If I had a thousand tongues and each tongue were a thousand thunderbolts and each thunderbolt had a thousand voices, I would use them all today to help you understand a loyal and misrepresented and misjudged people.” These were the words of Joseph C. Price, founder and President of Livingston College in North Carolina, who in 1890 delivered an address to the National Education Association annual convention held in Minneapolis. Price’s words reflect on the long tradition of African American oratory. Listed below are some of the most significant orations by African Americans with links to the actual speeches.
New York City newspaper editor T. Thomas Fortune in 1887 called upon African Americans to form an organization to fight for the rights denied them. Three years later the National Afro-American League, became the first black civil rights organization in the United States. One hundred … Read More(1890) T. Thomas Fortune, “It Is Time To Call A Halt”
On May 18, 1893, Anna Julia Cooper delivered an address at the World’s Congress of Representative Women then meeting in Chicago. Cooper’s speech to this predominately white audience described the progress of African American women since slavery. Cooper in many ways epitomized that progress. Born … Read More(1893) Anna Julia Cooper, “Women’s Cause is One and Universal”
On May 20, 1893, women’s activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper gave this speech before the World’s Congress of Representative Women, meeting in their conference in Chicago, Illinois. If before sin had cast its deepest shadows or sorrow had distilled its bitterest tears, it was true … Read More(1893) Frances E.W. Harper, “Woman’s Political Future”
Ida B. Wells emerged in the 1890s as the leading voice against the lynching of African Americans following the violent lynching of three of her friends. Beginning with an editorial in newspaper she owned, Memphis Free Speech in 1892 shortly after their deaths, she organized … Read More(1893) Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law In All Its Phases”
William Saunders Scarborough, born in 1852 in Macon, Georgia, the son of a free black father and an enslaved mother eventually became the first graduate of Atlanta University and at 23 a professor of Latin and Greek at Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1908 he … Read More(1894) William Saunders Scarborough, “The Ethics of the Hawaiian Question”
On September 18, 1895 Booker T. Washington gave an address to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition which became known as the “Atlanta Compromise Speech.” The address appears below. Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Board of Directors, and Citizens: One-third of the population of … Read More(1895) Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Compromise Speech”
Virginia-born John Henry Smyth, late 19th Century lawyer and diplomat, had spent nearly five years as the U.S. Minister to Liberia, representing both President Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur. He was given an L.L. D. degree by Liberia College and appointed Knight Commander … Read More(1895) John H. Smyth, “The African in Africa and the African in America”
In 1894 Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin founded the Women’s New Era Club, a charitable organization of sixty prominent black women in Boston. Soon afterwards she began editing its monthly publication, the Women’s Era. Encouraged by the success of the New Era Club and heartened by … Read More(1895) Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, “Address to the First National Conference of Colored Women”
In 1895 T. Thomas Fortune, then editor of the New York Age, and founder of the Afro-American League in 1890, was considered one of the leaders of African America. That year he gave an address at the Congress on Africa which met in Atlanta in connection … Read More(1895) T. Thomas Fortune, “The Nationalization of Africa”
Image Ownership: Public Domain One year after his Atlanta Compromise Speech 40-year-old Booker T. Washington was on his way to becoming the most influential African American in the United States. One example of that growing influence was the invitation from the Harvard Alumni to speak … Read More(1896) Booker T. Washington, “Address to the Harvard Alumni Dinner”
