On April 4th, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a sermon at the prestigious Riverside Church, an interdemoninational church in New York City. The sermon was called Beyond Vietnam-A Time to Break Silence.
The reaction to this speech was swift and decisive:
"demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi"
-Time Magazine
"diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
-The Washington Post
"the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country."
-FBI memo
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, 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.
In 1967, America was at war, militarily, culturally and socially. The Who, Aretha Franklin and The Rolling Stones were dominating the airwaves. The Best Picture of the Year was In the Heat of the Night, the compelling murder thriller about a black police detective from up North and a Southern police chief forced to work a murder together.
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. 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. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
Lyndon Johnson was president and the country was fully engaged in the war in Vietnam. The war, among other things, was tearing the country apart. J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I were investigating many prominent Americans, including Dr. King. Under the auspices of investigating Communist influence and infiltration of the civil rights movement, the FBI had launched a massive surveillance effort that targeted the civil rights movement in general and King in particular.
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 in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else...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 a hell for the poor.
In late 1963, the FBI released a report of its findings. But, to the dismay of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who had approved wiretaps on King, the report did not deal with Communist influence, but personal attacks against Dr. King. Kennedy ordered that all copies of the report be recalled immediately. It was the last time that any official effort was made to rein Hoover in. However, in the wake of President Kennedy's assassination, Hoover would exploit the power vacuum as the nation struggled to cope, and his vendetta against King would continue unabated.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...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.
It was against this backdrop of suspicion and surveillance that, in 1965, Dr. King began to express misgivings about the Vietnam War. By the spring of 1967, his social, spiritual and evolving political views had coalesced into a clear analysis of the role of the United States in Vietnam.
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 investments.
Dr. King decided, at last, to break his silence. On April 4th, 1967, he stood before clergy and laypeople and delivered an eloquent, unflinching assessment of the Vietnam War.
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...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, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A year to the day later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Audio and text of the speech here:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/...