good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. we honor dr. martin luther king jr., as we find ourselves living in a world in which gun violence, war and brutality are just as commonplace. we begin the first of these two-night specials with an examination of one of dr. king's most pro found and controversial speeches beyond vietnam where he challenged not only america's involvement in the vietnam war but where he called into question the widening gap from those benefitting from the country's economic growth and those left behind. we are glad you joined us for dr. king's look at an end to war

and end of economic injustice, starts right now. ♪ ♪ and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ exactly one year before dr.

king was assassinated in memphis, he gave one of his most powerful and yet overlooked speeches from the pulpit of riverside church. he called into question this country's involvement in vietnam and the economic disparity tearing up america. over the next two nights, mlk, a call to conscience, we look at a speech that would result in controversy and eventual betrayal. >> i come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. a time comes when silence is betrayal. and that time has come for us in relation to vietnam. >> martin luther king knew when he gave that speech that it would set off a firestorm.

>> it's a speech that challenges us, and in that sense, it's most important that we are uncomfortable with that speech tells us something. >> 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. to such questions, the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment and my calling. indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. >> with this speech, dr. king risked everything he worked so hard to accomplish. in its aftermath, all hell broke loose, already off the list of the most admired americans, now the mainstream media turned answer him and even civil rights

voices publicly condemned him. >> i'm in the historic riverside church in new york city where most agree he delivered his most challenging and controversial call to conscience. when he spoke here on april 4, 1967, one year to the day before he would be killed in memphis, every pew, every available space was jammed with listeners. in the midst of an unpopular war in asia, and a field already with violent outbursts of rage in america's countries, dr. king once again dedicated himself to non-violence, but that call to peace is not what made this speech so courageous, it was his insistence that our war in vietnam was destroying the soul of america, and on by ending the bombing, bringing home u.s. troops and focussing on the needs of the poor and disenfranchised right here at

home could all of america survive. >> some of our crew have already broken the silence of the night, have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. we must speak with all the humility that is available to our limited vision, but we must speak. ♪ >> martin luther king jr. delivered hundreds of speeches, preached a sermon almost every sunday of his adult life. two of his most famous speeches are as familiar as any in american history. >> i have a dream, that we as a people will get to the promised land. >> those speeches have been analyzed and memorized, but the speech he gave here at the riverside church urging non-violent reconciliation in a time of war and a renewed commitment to economic and social justice is the one that arguably has the most to teach

us today as search for honorable resolutions to the conflict in iraq and afghanistan and narrow the gap between rich and poor here at home. marian wright edelman was a lawyer working on behalf of the poor in mississippi when dr. king decided to speak out against the poor. >> he'd been struggling with this for a long time, and, you know, and i'm sure he had thought through all the things that would be said about how he's diverting attention from the civil rights movement and, but he said, yeah, he struggled. but he was obviously, also a very honest man who tried to work his way through what the gospels demanded of him and to try to live with that. >> we are a nation that must undergo a radical revolution of values.

we must radically begin the shift to a personal society, where profit motives and property rights are more important to people than extreme materialism and militarism are being accomplished. >> beyond vietnam was a frank no-holds-barred speech in which dr. king took on the policies of president johnson, kennedy and eisenhower. >> somehow this madness must cease. we must stop now. i speak as a child of god, and whether to suffering poor in vietnam, i speak to the poor of america who have paying the double price of smashed hopes and homes, dealt death and

corruption in vietnam. i speak as a citizen of the world, for the world, as it stands again, at the path we have taken, i speak as one who loves america, to the leaders of our own nation, the great initiative in this war, this initiative to stop it must be ours. >> his conscience leaves him no choice. that he has reached the point where he had to break the silence. and we know that when silence replaces the truth, the silence itself is a lie. martin luther king, junior was the kind of brother, the kind of human being, the kind of christian, the kind of free

black man where he refused to live a lie. >> it's challenges from a distance now of more than 40 years to remember what our country looked like in 1965, '66, '67 with the escalating war in vietnam and fight for civil rights turned this country into warring factions. which now almost universally acknowledge that the vietnam war was a mistake. even robert mcnamara conceded that before his death in 2009. >> there is a uniformly accepted view that the war in vietnam was wrong. most people accept the fact that we lost the war. there's a few who still say, no, we didn't really lose. i don't know exactly what they think happened. but everybody agrees it was a bad war. >> but at the time many insisted america was making an important stand against communism and to question an ongoing war was

tantamount to treason, so when dr. king told his inner circle that he was going to publicly speak against the war, there was might blow back. many questions whether he knew what he was doing. harry belafonte remembers. >> i believe very strongly that dr. king understood with great clarity what it was he was getting in once he cross pollinated our movement with the essence of the peace movement and the resistance to the war in vietnam. he was not just speaking philosophically toward the issues of peace but was also speaking very strongly to the issues of american political policy. ♪ >> it was that decision to speak out about war policy that made so many in the civil rights movement angry.

why take on the vietnam war when the fight for civil rights was still to be won? and most importantly, why incur the wrath of president lyndon johnson, a man many considered to be the best civil rights president since lincoln and a man who had seemingly forged an important alliance with dr. king. >> one of the great tributes we can pay to president kennedy is try to enact some of the great policies that he tried to initiate. but i'm going to support them all, and you can count on that. and i'm going to do my best to get other men to do likewise, and i'll need you guys help, i've never needed it than i do now. >> well you have it, you can call on us for anything. >> thank you, mr. martin. >> and the question was should we publicly oppose him? should we put ourselves at

loggerheads with johnson who had done so much for us for civil rights. >> he's confronting the powers of this country, you know, and i had friends, too, who said you can't criticize the president, the president must know what he's doing. and i heard from my father, if abraham can criticize god over the decision to destroy sodom and fgomorrah, how can you not criticize the president. look what he's doing. and i thought, this was abraham, this was prophetic. this was the bible, alive. >> the rift was so deep that even his own organization, the southern christian leadership conference tried to silence him. and for a while, dr. king was unsettled by that. by 1967, some 600,000 american men were fighting in vietnam, with 2,000 u.s. casualties reported every week. funding that civil rights leaders hoped would go to the war on poverty was instead going

to the war in vietnam. dr. king realized that he could no longer be silent. but the question remained. where to give that speech? >> the whole purpose of the riverside church speech was to cushion what he expected was going to be the negative politics or his speech ten days later at the united nations up in new york where stokely carmichael was going to speak, and a lot of radicals, and they were going to be carrying viet cong flags, and they said if you're going to make that march, try to do something first that frames your argument in a way that it won't be distorted, so that you can get your point across. the riverside church was designed to be a clear statement, but in a religious context that would be respectful and therefore generate the maximum amount of attention to what dr. king had to say, and it didn't work. >> i deem it a signal of importance to try to state

clearly, and i trust concisely, why i believe that the path from sixth avenue baptist church, where i began my pastorate leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. >> it was one of the few speeches that king did not solely write himself. and unlike his sermons which were often delivered extemporaneously, king read beyond vietnam from a carefully constructed text. the text itself actually went through revision after revision, as many of his closest aides all took turns writing and rewriting. >> i don't think there was any speech that dr. king ever gave that was as labored as this one was in his preciseness of thought and what he wanted to impart. >> clarence jones was one of those who wrote a draft of the speech, which dr. king quickly rejected. >> he says, clarence, i thought

you were my radical. i said i don't quite understand what you mean. he says what is this, you go on and state the issue in the war, and then you say, but on the other hand, and then you go on and state it and then you say on the one hand and on the other hand. he says clarence, you, above all people, should know that the vietnam war is either morally right or moralry wro rly wrong. it's not on one hand and on the other hand. >> he turned to one of his closest friends vincent harding. >> that legal folder sitting on your lap, what have you inside that folder? >> okay, well, this is my file for that first draft of the

speech that was delivered in this place. >> can i, can i, can i touch this? >> you may touch it, but don't touch it too hard. >> wow. i'm immediately stunned. because this obviously is a piece of history. the first draft of the speech. and in the draft, as you and dr. king worked on it, this first line stayed the same. i come to this magnificent house of worship tonight, because my conscience leaves me no other choice. tell me why that first line, which pretty much sums it all up, didn't change in the subsequent drafts? >> martctin knew that he wantedo speak from that position, not just as an anti-vietnam leader, but as a man, a citizen of

conscience. we say in the speech, but dealing with vietnam is not enough. that what we're doing in vietnam is indicative of a spirit, of an attitude, of a history that could lead us into similar, deep, disastrous, mistakes in the future. this is a case of getting out of a certain frame of mind, of a way of thinking about ourselves and thinking about the world and beyond vietnam meant we've got to go in that direction. >> on april 4th, the riverside church was standing room only, every pew was jammed with supporters. another 1200 extra seats were brought in and were quickly filled. hundreds more stood outside, hoping for a chance to hear dr. king. one of those in the church that

day in '67 was the young daughter of a rabbi. her father was one of dr. king's closest friends and allies. they had walked together in selma, stood side by side as proponents of non-violence and championed the poor and disenfranchised. >> what will it do to the civil rights movement. everyone knew dr. king would be attacked. was it morally right for him to encourage dr. king to speak out against the war. >> how did he navigate to your point now, knowing that his friend, martin king, when he came to riverside to give that speech, was going to be demonized? >> my father knew that dr. king meant every word of what he came to say at riverside church. yes, it takes courage and is very difficult, but he also knew that dr. king believed in this and wanted to do it.

my father would never try to convince him to say anything that he didn't believe in. and i think of that speech and that evening exemplifies a statement that my father used. moral grandure and spiritual audacity. >> it questioned the morality of an ongoing war and suggested that ongoing war support would lift americans out of poverty. although other speeches were filmed in their entirety, less than ten minutes of film remain from the riverside church. we only know the powerful delivery thanks to the audio recordings that were made. >> seems as if it was -- for poor, both black and white. there were experiments, hopes, new beginnings, and then came the buildup in vietnam. and i watched this program

broken and eviscerated, as if it was some idle political play thing of a society gone mad. >> we wanted to show that there's a linkage between the war and what's going on with black america, that the war was interfering with that. lyndon johnson wanted to have it both ways. we wanted to do good things for the domestic agenda, for the great society. but he also wanted to have the war. >> it was a speech that asked if fear had turned americans into bullies. >> communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs and nuclear weapons. that 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. >> this speech was radical in

the sense that it gave a pointed, accusing reminder of how far we had strayed from his main message that non-violence and democracy are a glove on a hand. they fit together. and war was corrupting our promise, the promise of freedom. >> there are those who think that your father's philosophy, king's philosophy, esuppopoused this place in 1967 wouldn't work, obsolete in today's world. >> i don't agree. you know, people felt the same way in the past. they felt the same way about communism and vietnam and the threat it posed. i've heard this in my own life. a lot of people thought non-violence was hopeless against people like bull connor. >> and hitler. >> and hitler. my father was not an absolute pacifist. he knew that there are times

when you must go and rescue people, and it may take force of arms. but he also believed that first you have to try as hard as you can with other methods. if i could see the miracle, how he transformed us, can't it work in other setting? i can't say that it can. how could i? >> it's a speech that resonates today. we must ask ourselves if the current conflicts are a repetition of vietnam, a charge that many strongly reject. >> perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place, and it became clear to me that the wars have done far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. it was sending vast sums and our brothers and our husbands to fight and to die an extraordinarily high proportions, relative to the rest of the population. we were taking the black young

men, who had been crippled by our society and sending them, guaranteeing liberties in southeast asia, which they had not found in southwest georgia. >> so king responding to what was going on in vietnam as a direct relationship to what was going on in black america. he began to add the numbers up, and the mathematics was miserable for black people. disproportionate numbers of black people were being sent to the front. in 1965, they lowered the educational standard for entry into the military, and admitted black people that they had previously kept out. what is that, affirmative retro action? black people were dying in fields with napalm but couldn't

enjoy decent citizenship. he said look, i'm not going to segregate my conscience. >> he had another issue with which he had been grappling, how he could remain silent about an ongoing war. >> it moves to an even deeper level of awareness. it grows out of my experience in the get olast three years, espey the last three summers. 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 convictions. social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. but they ask, and rightly so,

what about vietnam? and i knew that i could never again raise my voice against the oppression in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest, my own government. >> tomorrow night, part two of our look at dr. king's stand against the war in vietnam and the growing economic divide that was threatening our country's stability, a stance that resonates even today. that's our show tonight, thank you for watching, and, as always, keep the faith. ♪ for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. hi, i'm tavis smiley, join me next time as we conclude our look into a deep dive ito vietnam, we'll see you then. ♪

♪ and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

♪ - today on america's test kitchen, julia uncovers the secrets to making foolproof new york cheesecake. and bridget shows how to make the best new york bagels at home. right here on america's test kitchen. america's test kitchen is brought to you by dcs. dcs: manufacturers of professionally styled indoor and outdoor kitchen equipment. at dcs, our mission is design that delivers,