Black History Month: 10 Speeches That Shifted Society

Words can be a powerful tool for change. Here are 10 speeches by African-Americans whose words impacted everyone who heard them.

President Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Address

Many believed we would never see a Black President, so on January 20, 2009 when Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, it became a day etched in the mind of millions who realized nothing was impossible.

SoJourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman”

Back in 1851, abolitionist Sojourner Truth uttered a simple phrase that many may argue is still a relevant question over 160 years later, “Ain’t I a Woman” when discussing women’s rights, especially women of color. Speaking at a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio, Truth delivered one of the most famous abolitionist and women’s rights speeches in the history of the United States. She said,

That man over there says 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 ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’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 ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Read the entire speech here.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recited arguably the most important and popular speeche ever. In case you never saw this footage, see it below.

Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

In July 1852 in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass asked one simple but powerful question to an audience of 500 people, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass had been invited to speak at the event to discuss what the fourth of July meant to African-Americans. Well, he let the audience know.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2012 Democratic National Convention speech

At the 2012 DNC First Lady Michelle Obama gave a fiery, heartfelt speech fighting for the re-election of President Barack Obama – and to many, FLOTUS’ speech propelled many to stand by her husband.

Thurgood Marshall’s “Argument Before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education”

Brown v. Board of Education is one of the most defining court decisions in American History.  Representing the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall delivered the argument that lead to this huge feat. Read an excerpt below:

….I got the feeling on hearing the discussion yesterday that when you put a white child in a school with a whole lot of colored children, the child would fall apart or something. Everybody knows that is not true.

Those same kids in Virginia and South Carolina-and I have seen them do it-they play in the streets together, they play on their farms together, they go down the road together, they separate to go to school, they come out of school and play ball together. They have to be separated in school.

There is some magic to it. You can have them voting together, you can have them not restricted because of law in the houses they live in. You can have them going to the same state university and the same college, but if they go to elementary and high school, the world will fall apart. And it is the exact same argument that has been made to this Court over and over again, and we submit that when they charge us with making a legislative argument, it is in truth they who are making the legislative argument.

Mary McLeod Bethune’s  “What Does American Democracy Mean to Me?”

Bethune gave her infamous speech on the NBC radio show “America’s Town Meeting of the Air” on November 23, 1939 where she answered the question, “What Does American Democracy Mean to Me?”. See an excerpt below:

Democracy is for me, and for 12 million black Americans, a goal towards which our nation is marching. It is a dream and an ideal in whose ultimate realization we have a deep and abiding faith. For me, it is based on Christianity, in which we confidently entrust our destiny as a people. Under God’s guidance in this great democracy, we are rising out of the darkness of slavery into the light of freedom. Here my race has been afforded [the] opportunity to advance from a people 80 percent illiterate to a people 80 percent literate; from abject poverty to the ownership and operation of a million farms and 750,000 homes; from total disfranchisement to participation in government; from the status of chattels to recognized contributors to the American culture.

Read the entire speech here.

John Lewis’ “We Must Free Ourselves”

The then 23-year-old’s speech at the March on Washington in August 1963 often plays second fiddle to MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech but the living icon’s speech made a huge impact that day.

The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery.  The non-violent revolution is saying, “We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years.  We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside any national structure that could and would assure us a victory.”  To those who have said, “Be Patient and Wait,” we must say that, “Patience is a dirty and nasty word.”  We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually, we want our freedom, and we want it now.  We cannot depend on any political party, for freedom, and we want it now.  We cannot depend on any political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Shirley Chisholm’s Address to U.S. House of Representatives on Equal Rights for Women in May 1969

Read Chisholm’s speech below:

Mr.Speaker, when a young woman graduates from college and starts looking for a job, she is likely to have a frustrating and even demeaning experience ahead of her. If she walks into an office for an interview, the first question she will be asked is, “Do you type?”

There is a calculated system of prejudice that lies unspoken behind that question. Why is it acceptable for women to be secretaries, librarians, and teachers, but totally unacceptable for them to be managers, administrators, doctors, lawyers, and Members of Congress.

The unspoken assumption is that women are different. They do not have executive ability orderly minds, stability, leadership skills, and they are too emotional.

Continue Reading here.

Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “Keep Hope Alive” at the Democratic National Convention in 1988

In his second presidential campaign, Rev. Jesse Jackson sought the Democratic presidential nomination and although he did not get the nod, he did leave his mark with this powerful oration.