Strong Voices is a children’s book that collects fifteen excellent American speeches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is important to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. From the Twin Falls Public Library I got a 2020 128-page children’s book with introductions by Tonya Bolden titled Strong Voices: Fifteen American Speeches Worth Knowing. The full text for each speech in this anthology is preceded by a brief biography of the speaker. Those speeches are:

 

Patrick Henry ‘Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.’ One version of his text.

 

George Washington ‘Farewell Address.’ Excerpts and text.

 

Red Jacket ‘We Never Quarrel About Religion.’ Text.

 

Sojourner Truth “I Am a Woman’s Rights.’ Text.

 

Abraham Lincoln ‘Gettysburg Address.’ Texts.

 

Theodore Roosevelt ‘Citizenship in a Republic.’ Text.

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt ‘The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself.’ Text.

 

Lou Gehrig ‘Farewell to Baseball.’ Text and video.

 

Langston Hughes ‘On the Blacklist All Our Lives.’ Audio.

 

John Fitzgerald Kennedy ‘We Choose to Go to the Moon.’ Text.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. ‘I Have a Dream.’ Excerpts.

 

Fannie Lou Hamer ‘I Question America.’ Transcript.

 

Cesar Chavez ‘Address to the Commonwealth Club of California, 1984.’ Text and audio.

 

Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.’ Abridged text.

 

The Duke Cigarettes lithograph of Patrick Henry came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

A collection from 1942 of The World’s Great Speeches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes we just run out of speech ideas, or suffer from writer’s block. At that point, we might want to get inspired by looking through a large collection of speeches. At the Internet Archive there is a pdf of a 748-page book titled The World’s Great Speeches, edited by Lewis Copeland. Contents are:

 

Part I: GREAT SPEECHES OF EARLIER TIMES

I.     Greece and Rome 

II.    The European Continent

III.   Great Britain and Ireland 

IV.   The United States 

V.    Canada 

VI.   South America, South Africa, India, and China 

 

Part II: GREAT SPEECHES OF OUR TIMES

VII.  American Industry and Government 

VIII. International Affairs 

IX.   The Second World War 

X.    National Defense

 

Part III: INFORMAL SPEECHES

XI.   Informal Speeches

 

Part IV: THE UNITED STATES AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR

XII.  The United States and the Second World War 12

 

TOPICAL INDEX

 

INDEX BY NATIONS

 

INDEX OF SPEAKERS

 

I created a cover using an image of fireworks modified from one at OpenClipArt.