieder tells a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of America’s greatest moral and political leaders. |
|
A brilliant interpretive endeavor grounded in the sociology of culture, The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me delves into the intricacies of King’s sermons, speeches, storytelling, exhortations, jokes, jeremiads, taunts, repartee, eulogies, confessions, lamentation, and gallows humor, as well as the author’s interviews with members of King’s inner circle. The King who emerges is a distinctively modern figure who, in straddling the boundaries of diverse traditions, ultimately transcended them all.
Du Bois-Malcolm-King
Chronology
Letter from
Birmingham Jail
* *
* * *
 |
Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
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2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
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posted 2
September 2008
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