Public speech making has played a powerful role in the long struggle by African Americans for equal rights. This collection, for the ear and the eye, highlights speeches by an eclectic mix of black leaders. Their impassioned, eloquent words continue to affect the ideas of a nation and the direction of history.

Spanning the 20th century, this collection is a vivid account of how African Americans sounded the charge against racial injustice, exhorting the country to live up to its democratic principles.

Listen to Say it Plain

Booker T. Washington

A former slave and the most influential African American at the turn of the 20th century

Marcus Garvey

A Jamaican immigrant who urged black Americans to form their own nation in Africa

Mary McLeod Bethune

A prominent educator and leading civil rights figure in the New Deal era

Dick Gregory

A popular comedian and activist in the 1960s involved in the 1963 marches in Birmingham

Fannie Lou Hamer

Helped lead the fight for black voting rights in Mississippi

Stokely Carmichael

A young civil rights organizer who popularized the slogan, "Black Power"

Martin Luther King Jr.

The most prominent leader of the non-violent civil rights movement in the 20th century

Shirley Chisholm

The first African American woman to be elected to Congress

Barbara Jordan

U.S. Representative who made a historic speech during the 1974 Watergate hearings

Jesse Jackson

A civil rights leader, disciple of Martin Luther King, Jr., and two-time presidential candidate

Clarence Thomas

A Supreme Court Justice appointed by President George H. W. Bush

Barack Obama

President of the United States

Titled after the classic 1969 James Brown anthem, “Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud,” this anthology illuminates the ideas and debates pulsing through the black freedom struggle from the 1960s to the present. These arguments are suffused with basic questions about what it means to be black in America.

Listen to Say it Loud

Malcolm X

Preaching pride and black nationalism

Bob Moses

An organizer from the North in deepest Mississippi

Lorraine Hansberry

Celebrated playwright and activist

Bayard Rustin

An invisible man of the civil rights movement

Shirley Chisholm

“Unbought and unbossed” in Congress

Stokely Carmichael

Promoted black power and pan-Africanism

Angela Davis

Radical critic of the U.S. criminal justice system

Vernon Jordan, Jr.

Promoter of black economic advancement

Dorothy Height

Powerful advocate for equal rights

William Julius Wilson

Looking deep for the causes of poverty

Mary Frances Berry

“Colorblind” society is a faulty vision

Ward Connerly

Leading foe of affirmative action

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Eminent scholar and public intellectual

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A Note About Transcripts:

The transcripts were drawn from audio and video recordings. In some cases, we were able to start with existing transcripts in the public domain and check them against recordings. At other times, we produced the transcripts ourselves, with the help of dedicated colleagues. Each transcript here has been checked against the recordings by at least two sets of ears. Occasionally, words in some of the recordings are hard to hear. We've used our best judgment to make the most faithful transcripts we can.

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