<em>Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence</em>
Social Movements
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King delivered his first major public statement against the Vietnam War, entitled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." Addressing a crowd of 3,000 at Riverside Church in New York City, King condemned the war as anti-democratic, impractical, and unjust. He described the daily suffering of Vietnamese peasants caught in the crossfire, as well as the human and economic burdens being placed on America's poor. Not only were lower-class Americans more likely to fight in Vietnam, but Johnson's domestic "War on Poverty" designed to help poor families was being derailed by U.S. foreign policy. King called for an immediate end to the bombing and a negotiated peace settlement with Vietnam. Although some activists supported King's opposition to the war, many were concerned that the speech would be perceived as unpatriotic and hinder the civil rights struggle by connecting it to the more radical peace movement.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence," 4 April 1967, Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., available from American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1967
English
Speech
Postwar America (1946-1975)
President Roosevelt Defines Freedom at Home and Abroad
In his 1941 State of the Union address to Congress, excerpted below, President Franklin Roosevelt outlines his plan for how the United States will combat worldwide threats to democracy. Known as the "Four Freedoms" speech, this strong plea for national and personal sacrifice in the face of war defines several aspects of democracy that are "worth fighting for."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Annual Address to Congress," Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum<em> Our Documents: Four Freedoms</em>, http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/od4freed.html
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1941
English
Speech
Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)
Crazy Horse Speaks from His Deathbed
Crazy Horse, or Tashunka-uitco, led the Lakota resistance to the U.S. Army and the forced movement of his people onto reservations in the 1860s and 1870s. He helped lead a victorious coalition of Native Americans against Custer's soldiers at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 and held out against U.S. troops until 1877. After surrendering, he moved to the Red Cloud Agency, a reservation in Nebraska. There he was arrested for attempting to leave in order to visit his sick wife; while he was still in custody, Crazy Horse was murdered by military guards.
Crazy Horse
Homer W. Wheeler, <em>Buffalo Days</em> (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1905), 199-200; from <em>Great Speeches by Native Americans</em>, ed. Bob Blaisdell (New York: Dover, 2000) 147.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1877
English
Speech
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
John Lewis Tells America to "Wake Up"
Civil Rights and Citizenship
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 Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, objected to his strong rhetoric and criticisms of the federal government. The speech that Lewis delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 was a toned-down version that he agreed to only after aging civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph personally appealed to him not to endanger the success of such a historic event.
John Lewis
In John Lewis and Michael D'Orson, <em>Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement</em> (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1999), 216-23, 225-28.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1963
1555
English
Speech
Postwar America (1946-1975)
President Johnson Ushers in a New Era in U.S. Immigration Policy
Immigration and Migration
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 to applicants from Northern European countries. In a speech marking the occasion, Johnson outlined the reasoning behind the new legislation, claiming that the new law was a better reflection of American ideals. The old system, Johnson maintained, "violated the basic principle of American democracy" by allowing only three European countries to supply 70 percent of all immigrants. Over 28 million people have legally immigrated to the United States since 1965, many from Latin America and Asia.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson, "Remarks on Signing the Immigration Bill, Liberty Island, New York, October 3, 1965," from The Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/651003.asp
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1965
English
Speech
Postwar America (1946-1975)
A Congressman Denounces Immigration Quotas as "Un-American"
Immigration and Migration
Restrictions on immigration, largely aimed at would-be migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, gained considerable popular support during the 1920s. Anti-immigrant sentiment culminated in the Quota Act of 1921, which effectively reduced immigration from those areas to a quarter of pre-World War I levels, and in the even more restrictive Immigration Act of 1924. Although the later bill passed the Senate with only six dissenting votes, not everyone was persuaded. Robert H. Clancy, a congressman from Detroit, defended the Jewish, Italian, and Polish immigrants that comprised much of his constituency and denounced the quota provisions of the bill as "un-American." In a speech before Congress on April 8, 1924, Clancy traces the history of anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and reminds his fellow congressmen that all Americans are of foreign origin.
Robert H. Clancy
Speech by Robert H. Clancy, 8 April 1924, <em>Congressional Record, </em>68th Congress, 1st Session (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1924), vol. 65, 59295932.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1924
1862, 1865
English
Speech
Modern America (1914-1929)
A Labor Leader Rails Against Chinese Immigration (1878)
Immigration and Migration
Labor Activism
Race and Ethnicity
In this "Workingmen's Address," published in 1878, Dennis Kearney of the Workingman's Party of California appealed to racist arguments against Chinese immigrants. After excoriating the fraud, corruption, and monopolization of land by the "moneyed men" of the Gilded Age, Kearney claimed that Chinese people were being "imported" as a source cheap labor, thus depriving "native-born" workers of jobs. He referred to the unfamiliar dress, eating habits, and living arrangements of Chinese people as evidence that they were little more than "cheap working slaves" whose impact was to "further widen the breach between rich and poor, and still further degrade white labor." "California must be all American or all Chinese," Kearney asserted in conclusion. Such sentiments led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882, which effectively ended emigration from China until well into the twentieth century.
Dennis Kearney
Dennis Kearney, President, and H. L. Knight, Secretary, "Appeal from California. The Chinese Invasion. Workingmen's Address," Indianapolis <em>Times</em>, 28 February 1878.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1878
English
Speech
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
"The Black Child's Pledge"
Race and Ethnicity
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (as it was originally called) was founded in Oakland by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. The group's focus on "armed defense" often overshadowed their community activities, which included a free-breakfast program for children. This "Black Child's Pledge," composed by Shirley Williams and published in <em>The Black Panther</em> newsletter in 1968, highlights the Panthers' militancy and black-nationalist outlook, but also emphasizes the importance of education, physical fitness, abstinence from drugs, and the values of cooperation and community solidarity for black children.
Shirley Williams
Shirley Williams, "Black Child's Pledge," <em>The Black Panther</em>, 26 October 1968; Deborah Menkat, Alana D. Murray, Jenice L. View, eds., <em>Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching</em> (Teaching for Change & PRRAC, 2004).
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1968
English
Speech
Postwar America (1946-1975)
The Secretary of Commerce Urges Peaceful Coexistence With Russia
Henry A. Wallace, Franklin D. Roosevelt's vice president and Secretary of Commerce under Harry Truman, delivered this speech to a gathering of leftist and liberal groups in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1946. In it, he urges taking a more conciliatory approach in America's foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. In contrast to Truman's increasingly "get-tough" rhetoric, Wallace insists that peaceful coexistence represents the best policy in an era of atomic warfare. Truman, however, viewed the speech as undermining his foreign policy, and asked for Wallace's resignation a week later.
Henry A. Wallace
In James Roark, et. al., <em>The American Promise</em>, third edition (New York: Bedford/St.Martin's, 2005), 957-958.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1946
English
Speech
Postwar America (1946-1975)
President Truman Announces a New Foreign Policy
President Harry S. Truman proclaimed the Truman Doctrine in a speech addressed to Congress on March 12, 1947. In addition to drawing a stark contrast between the two different "ways of life" represented by the United States and the Soviet Union, the speech marked a shift in American foreign policy toward a policy of "containment" of Soviet expansion. Truman pledged assistance to Greece and Turkey, then threatened by aggressive Soviet expansion in the region and by their own Communist movements, in the form of military and economic aid. The Doctrine would come to be seen, along with the Marshall Plan, as one of the "founding documents" of the Cold War, and would continue to provide the rationale for American foreign intervention in the years to come.
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman, "Address of the President to Congress, Recommending Assistance to Greece and Turkey," 12 Mach 1947, Harry S. Truman, Elsey Papers, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/doctrine/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1947-03-12&documentid=5-9&pagenumber=1.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1947
English
Speech
Postwar America (1946-1975)