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 Remembering the Real Martin Luther KingPosted on Apr 3, 2008
Forty years after his death, Martin Luther King, one of the great prophets of American democracy, has been reduced to little more than a lifeless statue. Yet his courageous call for peace and criticism of his government at a time of war must not be lost to history. Toward the end of his life, King turned his attention to poverty and the war in Vietnam. After giving the speech below, in which he called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” King was dropped from Gallup’s annual list of the most admired Americans and was ridiculed by the New York Times, among too many others. Soon after, he was murdered. King said that America “can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.” Those words were echoed by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man who served his nation in uniform, who devoted his life to the welfare of his community, but was dismissed as a kook and a racist and a hater of his country for challenging its moral impenetrability. America, apparently, does not take well to criticism. Thus it seems an appropriate time to let that King, not the statue, but the patriot, say his piece.
Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence
By the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join 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 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. 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. And 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 movements 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 the 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 misunderstanding, 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 must play in the successful resolution of the problem. 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 resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellowed [sic] Americans, *who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. 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 this 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.
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By Conservative Yankee, April 10 at 5:19 am # Lowell....I remember it well. Worked in the Night Owl, and had friends on Bridge Street during the Seventies when the Dunkin Doughnuts blew up and took out two other buildings, and just about every piece of glass on the street for half a mile. The explosion rocked the kitchen where I was working across the river, and I thought (having just returned from Alaska) that it was an earthquake! My mother is Jewish, so in some quarters so am I. I have an answer to your question, but I sure no one will like it. First the Blacks usually (Cyrena being an exception) see the civil rights struggle, and Dr. King as belonging to African Americans alone. Sometimes they tend to forget that several white folks lost their lives in this struggle also. In my family (The Jewish side) shares a similar memory lapse about the Holocaust True (as with the blacks during civil rights) the large majority of victims were jewish, BUT there were also others, sometimes these “others” came from a targeted class, but there also were some “good Germans” who couldn’t tow the Nazi line. Hiding a Jew, helping a Jew escape, or even sharing food with a starving Jewish family, as some Poles attempted in Warsaw, was enough to warrant a death sentence… a slow death through labor in one of many camps. My point being some cross cultural friendships developed.. Cyrena’s point about exposure bringing peace… I can’t disagree with the thrust of your stereotype. Rev Jackson’r depiction of my home town as “Hymie-town” and Al Sharpton’s continual and outright anti semitic statements cause me to (unfairly?) dismiss some of their good ideas… just human nature. I hope for a better future, but Knowing the significance of our (humsns) canine teeth, I have my doubts about all races standing in a circle singing Kumbyah
By Conservative Yankee, April 7 at 4:27 am # Cyrena… Ithink you may have missed a small piece of the idea.. “Dr. King the strict constructionist referred to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. He stated, “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned ... Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check - a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.” Again, a clear indictment of America!” After all, it was “The poor people’s march” not the poor-people-of-color march. The White ghettos in Worcester Springfield, and Lewiston are in the same dark place as the share-croppers of 1960 Mississippi. Their life spans are shorter, their population is beset from without by employers leaving the Northeast, and within by crime,, poverty and a slow-death of “hope. The blueberry pickers here in Washington County get just $3,000 (on average) for a season (seven weeks)This money is withheld as “traveling pay” until the job is completed. the owners often take the “rent and board” for a one-room shack and beans or potatoes from the gross. Children as young as six work with their parents. They are not “actual workers” but contribute to their parent’s “box count” the basis for pay. Bob Dylan’s words “I’ve been down so long it looks like up to me” fit these folks. I’ve seen black poverty too. I spent time in Newark, East St. Louis, and Patterson. Funny thing though, to me, it looks no different from the poverty of Appalachia, Pine Ridge, or parts of Washington County Maine! The divisions by race have got to end. it is a battle rich vs Poor, and the longer we allow THEM to define conflicts by color-lines, the longer the poor will stay poor!
By Conservative Yankee, April 10 at 12:30 pm # Re: Re:I did comment here, but it seems the censors won’t print it… Check your “private messages”
By Bill Blackolive, April 6 at 9:21 am # Desertdude is one wretchPeople like Desertdude fear black guys because Desertdude and ilk got no share from being white and need to feel better than somebody so they buy into superstition and think black guys have bigger penises and stronger muscles because they have less grey matter. Homo sapiens are last report 200,000 years ancient and have larger penises than apes but this is not taught in US silly formal education, when it really should be brought up in first grade but is not because our society of the few riding on the many is ruled by these fat slob farting few. Poor, poor Desertdude. His next incarnation he has got to use his given grey matter.
By Harry H. Snyder, April 5 at 11:25 am # NOT factualPG asks: “Why is it that Progressive minds are killed -yet Good Ol Boys can walk freely without fear of attack” Actually because this is not true. George Wallace was shot in Laural MD (1972) John Stennis was shot as he opened his front door in Washington DC AND there is always the Dixie-Chicks friend “Earl” who was a quintessential GOB!
By Conservative Yankee, April 5 at 11:18 am # The night MLK died...The night Dr. King was shot was also the only time in my life I was ashamed of my white skin. I remember people celebrating in the streets of White Plains, and the words “Martin Lazarus Koon” being shouted. I remember my boss saying “Thank god that’s over” when the radio announced MLK’s death. The bosses son went out and got us all beers… We say that over these last forty years things have improved for African Americans. We point to Obama, (currently the only sitting African American Senator, and the third since reconstruction) as proof of change. Illinois by itself, elected two of those US Senators, and Massachusetts elected the other. Heavily populated black States like Mississippi, Michigan, and the Carolinas should have been places where black Governors and Senators thrived, but none of these States have even had a black elected to statewide office. The black representatives from the south come from squiggly lines called Gerrymanders largely devised to keep black representation confined to black areas… sort of like the school-district lines of the Sixties.... In White Plains. If King returned from the grave, and saw us today.... he would still know who we are.
By liberalwhiteboy, April 4 at 8:07 pm # http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2007/12 /how-to-become-zionized-negro.html
By jamie, April 4 at 7:23 pm # YouTube Link is different version of speech.The full (original?) and incredibly beautiful version of the Beyond Vietnam speech (the transcript above) was delivered at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 - the YouTube link above is apparently from a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967… it has many of the phrases and themes from the earlier one, but is different. The April 4th version will (should) make you cry - his tone, his choice of words, his voice - everyone living in this country who cares about this concept of being an “American” or is interested in the power/beauty of the English language should hear it at least once in their lifetime. And the guy talking about him being a “womanizer"… seriously? C’mon dude.
By Austin, April 5 at 9:07 am # Re: Martin Luther KIngActually MLK’s personal life shouldn’t be new information to those who have taken the time to really educate themselves about him. It’s a shame that he would admit this charge to you (which he did to Coretta at one point), while we’ve had a President (whom I would have still voted for over the current one) lied about. And while we try to minimize the impact of important individuals, we can’t act like some of the more beloved citizens were perfect human beings. We all know that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and claimed blacks were naturally inferior in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” (which helped to set the intellectual trend of black inferiority in the US). But even in spite of all of that(and the difference between me and you), as a black American, I can still realize and appreciate the revolutionary precedent himself and others outlined in the Declaration of Independence… Please don’t be so narrow-minded in your analysis of an individual. That doesn’t help if you’re actually trying to change someone’s mind…
By StPauliGirl, April 5 at 5:50 am # Re: Martin Luther KIngWomanizer and a thief? and your ‘proof’ is someone told you? Because of what someone else said, you are willing to dismiss everything he did? The hoopla about a ‘guy like this’ is because that wasn’t the sum total of the man.
By kath cantarella, April 4 at 2:27 pm # Mr King's flesh has become his words.His flesh was borrowed and the lease ended, but the words will always be his very own.
By kath cantarella, April 9 at 2:30 pm # DR King...and my apologies for the really bad poetry, Dr King. Add Your Comment |
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