Martin Luther King: A Time To Break Silence
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. People hated him for trying to end all forms of discrimination in America. But that hate was nothing compared to the hate shown when he began questioning the war in Vietnam.
Exactly one year before he was killed, he delivered his Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence speech in New York City’s Riverside Church.
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 comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
It’s pretty amazing — and it’s also a shame — that this speech is over forty freakin’ years old, and yet it’s still so relevant today…
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. 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.
At the time of this speech, the war had dragged on for 8 years. It would drag on for another 8 years, and an additional 38,000 US soldiers would be killed before the American people persuaded the military-industrial complex to call it quits.
Read and listen to the entire speech: A Time to Break Silence.
Read More: Martin Luther King, Jr., Vietnam War, Iraq War
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April 4th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Thanks, Joe.
I needed that. I continue to be amazed that as a young man, I totally overlooked this great human being. Anyone else see a few of these qualities in Obama?
If you recall (and I think I do, correctly) Nixon promised to end the war if elected in ‘68. Help me out with this: Didn’t we finally get out and get the POW’s back in ‘75? 7 years?
But now, we have all this “…one hundrd years”. “struggle of our generation..” stuff. Suggesting no end in sight…constant state of war.
I just don’t want to kill anybody and take their stuff anymore.
April 4th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Yeah, I think ‘75 was the official end of it, although the death toll had dropped dramatically for the last few years (not much comfort if one of your family or friends was one of the “only” a few hundred that died in those last years…) I think in everybody’s mind this war lasted from about 1966-1972 or so, because that was when it got heavy. Sort of hard to define when a covert war becomes a real war, but most articles put it starting in 1959. So, 1959 to 1975…16 years. If it took 16 years for folks to turn the war train around in Vietnam, how long will it take for Iraq?
I’m with you…tired of killing others and taking their stuff, and then giving the world phony reasons why they should thank us for it. It’s way past time for America to grow up and quit acting like a child.
April 6th, 2008 at 3:17 am
His Vietnam War speech has become my favorite since the debacle in Iraq.