After my last entry, I received email copied below from a journal friend. She had left me the first part of it in a comment on the entry, but sent the rest thru the mail. I took no offense, and wanted her and everyone else to understand why I used the RFK eulogy rather than one of Dr. King's speeches. I had thought that J-land would be full of entries with quotes from King's many and wondrous speeches, so I wanted to do something a little different, and honor two of my heroes at the same time. Had I known that it would be hard to find quotes from Dr. King in J-land I would have done this exerpt of one of his speeches as my first, and only, commemoration. It is the one I feel we need to hear now in this country, the one I wish I could broadcast over a loudspeaker in the heart of Washington, D.C. If you want more, alternet.org has a great group of exerpts from King speeches here.
Kathleen's email: This is the original comment I wanted to leave you, however, I am afraid that people will read it as a complaint about you. Regardless I want someone to know what I was thinking.
Your entry has restored some faith back in me. I was beginning to wonder why there were no entries regarding Dr. King’s birthday. I must say I am a little put out (not criticizing you) that we still cannot swallow Dr. King’s message unless it is through a white man (Kennedy). Apparently, coming from a white man makes it easier than King’s own speeches. For the most part his speeches were beautiful, truly works of art. Having to honor Dr. King through Robert Kennedy simply shows how far we still have left to go. Unfortunately, we are indeed at a standstill with the current administration, and with that, I am suffering the utmost grief.
Take care, and thank you for having courage.
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Dr. King's speech:
From "Beyond Vietnam," April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City.
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men [in the ghettos] 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 nonviolent action. But they asked – and rightly so – 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 the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
... 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.
... Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for 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 it must be ours.
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. ... 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 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, 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. ... 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 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 veins of people 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.
8 comments:
Not to issue with anything you or Kathleen had to say, but I wanted to point out that I spent most of the morning reading messages in J-land honoring Dr. King, so I'm a little confused by her mentioning that yours was the only one. Anyway, thanks for two great entires today!
Obviously I meant to say "take issue" in my previous comment. (Proofread yourself Cherie!)
cherie, i'm sure what you say is true, as i thought it would be. i haven't had time to read many journal entries today, so didn't have the journals to give kathleen.
To avoid splitting hairs, perhaps I should have said “none of the fifty plus journals that I read.” I am sure if I insulate myself with views similar or identical to my own I would indeed see what I expect or want. However, what is pleasing to me is not the reality of our country at the present. Moreover, insulating myself with only my views does nothing for society as a whole; therefore I cannot allow myself to fall in that trap. I come here and other similar places when I need a reminder that there are compassionate and logical people.
Marigolds, you have exposed me for the brute I am. I tend to always mess up the feel good moment and drown it in some injustice. I meant no harm. However I am still incline to believe that there are people (excluding you and your readers if need be) that cannot accept a black without him or her being “whitewashed” first. It is a cruel reality. A reality no one wants to talk about or admit, and some even refuse to try to see it.
Your entry is beautiful! Thank you.
Dr King was indeed a wise and wonderful man. But I would said that his "racism, materialism and militarism" would have to be expanded to include intolerence as a Nationally-supported value. It seems that the older I get the more intolerent society is becoming. The "backlash" to change, including Civil Rights and Women's Rights issues has been astounding to me. It seems that those I would think would be the most tolerant and understanding have united to become the least so. Paulette
you are never a "brute," kathleen, and i never meant to "expose" you as any such thing. as i've told you in my emails, it's hard to know where racism lurks; it was fed to us with mother's milk in my generation (generation and location, texas in fact) and -despite our best efforts- may linger like a virus in the blood. i saw your email as only an awareness of this fact, and a tool for my own, and perhaps others', self-examination. please know that Dr. King is in my pantheon of personal heroes, and his words are of immense importance to me. I was glad of the chance for another entry using his words.
Actually, I am grateful for BOTH entries. Robert Kennedy's words reminded me of the shock and sorrow and confusion and dread we experienced in 1968 at the news of King's assassination. Rereading Kennedy's words 37 years later brought back the full emotional impact of that moment. And Dr. King's words? What can I say except I am humbled by his witness; dwarfed by his greatness. Thank you for providing both.
Beyond Vietnam is one of MLK's strongest speeches -- which says a lot in a career of public service that gave us many -- and a reminder that he was not only a civil rights leader but also a leader of the anti-war movement, something that most of us tend to forget when we celebrate him during his holiday.
Your highlighting his speech as well as RFK's speech about him I thought was an excellent idea. It does nothing but good to show that this was a man who inspired many, crossing both social and racial divides.
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