Padre Antonio José Martinez, Cura de Taos

[Part II of the Sermon Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King delivered at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., 
on 31 March 1968, FOUR DAYS (!) before he was assassinated on Palm Sunday of 1968.  I think there
was a very close connection between this sermon and King's assassination so soon afterwards.  It reminds
me of the close time-frame between Archbishop Oscar Romero's  denunciation of violence in his country 
of El Salvador and his own assassination on March 24, 1980.  King's analysis and denunciation of the 
Vietnam War, in my opinion, resonates strongly with our current situation in Iraq. The sermon was reprinted
in the Congressional Record as a tribute on 9 April, five days after his death. - JR]

				
			REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ON THE VIETNAM WAR

...I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and
bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the
social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one
occasion, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." The world must hear this. I
pray God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world.
Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the
military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us
against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of
protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to
kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we
spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called
poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here
we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we
have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill
in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be
done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up
morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of
America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few
client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind," and the best way
to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam, because if it continues, we will inevitably come to the point
of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation.

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or
nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests,
the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a
civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an
inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

This is why I felt the need of raising my voice against that war and working wherever I can to arouse
the conscience of our nation on it. I remember so well when I first took a stand against the war in Vietnam.
The critics took me on and they had their say in the most negative and sometimes most vicious way.

One day a newsman came to me and said, "Dr. King, don’t you think you’re going to have to stop, now,
opposing the war and move more in line with the administration’s policy? As I understand it, it has
hurt the budget of your organization, and people who once respected you have lost respect for you. Don’t
you feel that you’ve really got to change your position?" I looked at him and I had to say, "Sir, I’m
sorry you don’t know me. I’m not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at
the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I’ve not taken a sort of Gallup Poll of
the majority opinion." Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of
consensus.

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks
the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it
right?

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he
must do it because conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of
goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain’t
goin’ study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.

Let me close by saying that we have difficult days ahead in the struggle for justice and peace, but I
will not yield to a politic of despair. I’m going to maintain hope as we come to Washington in this
campaign. The cards are stacked against us. This time
we will really confront a Goliath. God grant that we will be that David of truth set out against the
Goliath of injustice, the Goliath of neglect, the Goliath of refusing to deal with the problems, and go
on with the determination to make America the truly great America that it is called to be.
I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she
strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our
destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.

Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of
history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the beautiful words
of the "Star Spangled Banner" were written, we were here.

For more than two centuries our forebearers labored here without wages. They made cotton king, and they
built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet
out of a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery
couldn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face will
surely fail.

We’re going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the
almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And so, however dark it is, however deep the angry
feelings are, and however violent explosions are, I
can still sing "We Shall Overcome."

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

We shall overcome because Carlyle is right—"No lie can live forever."

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right—"Truth, crushed to earth, willrise again."

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right—as we were singing earlier today,

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scaffold sways the future.

And behind the dim unknown stands God,

Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith
we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Thank God for John, who centuries ago out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos caught vision of a new
Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, who heard a voice saying, "Behold, I make all things new; former
things are passed away."

God grant that we will be participants in this newness and this magnificent development. If we will but do
it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace.And thatday the morning stars
will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy. God bless you.

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