Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches

Catherine Ellis · Stephen Drury Smith

Jul. 2006 · The New Press

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A moving portrait of how black Americans have spoken out against injustice—with speeches by Thurgood Marshall, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and more.
 
In “full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul”, this unique anthology collects the transcribed speeches of the twentieth century’s leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures, many never before available in printed form (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).
 
From an 1895 speech by Booker T. Washington to Julian Bond’s sharp assessment of school segregation on the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board in 2004, the collection captures a powerful tradition of oratory—by political activists, civil rights organizers, celebrities, and religious leaders—going back more than a century.
 
Including the text of each speech with an introduction placing it in historical context, Say It Plain is a remarkable record—from the back-to-Africa movement to the civil rights era and the rise of black nationalism and beyond—conveying a struggle for freedom and a challenge to America to live up to its democratic principles.
 
Includes speeches by:

• Mary McLeod Bethune
• Julian Bond
• Stokely Carmichael
• Shirley Chisholm
• Louis Farrakhan
• Marcus Garvey
• Jesse Jackson
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Thurgood Marshall
• Booker T. Washington
• Walter White

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Catherine Ellis is the founder of Audio Memoir, an oral history service that captures her clients' personal and professional stories using techniques honed by decades of interviewing and broadcast experience. A longtime producer for American Radio Works®, Ellis has covered twentieth-century American race relations and critical events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Great Recession. She is a co-editor (with Stephen Drury Smith) of Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches and Say It Loud: Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African American Identity and (with Peter Bearman, Stephen Drury Smith, and Mary Marshall Clark) of After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember September 2001 and the Years That Followed, all published by The New Press. Ellis holds a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University, where she studied the competing memories of Jim Crow segregation in the South. She lives in Belmont, Massachusetts. Stephen Drury Smith is the executive editor and host of American RadioWorks®, the acclaimed national documentary series from American Public Media®. He has covered a wide range of international and domestic issues, including human rights, science and health, education, race relations, and American history. He is a co-editor (with Catherine Ellis) of Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches and Say It Loud: Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African American Identity and (with Mary Marshall Clark, Peter Bearman, and Catherine Ellis) of After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember September 2001 and the Years That Followed, all published by The New Press. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and Boston, Massachusetts.