Catherine Ellis (1)

Say It Plain: a Century of Great African American Speeches is a collection of landmark oratory spoken by black Americans whose goal was to urge America to live up to its promise of democratic justice. Although this anthology includes some of our nation’s most powerful, influential speeches, addresses, and legal arguments of the past sixty years, the chronological arrangement begins with Booker T. Washington’s speech to the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition delivered in show more 1895. Washington’s speech is immediately followed by a 1921 speech given by Marcus Garvey. The adjacent positioning of Garvey’s speech to Washington’s serves to compare Washington and Garvey’s shared view that the road to opportunity lies in effective use of American capitalism and to contrast Washington’s acceptance of slow progress to Garvey’s aggressive, demanding style. The collection moves on through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century with the words of familiar leaders, but with some of their lesser known speeches and addresses, many here transcribed into print for the first time. Each selection is preceded by a short, informational introduction which serves as a history lesson or review depending on the reader’s personal knowledge and experience.

But Say It Plain is so much more than just another book of speeches by African American cultural and spiritual leaders and political figures. Indeed, Say It Plain is a book intended to be heard rather than read. The print form of the book accompanies two CDs which are actual, live recordings of the speechwriter’s original delivery, not actors’ voices or mere readings of the prepared text. The listener hears passion in the voices as the speakers sometimes stray from or augment the original versions.

Collecting recordings for this project was a difficult endeavor for the editors. Obviously recording equipment was in its infancy in the late 19th century as the scratchy sound of Booker T. Washington’s 1895 speech reminds us. Hearing this particular recording has launched this reviewer into another world of personal research on the history of recording technology. Although the search for recordings took the editors to libraries with vast African American collections such as the J. Fred MacDonald collection in the Chicago Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University, some preserved recordings are in archives that are not readily accessible to the public. Some copyrights are owned by rich, private networks with permission fees too high for the budget of the project. And some family heirs holding copyrights to speeches simply denied requests to have their ancestors’ words included in the work.

Nevertheless, Say It Plain is an inspirational audio documentary of early American speeches not previously covered in other works. Say It Plain gives new life to some of history’s most powerful speeches for both young ears and old ears with no prior opportunity to hear the message the first time.

O, yes, I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath-

America will be!

Langston Hughes

reviewed by Jen show less