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.
On June 16, 1858, only three hours after the Illinois Republican Party nominated him as its candidate for the United States Senate from that state, Abraham Lincoln gave his “A House Divided” speech in Springfield, Illinois. That speech became the most famous oration from an … Read More(1858) Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided”
Schoolteacher, dentist, physician, lawyer, graduate of the American Medical College in Philadelphia, member of the Massachusetts bar, proficient in Greek and Latin, Dr. John S. Rock was unequivocally one of the most distinguished African American leaders to emerge in the United States during the antebellum … Read More(1858) John S. Rock, “I Will Sink or Swim with My Race”
On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a racially mixed group of eighteen men in an attack on the U.S. Government arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in the hope of initiating a general uprising of enslaved people in Virginia and the rest of the South. … Read More(1859) John Brown, “Address to the Virginia Court at Charles Town, Virginia”
On December 2, 1859, John Brown was executed by Virginia authorities in Charles Town for his ill-fated raid on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry. Soon after word of his death reached Boston, William Lloyd Garrison, the leading abolitionist in the United States at the … Read More(1859) William Lloyd Garrison, “On the Death of John Brown”
On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a presidential candidate who had yet to win the Republican nomination, accepted an invitation to speak to the Young Men’s Republican Union at Cooper Union Hall before a capacity crowd of 1,500. Lincoln used the occasion to outline his … Read More(1860) Abraham Lincoln, “Cooper Union Address”
In an address to the Judiciary Committee of the State Legislature of New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton compares the condition of the slaves in the South to that of disenfranchised women in New York. She argues that if the committee understands the denial of freedom … Read More(1860) Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “A Slave’s Appeal”
Although history has rendered Abraham Lincoln the Great Emancipator, his dedication to the anti-slavery cause was questioned by many abolitionists during his first presidential campaign of 1860. H. Ford Douglas, a Virginia-born fugitive slave who lived in Illinois in 1860, correctly saw Lincoln as an … Read More(1860) H. Ford Douglas, “I Do Not Believe in the Antislavery of Abraham Lincoln”
Image Ownership: Public Domain On March 21, 1861, after seven states had seceded from the United States, two weeks after the inauguration of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, but three weeks before the firing on Fort Sumter, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens delivered what would … Read More(1861) Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Speech”
New Jersey-born John Sweat Rock was one of the first African American dentists in the United States. He was also a medical doctor and in 1861, after studying law, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1861. On January 23, 1862, Rock addressed the Massachusetts … Read More(1862) John S. Rock, “A Deep and Cruel Prejudice”
March 5, 1862 As the Civil War raged in the South and West, William C. Nell, a prominent abolitionist and historian gave the keynote address at the Crispus Attucks Commemoration in Allston Hall in Boston honoring the only African American among the five men killed … Read More(1862) William C. Nell Speaks At The Crispus Attucks Commemoration, Boston
