John Lewis, the 23-year-old chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) drafted the speech excerpted below for the 1963 March on Washington. When copies of the speech were circulated in advance, march organizers, as well as…

Malcolm X delivered this speech, titled "Prospects for Freedom in 1965," to an Organization for Afro American Unity (OAAU) rally at the Militant Labor Forum in New York City on January 7, 1965. A month later he was assassinated. Inspired by the…

Native American warriors in the 19th century resisted the various people and institutions that threatened their way of life on the Great Plains. In these speeches to federal agents during the Indian Wars of the 1860s, Indigenous leaders attempt to…

The Dawes Act of 1887 sought to assimilate Native Americans by, among other things, transforming their traditional uses and attitudes about land and land ownership to more mainstream American values of private ownership and settled farming. Some…

President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave this speech in Philadelphia at the Democratic National Convention in 1936, at which he was nominated for a second term. In it, he explained why New Deal reforms and spending programs were necessary. Roosevelt…

President Johnson, in this speech delivered at Johns Hopkins University on April 7, 1965, lists the reasons for escalating the United State's involvement in Vietnam. Having secured Congressional authorization with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Johnson…

In 1965 the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, were signed by President Johnson, ending the quota system which had guided U.S. immigration policy since the 1920s and which had given overwhelming preference…

Kennedy had first spoken of an "Alliance for Progress" between the United States and Latin America in his inaugural address. Citing a shared heritage, Kennedy outlined his vision for a "large-scale Inter-American effort... to attack the social…

Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President during a time of national crisis. His election had prompted the secession of South Carolina and six other states, and Federal troops were surrounded at Fort Sumter. In his inaugural address, Lincoln sought to…

On June 27, 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt accepted the Democratic party's nomination to run for a second term as President of the U.S. In this excerpt from his speech to the Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt compares the struggle to gain…