Primary Sources: Speeches

This online presentation documents the speeches that such prominent figures as General John J. Pershing, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt made for the Nation's Forum record label in the early 1920's. The label was the creation of lawyer and arts promoter Guy Golterman who conceived the idea of recording political speeches after visiting the Library of Congress. He later commented: "As I looked at the facsimile of Washington's farewell and the original of Lincoln's Gettysburg address, I profoundly wished that the vitality of their voices could have been preserved."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"Although others made important contributions, Elizabeth Cady Stanton is often celebrated as the most important orator of the early women’s movement. Stanton was born into a prominent family of public servants, the daughter of a congressman who, against common practice, encouraged Elizabeth to follow her intellectual curiosity and pursue an education... Despite being praised for her ambition, it was clear to Elizabeth that as a woman she would never enjoy the full esteem of her father, nor the respect of her male contemporaries. "

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"Born a slave in a Dutch settlement, Isabella Baumfee—later Sojourner Truth—received her emancipation in 1827 under New York state law. One of thirteen children, Isabella spoke Dutch until age eleven, when she was sold to a new master, who forced her to use English. Her Dutch, however, remained with her for the rest of her life."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"Susan Bronwell Anthony was born in 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts, the daughter of a Quaker activist and abolitionist. From an early age, Anthony learned the importance of education, social and economic justice, and moral righteousness. She brought that passion and commitment into the classroom, where she taught for fifteen years before becoming actively involved in the temperance movement and other women’s causes. This experience, and her acquaintance with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, drew her to demand equal rights for women—concluding that only with full citizenship could women become effective workers for social betterment. Soon after, Anthony dedicated her life entirely to the cause of women’s suffrage."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"At the frail age of seventy-six, after five decades of service to suffrage and equal opportunity, Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered this address after stepping down as president of the National American Women Suffrage Association. In a trembling and emotive voice, she emphasized the importance of individual responsibility and women’s rights, including female autonomy and, of course, the right to vote."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"...In 1969, at the First National Conference for the Repeal of Abortion Laws in Chicago, Illinois, Friedan declared in this speech that women could achieve liberation only through individual responsibility and contended that abortion and reproduction were civil rights to be enjoyed by all women."

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"The sermon can viewed as a commentary on the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses (Exodus 20). However, its stern mandate works as an extension of Mosaic law: for example, the prohibition of adultery is supplanted by a condemnation of any kind of lust."

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"By the time he gave this speech, Marx was in his eighth year of residence in Britain, having been expelled from every other country he had attempted to settle in. "

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"...It was a popular speech, repeatedly interrupted by applause, but it failed in its objective. Clinton was impeached on two of the four counts, and faced a five-week trial in the Senate, though he was ultimately acquitted in February 1999."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"One of the most distinguished figures in American history, Frederick Douglass was born a slave on Holmes Hill Farm, near the town of Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. In 1838, only months after escaping bondage through the Underground Railroad, Douglass read his first issue of William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery weekly, the Liberator. Inspired by Garrison’s activism, Douglass delivered his own abolitionist orations three years later, speaking to the Convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
Although W. E. B. Du Bois was a fierce champion of racial integration, there were periods in his career when he favored economic and political separatism as the best means to African-American dignity and equality. By the late 1920s, he called not only for economic, political, and educational parity, but also a separate Negro “nation within a nation”—a marked departure from statements and remarks made earlier in his life. In fact, Du Bois’s call for “race pride” has been credited by some as the forerunner to the Black Power movement.

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
On the long road from his childhood home in Baltimore, Maryland, Thurgood Marshall vaulted economic and social barriers to become one of the most celebrated lawyers in American history. After graduating with honors from Howard University Law School in 1920, Marshall began a twenty-year tenure with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. With mentor Charles Hamilton Houston, Marshall attacked the primary root of racial disparity, America’s education system, by organizing a long-term legal campaign to eradicate segregation in the nation’s schools.

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"Like African-American leaders before him, Martin Luther King, Jr., was, above all, “fundamentally a clergyman.” His great grandfather, Willis Williams, preached in antebellum Georgia; his grandfather led Ebenezer Baptist Church, a bedrock institution in Atlanta; his father, “Daddy King,” guided that church through trying times and later shared the pulpit with his son, Martin Luther."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"On August 28, 1963, before a crowd of nearly 300,000, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered what is arguably the most celebrated civil rights speech in American history. Forming a half-mile blanket over both sides of the Lincoln Memorial, singing “We Shall Overcome,” crowds flocked in trains and buses from all over the country for the historic March on Washington—'the first and essentially last mass meeting to ever reach the national airwaves.'"

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"By the late 1960s, as with other early activists, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent, incrementalist approach to civil rights fell under the harsh criticism of those in the black power movement. Despite Dr. King’s successes, de facto discrimination remained a bitter reality, even for those in the “old guard.” At the risk of being marginalized, King responded by expanding his scope of issues to include economic—not just racial—discrimination and inequality. His Poor People’s Movement joined in common cause with hard-pressed Americans of all races and backgrounds, from African-American custodians to Hispanic migrant workers."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
Speaking to more than a thousand representatives in the statehouse, he boldly asserted that, with regard to slavery and its devisive effect on the nation, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Evoking Jesus’s words in the Synoptic Gospels, Lincoln’s statement was far more radical than expected and, in the eyes of many, politically unsafe for a man with a calling for higher office.

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"In one of the most lauded inaugural addresses of all time, John F Kennedy, who had been elected president by a narrow margin, reached out to a new generation of Americans."

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"...Its stirring words led Kennedy to be hailed as a space visionary; at the time, however, he faced congressional and public scepticism about America's space programme, which had begun in earnest the year before."

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"One of the most memorable speeches of Eisenhower's presidency occurred right at the end, when, in his nationally televised farewell address from the Oval Office, he warned of the danger of an emerging military-industrial complex coming to exert undue influence on government."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"Although black leaders were initially skeptical of candidate John F. Kennedy’s commitment to equal opportunity, including his endorsement of a civil rights platform at the Democratic National Convention, his public praise of Martin Luther King, Jr., convinced a significant number of blacks to support him."

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"A crowd of 120,000 cheering Berliners gathered to hear Kennedy speak on the steps of the Schöneberger Rathaus, West Berlin's city hall, near the wall itself. His speech later caused wry smiles since, in some parts of Germany (although not Berlin), ein Berliner is a type of doughnut. Amusement was the last thing on the audience's mind, however: they regarded Kennedy's address as a major morale boost and a message of defiance to their communist neighbours."

From Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches
"...He arrived to find the people in an upbeat mood, anticipating the excitement of a Kennedy appearance. He climbed onto the platform and, realizing they did not know, broke the news. Just two months after this speech, Kennedy himself was assassinated on June 5,1968."

From Chambers Classic Speeches
"As in 1963, East was divided from West by the Berlin Wall, but the circumstances had changed. The Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931- ), had begun to promote a new policy of glasnost, or openness. Recognizing these developments, Reagan challenged Gorbachev, in possibly the most famous words of his presidency, to ‘tear down this wall!’. Just over two years later, the wall did indeed come down."