On this day in 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
delivered a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam - a
Time To Break Silence."
Like many of Dr. King's speeches, it retains great
resonance today, and is worth reading in its entirety:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeche ... ilence.htm
an excerpt:
...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. 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 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.
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 South 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 hand 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 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.
One year later, on this day in 1968, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis.
That night, in Indianapolis, Robert F. Kennedy was scheduled to address a
group of African Americans who had obviously not heard the news about Dr.
King. Right before arriving at the rally the Chief of Police in Indianapolis told
Kennedy that he could not provide protection and that giving the remarks would
be too dangerous. Nevertheless, Kennedy took the stage - a flatbed truck - alone,
and said:
Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because...
I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people
who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight
in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in
the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps
well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
For those of you who are black - considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people
who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks,
and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as
Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of
bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice
of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same
kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get
beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop
by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace
of God."
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what
we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion
toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether
they be white or whether they be black.
(Interrupted by applause)
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true,
but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding
and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've
had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence;
it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live
together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our
land.
(Interrupted by applause)
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man
and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Rioting broke out in 60 American cities following Dr. King's death. Indianapolis was not one of them.
Two months later, Kennedy was also assassinated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6mxL2cqxrA
Born This Day:
1846 – Comte de Lautréamont
(Isidore Lucien Ducasse),who wrote:
O incomprehensible pederasts, I shall not heap insults upon your
great degradation; I shall not be the one to pour scorn on your
infundibuliform anus. It is enough that the shameful and almost
incurable maladies which besiege you should bring with them
their unfailing punishments.
1913 - Muddy Waters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_vsvX2qiLM
Died This Day:
1983 - Gloria Swanson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOLypkY8LMc
2001 - Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
