{"id":197469,"date":"2019-10-24T19:30:35","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T17:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/plumvillage.org\/letter-from-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nominating-thich-nhat-hanh-for-the-nobel-peace-prize-in-1967\/"},"modified":"2019-10-24T19:30:35","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T17:30:35","slug":"letter-from-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nominating-thich-nhat-hanh-for-the-nobel-peace-prize-in-1967","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/letter-from-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nominating-thich-nhat-hanh-for-the-nobel-peace-prize-in-1967","title":{"rendered":"Letter from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. nominating Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

January 25, 1967<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The first page of Dr. King’s letter, courtesy The King Library and Archives in Atlanta<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Nobel Institute
Drammesnsveien 19
Oslo, NORWAY <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gentlemen: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964,\nI now have the pleasure of proposing to you the name of Thich Nhat Hanh for\nthat award in 1967. I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel\nPeace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This would be a notably auspicious year\nfor you to bestow your Prize on the Venerable Nhat Hanh. Here is an apostle of\npeace and non-violence, cruelly separated from his own people while they are\noppressed by a vicious war which has grown to threaten the sanity and security\nof the entire world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because no honor is more respected than\nthe Nobel Peace Prize, conferring the Prize on Nhat Hanh would itself be a most\ngenerous act of peace. It would remind all nations that men of good will stand\nready to lead warring elements out of an abyss of hatred and destruction. It\nwould re-awaken men to the teaching of beauty and love found in peace. It would\nhelp to revive hopes for a new order of justice and harmony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know Thich Nhat Hanh, and am privileged\nto call him my friend. Let me share with you some things I know about him. You\nwill find in this single human being an awesome range of abilities and\ninterests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is a holy man, for he is humble and\ndevout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. The author of ten\npublished volumes, he is also a poet of superb clarity and human compassion.\nHis academic discipline is the Philosophy of Religion, of which he is Professor\nat Van Hanh, the Buddhist University he helped found in Saigon. He directs the\nInstitute for Social Studies at this University. This amazing man also is\neditor of Thien My, an influential Buddhist weekly publication. And he is\nDirector of Youth for Social Service, a Vietnamese institution which trains\nyoung people for the peaceable rehabilitation of their country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thich Nhat Hanh today is virtually\nhomeless and stateless. If he were to return to Vietnam, which he passionately\nwishes to do, his life would be in great peril. He is the victim of a\nparticularly brutal exile because he proposes to carry his advocacy of peace to\nhis own people. What a tragic commentary this is on the existing situation in\nVietnam and those who perpetuate it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of Vietnam is filled with\nchapters of exploitation by outside powers and corrupted men of wealth, until\neven now the Vietnamese are harshly ruled, ill-fed, poorly housed, and burdened\nby all the hardships and terrors of modern warfare. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thich Nhat Hanh offers a way out of this\nnightmare, a solution acceptable to rational leaders. He has traveled the\nworld, counseling statesmen, religious leaders, scholars and writers, and\nenlisting their support. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a\nmonument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I respectfully recommend to you that you\ninvest his cause with the acknowledged grandeur of the Nobel Peace Prize of\n1967. Thich Nhat Hanh would bear this honor with grace and humility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sincerely, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Luther King, Jr. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 25, 1967 The Nobel Institute Drammesnsveien 19 Oslo, NORWAY Gentlemen: As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964, I now have the pleasure of proposing to you the name of Thich Nhat Hanh for that award in 1967. I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":197470,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-197469","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.plumvillage.org\/bg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}