This comprehensive anthology will be the standard source for the
study of African American public address for years to come.

For Americans of the 19th century, as W. E. B. Du Bois observed, eloquent
speeches were 'the shining lights of civilization' that both expressed
and sought to improve the lives and communities from which they sprang.
Through political speeches, sermons, lectures, oral testimonies, and ceremonial
addresses, African Americans offered diverse responses to the issues and
events of their times, including not only slavery and racial equality but
also women's rights, education, religion, immigration, socialism, war,
Indian policy, and labor organization, among others. The speeches in this
collection are among the most powerful expressions of African American
opinions on these issues and were delivered on occasions and before audiences
where the speakers believed their words might be transformative.

Lift Every Voice is a completely revised, updated, and expanded
version of Philip Foner's 1972 classic Voice of Black America, which Library
Journal hailed as "indispensable.""This well-edited and
richly inclusive work," wrote Benjamin Quarles, "unveils the
full sweep of Black expression as found in platform addresses" by
"men and women who join eloquence with reason in articulating their
grievances and their aspirations and in arousing their listeners with their
ringing and prophetic challenges." This new collection includes over
60 additional texts and revised and expanded introductory essays that provide
historical, biographical, and critical information for each speech.

Containing more than 150 speeches, this anthology represents the most
extensive and diverse collection of African American oratory of the 18th
and 19th centuries ever published. Lift Every Voice makes readily
accessible not only the classic orations of such well-known figures
as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Booker T. Washington but also
dozens of lesser-known but important speeches deserving greater recognition
and study. Many of these speeches are previously unpublished, uncollected,
or long out of print.

Miracle of ’48: Harry Truman’s Major Campaign Speeches and Selected Whistle-stopsis the first published collection of the public addresses Harry Truman made as he crisscrossed the United States from New York City to Los Angeles to Independence, Missouri in 1948. Edited by veteran political journalist Steve Neal, and complemented by a foreword from presidential historian Robert V. Remini, this volume captures the infectious spirit and determination of Truman’s message to the American people.

In an era when policy issues were paramount and televised debates were a thing of the future, Truman boldly stated his case directly to the American people, and they responded. “Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make these Republicans like it,” he declared in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. “Don’t you forget that. We will do that because they are wrong and we are right.”

From the start of his “non-political” western tour in Crestline, Ohio, through his victory celebration in his hometown of Independence, the plainspoken Truman waged the good fight against all odds, never mixing his words or apologizing for his aggressively honest tactics. In blaming the GOP for a decline in farm prices, he alleged that the 80th Congress had “stuck a pitchfork in the farmer’s backs.” Truman is now regarded as among our greatest presidents and the populist message of his ’48 campaign is still as compelling and relevant today as it was over half a century ago.

“The political history of the United States reveals many unusual developments,” General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote Truman after the 1948 election, “but certainly at no point does it record a greater accomplishment than yours, that can be traced so clearly to the stark courage and fighting heart of one man.”

Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran bring together nine essays that explore change in both the theory and the practice of rhetoric in the nineteenth-century United States.

In their introductory essay, Clark and Halloran argue that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, rhetoric encompassed a neoclassical oratorical culture in which speakers articulated common values to establish consensual moral authority that directed community thought and action. As the century progressed, however, moral authority shifted from the civic realm to the professional, thus expanding participation in the community as it fragmented the community itself. Clark and Halloran argue that this shift was a transformation in which rhetoric was reconceived to meet changing cultural needs.

Part I examines the theories and practices of rhetoric that dominated at the beginning of the century. The essays in this section include "Edward Everett and Neoclassical Oratory in Genteel America" by Ronald F. Reid, "The Oratorical Poetic of Timothy Dwight" by Gregory Clark, "The Sermon as Public Discourse: Austin Phelps and the Conservative Homiletic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century America" by Russel Hirst, and "A Rhetoric of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America" by P. Joy Rouse.

Part 2 examines rhetorical changes in the culture that developed during that century. The essays include "The Popularization of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: Elocution and the Private Learner" by Nan Johnson, "Rhetorical Power in the Victorian Parlor: Godey’s Lady’s Book and the Gendering of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric" by Nicole Tonkovich, "Jane Addams and the Social Rhetoric of Democracy" by Catherine Peaden, "The Divergence of Purpose and Practice on the Chatauqua: Keith Vawter’s Self-Defense" by Frederick J.Antczak and Edith Siemers, and "The Rhetoric of Picturesque Scenery: A Nineteenth-Century Epideictic" by S. Michael Halloran.

Drawing upon nearly two hundred years of recorded African American oratory, The Will of a People: A Critical Anthology of Great African American Speeches,edited by Richard W. Leeman and Bernard K. Duffy, brings together in one unique volume some of this tradition’s most noteworthy speeches, each paired with an astute introduction designed to highlight its most significant elements.

Arranged chronologically, from Maria Miller Stewart’s 1832 speech “Why Sit Ye Here and Die?” to President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural address, these orations are tied to many of the key themes and events of American history, as well as the many issues and developments in American race relations. These themes, events, and issues include the changing roles of women, Native American relations, American “manifest destiny,” abolitionism, the industrial revolution, Jim Crow, lynching, World War I and American self-determination, the rise of the New Deal and government social programs, the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, the Vietnam War, Nixon and Watergate, gay and lesbian rights, immigration, and the rise of a mediated culture. Leeman and Duffy have carefully selected the most eloquent and relevant speeches by African Americans, including those by Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Booker T. Washington, Mary Church Terrell, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Barbara Jordan, Jesse Jackson, and Marian Wright Edelman, many of which have never received significant scholarly attention.

The Will of a People is the first book to pair the full texts of the most important African American orations with substantial introductory essays intended to guide the reader’s understanding of the speaker, the speech, its rhetorical interpretation, and the historical context in which it occurred. Broadly representative of the African American experience, as well as what it means to be American, this valuable collection will serve as an essential guide to the African American oratory tradition.