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.
In 1895 Booker T. Washington, the founder and Principal of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama rose to national prominence when he gave his famous Atlanta Compromise Speech at the Cotton States Exposition. Approximately one year later on September 30, 1896, Washington addressed an audience at the … Read More(1896) Booker T. Washington, “Democracy and Education”
Hugh M. Browne, educator, Presbyterian minister, and college professor in Liberia, positioned himself between the advocates of industrial and higher education for African Americans. In the speech below given in Washington, D.C., he describes his educational philosophy and the forces and experiences that shaped it. … Read More(1896) Hugh M. Browne, “The Higher Education of the Colored People of the South”
Five months after Booker T. Washington had announced his policy of accommodation at the Atlanta Exposition, John Hope, then a member of the faculty at Atlanta Baptist College, delivered his rebuttal in a speech before a black debating society in Nashville on George Washington’s birthday, … Read More(1896) John Hope, “We Are Struggling For Equality”
Born in Memphis in 1863 and an activist until her death in 1954, Mary Eliza Church Terrell has been called a living link between the era of the Emancipation Proclamation and the modern civil rights movement. Terrell was particularly active in the Washington, D.C. area. … Read More(1897) Mary Church Terrell, “In Union There is Strength”
Image Ownership: Public Domain Alexander Crummell’s remarkable career spanned much of the 19th Century. Before the Civil War Crummell had established his credentials as an abolitionist, educator and lecturer in England as well as the United States. In the 1850s he was a member of … Read More(1898) Alexander Crummell, “The Attitude of the American Mind Toward the Negro Intellect”
After his 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech, Booker T. Washington’s popularity grew rapidly among Northern whites. In this instance he gives an address at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 12, 1898, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Not surprisingly he promotes industrial education … Read More(1898) Booker T. Washington, “The Madison Square Garden Address”
Margaret Murray Washington, the third wife of Booker T. Washington was a well-known educator and women’s activist in her own right before she married the founder of Tuskegee. She continued that activism during their marriage. The Washingtons gave twin lectures at Old Bethel A.M.E. Church … Read More(1898) Margaret Murray Washington, “We Must Have a Cleaner Social Morality,”
Mary Church Terrell, the daughter of former slaves, became by the beginning of the 20th century one of the most articulate spokespersons for women’s rights including full suffrage. In 1896 she was elected president of the National Association of Colored Women and by 1910 she … Read More(1898) Mary Church Terrell, “The Progress of Colored Women”
Long termed a “race riot,” the turmoil that enveloped Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898 is now called an armed insurrection. White supremacists drove from power all of the black and white elected officials of this predominately African American city in what was believed … Read More(1898) Rev. Charles S. Morris Describes The Wilmington Massacre of 1898
On November 20, 1898, Reverend Francis J. Grimke, pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C., delivered a sermon in which he denounced those African Americans who called for conservatism and accommodation. Grimke vowed that as long as African Americans were deprived of … Read More(1898) Rev. Francis J. Grimke, “The Negro Will Never Acquiesce As Long As He Lives”
