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.
Image Ownership: Public Domain Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817-1864), was one of the most prominent of the anti-slavery speakers in the nation by the 1850s. Born into slavery in Maryland, he escaped with his mother to New Jersey. In 1834 when he was 17 Ward was … Read More(1850) Samuel Ringgold Ward, “Speech on the Fugitive Slave Bill”
Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883) was arguably the most famous of the 19th Century black women orators. Born into slavery in New York and freed in 1827 under the state’s gradual emancipation law, she dedicated her life to abolition and equal rights for women and men. … Read More(1851) Sojourner Truth “Ar’nt I a Woman?“
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to address the citizens of his hometown, Rochester, New York. Whatever the expectations of his audience on that 76th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Douglass used the occasion not to celebrate the nation’s … Read More(1852) Frederick Douglass, “What, To The Slave, Is The Fourth Of July”
By 1854 William Lloyd Garrison was the most prominent abolitionist in the United States. Beginning with his newspaper, the Liberator, which he established in Boston in 1831, Garrison led the effort to end slavery in the nation. In this 1854 speech in Boston which appears … Read More(1854) William Lloyd Garrison, “No Compromise with the Evil of Slavery”
In September 1855, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled in Boston v. Roberts that a separate school could not be maintained at taxpayer expense by the city of Boston. This decision marked the first significant victory in what would be a 99 year struggle to … Read More(1855) William C. Nell, “The Triumph Of Equal School Rights In Boston”
In January 1856, Sara G. Stanley, representing the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Delaware, Ohio, addressed the all-male Convention of Disfranchised Citizens of Ohio who met at the Columbus City Hall. She called upon the forty delegates who included among their ranks John Mercer Langston, Peter … Read More(1856) Sara G. Stanley Addresses The Convention Of Disfranchised Citizens Of Ohio
The Dred Scott Decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857 was supposed to end the decades-long debate about slavery in the United States. It did just the opposite, inflaming passions particularly in the North. In the follow speech, Abraham Lincoln, … Read More(1857) Abraham Lincoln, “The Dred Scott Decision and Slavery”
By 1857 “Bleeding Kansas’ and the Dred Scott Decision had intensified sectional tensions over slavery and moved the nation closer to civil war. Against that backdrop, Charles Lenox Remond, on July 10, 1857, addressed the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society where he joined a growing chorus of … Read More(1857) Charles Lenox Remond, “An Anti-Slavery Discourse”
Frances Ellen Watkins was born of free parents in Baltimore in 1825. After teaching in New York and Pennsylvania Watkins became a full-time abolitionist speaker for the Maine Anti-Slavery Society. By the 1850s she was one of the most noted speakers on that subject as … Read More(1857) Frances Ellen Watkins, “Liberty For Slaves”
On August 3, 1857, Frederick Douglass delivered a “West India Emancipation” speech at Canandaigua, New York, on the twenty-third anniversary of the event. Most of the address was a history of British efforts toward emancipation as well as a reminder of the crucial role of … Read More(1857) Frederick Douglass, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress”
