[AAACE-NLA] Martin Luther King Day message

[Margery Freeman]

Thank you, Tom, for lifting up these wonderful "sheroes" of literacy 
on this day dedicated to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I am taking the liberty of forwarding a copy of Dr. King's speech to 
the congregation at Riverside Church in 1967.  His prophetic voice 
is as important today as it was 37 years ago.
Margery Freeman 
 
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 1967
At Manhattan's Riverside Church
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 why I believe that the path from Dexter 
Avenue
Baptist
Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my 
pastorage, leads
clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform 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 Vieo overlook the 
role they
can play in a 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 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.
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. Then came the build-up 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 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 young black men who had 
been crippled by
our
society and sending them 8000 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 grows out of my experience in the ghettos 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 non-violent action. But, they 
asked, 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 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 from the 
shackles
they
still wear.
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.
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 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 Viet Cong 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?
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, 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. 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 their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese 
proclaimed
their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and 
Japanese
occupation and
before the communist revolution in China. 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 re-
conquest 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 re-colonize Vietnam.
Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 percent of the 
French war
costs.
Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they 
began to despair
of their 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 to do so.
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.
They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of 
their
crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious 
trees. They
wander
into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American 
firepower for
each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million 
of
them,
mostly children.
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 out 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?
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 NLF, 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? 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 new weapons of death into their land?
How do they judge us when our officials know that their 
membership is less
than 25 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.
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-
violence, when it
helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to 
know of
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. 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 at Geneva to give up, 
as a
temporary
measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th 
parallels. 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 the
increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion 
of the
North.
Perhaps only his sense of humor and 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 8000 miles from its 
shores.
At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to 
give a
voice to the voiceless of 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. 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 our troops 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 a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and 
brother to
the
suffering poor of Vietnam and 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 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 hearts 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.
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 
her
people.
In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take 
the
initiative in bringing the war to a halt. 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 nightmare:
1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will 
create
the atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in 
Southeast Asia by
curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in 
Laos.
4. 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.
5. Set a date on which 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 NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for 
the damage
we have
done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in 
this country
if necessary.
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
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 70 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. 
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 that 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. We will be marching and attending rallies 
without end
unless there is a significant and profound change in American life 
and
policy.
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. The need to 
maintain
social stability for our investments accounts for the 
counterrevolutionary
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. With such 
activity
in
mind, the words of 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, 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. When
machines
and computers, profit 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. 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 easily 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 the
veins of peoples 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 re-ordering 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 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 the 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.
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
that 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.
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 re-dedicate 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.
###

> From: Thomas Sticht <tsticht at znet.com>
> Date: 2004/01/18 Sun PM 03:42:01 EST
> To: <aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
> Subject: [AAACE-NLA] Martin Luther King Day message
> 
> Aaace-nla Colleagues: In recognition of Martin Luther King Day 
and the
> Civil Rights movement of the mid 20th century, following is an 
abstract of
> a paper I will be presenting at the International Reading 
Association
> meeting in Reno, Nevada this May 4th. Anyone desiring an 
electronic copy
> of the full paper can contact me at tsticht at aznet.net.
> Tom Sticht
> 
> 
> 
> Paper to be presented at the International Reading Association 
meeting May
> 4th, 2004.
> 
> How Three Women Adult Literacy Educators
> Helped Stimulate the Civil Rights Movement
> 
> Tom Sticht
> 
> Abstract
> This paper traces the influence of Cora Wilson Stewart of 
Kentucky on the
> adult literacy education practices of Wil Lou Gray of South 
Carolina and
> Septima Poinsetta Clark, the civil rights teacher from the 
Highlander Folk
> School in Tennessee. These three women were interconnected 
by their
> teaching across time in the first half of the 20th century. Their
> extraordinary contributions to adult literacy education helped 
stimulate
> the emergence of voting rights and the civil rights movements 
that lead to
> Brown vs. Board of Education in the second half of the 20th 
century.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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