Great Political Speeches

One of the things that everyone talks about when President Obama is mentioned is how great a speaker he is. Over the course of the year, he has done several good speeches, and one speech in particular, his speech on race that he did early in 2008, inspired a national conversation on the topic. Throughout our history, speeches and writings have had a profound influence on the way our country thinks and feels.

Two really good books are out right now that collect many of the greatest speeches and writings of American history. Ripples Of Hope, edited by Josh Gottheimer, is a collection of the great civil rights speeches in American history. Voices of a People's History of the United States, edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, similarly takes the voices of dissent against racism, war, economic exploitation and imperialism and collects them in one volume.

As a set, both books are a wonderful overview of the brave voices that have fought for rights of the poor, the marginalized and the ignored in America. One of the things that I responded to the most about two books was how they showcased the connections between the various human rights causes.

Several of the leaders of the various civil rights movements were also involved in fighting for the causes of other oppressed groups. The well known abolitionist Frederick Douglass, for instance, attended the Seneca Falls convention for women’s rights in 1848 and later spoke out against the discrimination of Chinese immigrants. Women’s suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fought also for the abolition of slavery and for the temperance. Gay activist Harvey Milk supported the Teamsters in workers’ rights.

Here are excerpts of some of my favorite speeches from both books.

“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out o’ kilter. I think the ‘twixt the Negoes of the South and the women of the North all a-talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’ all this here talking about? That man over there ways that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles or gives me any best place, and aren’t I a woman? Loot at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me- and aren’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well- and aren’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen them almost all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard- and aren’t I a woman? Then they talk about this thing in the head- what’s this they call it? That’s it honey. What’s that got to do with woman’s rights or Negroes rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as man, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down, all alone, these together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again; and now they are asking tto do it, the men better let them.”
Sojourner Truth, 1851

“While we acknowledge our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relationship of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of voluntary obedience to such of the present laws of marriage, as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent, rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess. We protest especially against the laws which give to the husband:

1. The custody of the wife’s person.
2. The exclusive control and guadrianship of their children.
3. The sole ownership of her personal, and use of her real estate, unless previously settled upon her, or placed in the hands of trustees, as in the case of minors, lunatics, and idiots.
4. The absolute right to the roduct of her industry.
5. Also against laws which give to the widower so much larger and more permanent interest in the property of his deceased wife, than they give to the widow in that of the deceased husband.
6. Finally against the whole system by which ‘the legal existence of the wife is suspended during marriage,’ so that in most States, she neither has a legal part in the choice of her residence, nor can she make a will, nor sue or be sued in her own name, nor inherit property.

We believe that personal independence and equal human rights can never be forfeited, except for crime; that marriage should be an equal and permanent partnership, and so recognized by law; that until it is so recognized, married partners should provide against the radical injustice of present laws, by every means in their power.”
Marriage protest of Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, May 1, 1855

“At last I was granted permission to come to Washington and bring my friend Yellow Bull and our interpreter with me. I am glad I came. I have shaken hands with a good many friends, but there are some things I want to know which no one seems able to explain. I cannot understand how the Government sends a man out to fight us, as it did General (Nelson) Miles, and then breaks his word. Such a government has something wrong about it. I cannot understand why so many chiefs are allowed to talk so many different ways, and promise so many different things. I have seen the Great Father Chief (President Rutherford B. Hayes); the Next Great Chief (Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz); the Commissioner Chief; the Law Chief; and many other law chiefs (Congressmen) and they all say they are my friends, and that I shall have justice, but while all their mouths talk right I do not understand why nothing is done for my people. I have heard talk and talk but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle. Good words do not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. it makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk. Too many misinterpretations have been made; to many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. you might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tied a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper. I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.”
Chief Joseph, Washington D.C., 1879

“I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency.

There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all allike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men.

I want a home here not only for the Negro, the mulatto, and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man. If respect is had to majorities, the fact that only one fifth of the population of the globe is white, the other four fifths are colored, ought to have some weight and influence in disposing of this and similar questions. It would be a sad reflection upon the laws of nature and upon the idea of justice, to say nothing of a common Creator, if four fifths of mankind were deprived of the rights of migration to make room for the one fifth.”
Frederick Douglass, December 7, 1869

“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865

“The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings. The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation… It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, January 18, 1892

“It is doubtlessly rather difficult for Caucasian Americans to properly comprehend and believe in what we say. Our citizenship has even been attacked as an evil cloud under which we expect immunity for the nefarious purpose of conspiring to destroy the American way of life. To us- who have been born, raised, and educated in American institutions and in our system of public schools, knowing and owing no other allegiance than to the United States- such a thought is manifestly unfair and ambiguous.

I would like to ask the committee: Has the Gestapo come to America? Have we not risen in righteous anger at Hitler’s mistreatments of the Jews? Then is it not incongruous that citizen Americans of Japanese descent should be similarly mistreated and persecuted? I speak from a humanitarian standpoint and from a realistic and not theoretical point of view. this view, I believe, does not endanger the national security of this country nor jeopardize our war efforts…

Are we to be condemned merely on the basis of our racial origin? Is citizenship such a light and transient thing that that which is our inalienable right in normal times can be torn from us in times of war? We in America are intensely proud of our individual rights and willing, I am sure, to defend those rights with our very lives. I venture to say that the great majority of Nisei Americans, too, will do the same against any aggressor nation- though that nation be Japan. Citizenship to us is no small heritage; it is a very precious and jealous right.”
James Omura, 1942

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of ideas. We must rapidly begin… the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
Martin Luther King Jr., April 1, 1967

“Mr. President, for these many years the Spanish-speaking people of our Nation have been silent. Although they have cried out in their own way, they were not heard. Yet by their very silence, they spoke volumes.
Now throughout our Nation, and particularly in the southwestern part of the country, our Spanish-speaking citizens are moving forward. Their voices are often heard after all these years. Sometimes they are heard in protest against injustice. Always they are raised in favor of self-help and progress.

There is a stirring among them that is unique in their history. It comes like a ground swell, and is irresistible in its force, as it reaches out to and carries along almost all our young people. Suddenly they are aware that what suited the people of yesterday need not suit them today, and surely not tomorrow. It is as if a curtain had been brushed aside, and an entire new world had been revealed to them.

No longer are they ‘the silent people.’ No longer are they content to labor silently in a million fields. The time is forever past when they were content to stand silent at thousands of back doors. A time will never return when they are willing to wait silently at thousands of store counters.”
Joseph M. Montoya, November 17, 1967

”The blacks did not win their rights by staying quietly in the back of the bus. They got off!

Gay people, we will not win their rights by staying quietly in our closets… We are coming out! We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions! We are coming out to tell the truth about gays!

For I’m tired of the conspiracy of silence.

I’m tired of listening to the Anita Bryants twist the language and the meaning of the Bible to fit their own distorted outlook. But I’m even more tired of the silence from the religious leaders of this nation who know that she is playing fast and loose with the true meaning of the Bible. I’m tired of their silence more than of her biblical gymnastics!

And I’m tired of John Briggs talking about false role models. He’s lying in his teeth and he knows it. But I’m even more tired of the silence from education and psychologists who know that Briggs is lying and yet say nothing. I’m tired of their silence more than of Briggs’ lies! I’m tired of the silence. So I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it.”
Harvey Milk, June 25, 1978