AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY
SPEECHES
“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.
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Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power Speech (1966)
On the night of June 16, 1966, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chair Stokely Carmichael (Later Kwame Ture) proclaimed to...
(2023) Hakeem Jeffries’ First Speech as Leader of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives
On January 6, 2023, New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries gave his first speech before the U.S. House of Representatives as...
(1963) Martin Luther King Cobo Hall Speech
On June 23, 1963, two months before the March on Washington, King stood before a throng of 25,000 people at...
(1970) Huey P. Newton, “The Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements”
On August 15, 1970, Huey P. Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, gave a speech in New York...
(2017) New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Address on the Removal of Confederate Monuments in New Orleans
On May 19, 2017, New Orleans, Louisiana Mayor Mitch Landrieu addressed an audience in his city as a backdrop and...
(1963) Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Religion and Race”
On January 14, 1963, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel gave the speech “Religion and Race,” at a conference of the same...
(1893) Frances E.W. Harper, “Woman’s Political Future”
On May 20, 1893, women’s activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper gave this speech before the World’s Congress of Representative Women,...
(1983) Glenn Loury, “Responsibility and Race”
Glenn C. Loury delivered this presentation at Hillsdale College on November 7, 1982, as part of a Center for Constructive Alternatives...
(1998) Anne Wortham, “Martin Luther King’s Flawed Dream”
In the speech below conservative critic Anne Wortham challenges the central theme of universal brotherhood as promoted in Dr. Martin...
