Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787-1901 (Studies in Rhetoric and Communication)

This comprehensive anthology will be the standard source for thestudy of African American public address for years to come. For Americans of the 19th century, as W. E. B. Du Bois observed, eloquentspeeches were 'the shining lights of civilization' that both expressedand sought to improve the lives and communities from which they sprang.Through political speeches, sermons, lectures, oral testimonies, and ceremonialaddresses, African Americans offered diverse responses to the issues andevents of their times, including not only slavery and racial equality butalso women's rights, education, religion, immigration, socialism, war,Indian policy, and labor organization, among others. The speeches in thiscollection are among the most powerful expressions of African Americanopinions on these issues and were delivered on occasions and before audienceswhere the speakers believed their words might be transformative.Lift Every Voice is a completely revised, updated, and expandedversion of Philip Foner's 1972 classic Voice of Black America, which LibraryJournal hailed as "indispensable.""This well-edited andrichly inclusive work," wrote Benjamin Quarles, "unveils thefull sweep of Black expression as found in platform addresses" by"men and women who join eloquence with reason in articulating theirgrievances and their aspirations and in arousing their listeners with theirringing and prophetic challenges." This new collection includes over60 additional texts and revised and expanded introductory essays that providehistorical, biographical, and critical information for each speech.Containing more than 150 speeches, this anthology represents the mostextensive and diverse collection of African American oratory of the 18thand 19th centuries ever published. Lift Every Voice makes readilyaccessible not only the classic orations of such well-known figuresas Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Booker T. Washington but alsodozens of lesser-known but important speeches deserving greater recognitionand study. Many of these speeches are previously unpublished, uncollected,or long out of print..