On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy sent his civil right message to Congress urging it to pass a civil rights act. The message was immediately prompted by the action of Governor George Wallace of Alabama in physically blocking the entrance of two African … Read More(1963) John F. Kennedy, “We Face A Moral Crisis: The Civil Rights Message to Congress, 1963”
By 1964 George C. Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, had become the national symbol of opposition to the civil rights movement and to federal governmental intervention to protect the rights of African Americans. In the address below he denounces President Lyndon B. Johnson for signing … Read More(1964) George C. Wallace, “The Civil Rights Movement: Fraud, Sham, and Hoax”
On February 2, 1955, New York Representative Adam Clayton Powell, then one of only three African Americans in the U.S. Congress, rose to argue that his colleagues should support two pending civil rights bills then before the House of Representatives. His speech appears below: Mr. … Read More(1955) Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., “Speech on Civil Rights”
On June 4, 1965 U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson gave the Commencement Address at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He used the occasion to remind his audience and the nation of the long history of racial discrimination and urged the American people to end racial … Read More(1965) Lyndon B. Johnson, “To Fulfill These Rights”
In early March 1965 much of the nation’s attention was focused on civil rights marches in and around Selma, Alabama. Activists led by Dr. Martin Luther King used these demonstrations to urge the federal government to act to end the denial of voting rights to … Read More(1965) Lyndon B. Johnson, “The Voting Rights Act”
Samora Machel, the leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front and first president of independent Mozambique (1975-1986), was a Marxist-Leninist. In the speech below, given in Maputo, the capital, on February 7, 1980, he describes the use of the state bureaucracy in fashioning his version of … Read More(1980) Samora Machel, “Transform the State Apparatus into an Instrument of Victory”
In the following address given in Berlin, East Germany on April 11, 1983 at celebrations marking the centennial of the death of Karl Marx, Samora Machel, discusses the relevance of Marxist struggle to the Third World and especially to his nation, Mozambique. Dear comrades, with … Read More(1983) Samora Machel “Every Revolution is a Contribution to Marxism”
On July 31, 1959, Nigeria was slightly more than a year away from full independence from Great Britain. On that day Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Premier of Eastern Nigeria and National President of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), gave a speech to … Read More(1959) Nnamdi Azikiwe Speaks on the Role of Nigeria and other African States in World Politics
On May 18, 1955 the Eastern House of Assembly, the regional legislature for Eastern Nigeria, moved a resolution to established the first university in Eastern Nigeria. Nnamdi Azikiwe gave a speech seconding the motion introduced by the Eastern Region Minister of Education. That eastern university … Read More(1955) Nnamdi Azikiwe, “The University of Nigeria Speech”
In 1953 when Northern Nigerians were beginning to consider secession from the Nigerian colony that would soon be a nation, Nnamdi Azikiwe gave a speech before the caucus of his political party, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in Yaba, Nigeria on … Read More(1953) Nnamdi Azikiwe, “Speech on Secession”
