Geared towards advanced upper elementary and middle school students, this book contains 10 famous speeches: Mary McLeod Bethune (What does American Democracy Mean to Me?)Fannie Lou Hamer (Democratic National Convention)Thurgood Marshall (The Equality Speech)Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Speech on Civil Rights)Mary Church Terrell (What It Means to Be Colored)Booker T. Washington (Democracy and Education)Sojourner Truth (Ain't I a Woman?)Malcolm X (The Ballot or the Bullet)Ida B. Wells (NAACP Speech Against Lynching)Frederick Douglas (Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage) Each speech is presented and is accompanied by questions that help students analyze the content as well as the message. This is an excellent material when used in a group setting providing ample opportunity for group and Socratic discussion. Note: Due to copyright laws each speech has been obtained from the original transcriptions. No edits have been performed and no efforts have been made to change any grammatical or orthographic elements.

"Say It Plain is a vivid, moving portrait of how black Americans have sounded the charge against injustice, exhorting the country to live up to its democratic principles. In "full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), this unique anthology collects the transcribed speeches of the twentieth century's leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures, many of them never before available in printed form. From an 1895 speech by Booker T. Washington to Julian Bond's harp 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. The paperback edition includes the text of each speech along with an introduction placing it in its historical context. Say It Plain is a remarkable historical record- from the back-to-Africa movement to the civil rights era and the rise of black nationalism and beyond-riveting in its power to convey the black freedom struggle."

75 Pages. Geared towards advanced upper elementary and middle school students, this book contains 10 famous speeches: Mary McLeod Bethune (What does American Democracy Mean to Me?); Fannie Lou Hamer (Democratic National Convention); Thurgood Marshall (The Equality Speech); Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Speech on Civil Rights); Mary Church Terrell (What It Means to Be Colored); Booker T. Washington (Democracy and Education); Sojourner Truth (Ain't I a Woman?); Malcolm X (The Ballot or the Bullet); Ida B. Wells (NAACP Speech Against Lynching); Frederick Douglas (Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage). Each speech is presented and is accompanied by questions that help students analyze the content as well as the message. This is an excellent material when used in a group setting providing ample opportunity for group discussion.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

The Atlanta Compromise was an address by African-American leader Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. Given to a predominantly White audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, the speech has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history. The compromise was announced at the Atlanta Exposition Speech. The primary architect of the compromise, on behalf of the African-Americans, was Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute. Supporters of Washington and the Atlanta compromise were termed the "Tuskegee Machine." The agreement was never written down. Essential elements of the agreement were that blacks would not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against racist behavior, they would tolerate segregation and discrimination, that they would receive free basic education, education would be limited to vocational or industrial training (for instance as teachers or nurses), liberal arts education would be prohibited (for instance, college education in the classics, humanities, art, or literature). After the turn of the 20th century, other black leaders, most notably W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter - (a group Du Bois would call The Talented Tenth), took issue with the compromise, instead believing that African-Americans should engage in a struggle for civil rights. W. E. B. Du Bois coined the term "Atlanta Compromise" to denote the agreement. The term "accommodationism" is also used to denote the essence of the Atlanta compromise. After Washington's death in 1915, supporters of the Atlanta compromise gradually shifted their support to civil rights activism, until the modern Civil rights movement commenced in the 1950s. Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 - November 14, 1915) was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community. Washington was of the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants, who were newly oppressed by disfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1895 his Atlanta compromise called for avoiding confrontation over segregation and instead putting more reliance on long-term educational and economic advancement in the black community.

An authoritative, impassioned celebration of Black English, how it works, and why it matters

African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives is an introduction to fundamental concepts and a systematic integration of historical and contemporary lines of inquiry in the study of African American rhetorics. Edited by Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson II, the volume explores culturally and discursively developed forms of knowledge, communicative practices, and persuasive strategies rooted in freedom struggles by people of African ancestry in America. Outlining African American rhetorics found in literature, historical documents, and popular culture, the collection provides scholars, students, and teachers with innovative approaches for discussing the epistemologies and realities that foster the inclusion of rhetorical discourse in African American studies. In addition to analyzing African American rhetoric, the fourteen contributors project visions for pedagogy in the field and address new areas and renewed avenues of research. The result is an exploration of what parameters can be used to begin a more thorough and useful consideration of African Americans in rhetorical space.