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 1984 Rev. Jesse Jackson campaigned for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. Although he entered the Democratic convention at San Francisco with little hope of winning, his appeals on behalf of the dispossessed of America whom he characterized as the “Rainbow Coalition,” ensured that … Read More(1984) Rev. Jesse Jackson, “The Rainbow Coalition”
In the speech below to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, on August 1, 1987, Clarence Thomas, then Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), makes the case that many African Americans have always embraced conservative values and thus their natural political home … Read More(1987) Clarence Thomas, “Why Black Americans Should Look to Conservative Politics”
On August 15, 1987 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall spoke to a gathering of federal judges. Reflecting on his two decades on the Court and particularly on recent affirmative action rulings by the High Court, Justice Marshall reminded his audience that the United States … Read More(1987) Thurgood Marshall, “A Colorblind Society Remains an Aspiration”
In 1988, Rev. Jesse Jackson made a second unsuccessful run for the Democratic Nomination for President, losing out to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Jackson, however, gave another major address at the Democratic National Convention which met in Atlanta, Georgia. The address, delivered on July 19 … Read More(1988) Rev. Jesse Jackson, “Keep Hope Alive”
Thank you all so much. Thank you, Judge Bell for your kind words, and I also thank you for all the kind things you’ve done for me in my life, especially over the last three or four years. I — This is a real pleasure … Read More(1993) Clarence Thomas, “The New Intolerance – Law Day Address”
Image Ownership: John Matthew Smith (CC BY-SA 2.0) By 1993 Lani Guinier, a Yale Law School graduate, had crafted an impressive career as an NAACP attorney who specialized in voting rights cases, member of the law faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, and special assistant … Read More(1993) Lani Guinier, “Seeking a Conversation on Race”
Image Ownership: Public Domain On November 13, 1993, President Bill Clinton traveled to Memphis to address 5,000 African American ministers at the national headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. Speaking from the pulpit where in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his last … Read More(1993) William J. Clinton, “The Freedom to Die”
By 1994 Colin Powell, the son of a Jamaica-born Harlem merchant, had already served as National Security Adviser to President George Herbert Walker Bush and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War. He would become the first African American Secretary … Read More(1994) General Colin Powell Urges African American Students to Reject Racial Hatred
In 1993 Sister Souljah (born Lisa Williamson), a Bronx-born rapper, earned national notoriety thanks ironically to then Presidential candidate Bill Clinton who denounced her comments about the 1992 Los Angeles Riots as “hate driven and racist.” Sister Souljah responded with her own criticism of the … Read More(1994) Sister Souljah, “We Are At War”
On October 5, 1995, three months before her death, former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan received the Sylvanus Thayer Award named in honor of Sylvanus Thayer, Class of 1808, who was the thirty-third graduate of the Academy and who nine years later became its fifth superintendent. The … Read More(1995) Barbara Jordan’s Acceptance Speech for the Sylvanus Thayer Award from the United States Military Academy, West Point
