President Obama's Most Notable Speeches? Part 2, Charleston

Although it has been quite proper to discuss President Trump's speeches, I did promise a while back to write some more about President Obama's most notable speeches. On June 26, 2015, Obama eulogized Reverend Clementa Pinckney and the other victims of the massacre at Charleston, SC's Emanuel African Methodist Church. I have been fortunate enough to contribute a chapter about this speech to a forthcoming book edited by Sean Patrick O'Rourke and Melody Lehn, Was Blind but Now I See, which studies the rhetoric that surrounded the Charleston shooting.

Obama began the speech, which was, after all, a religious speech at a religious ceremony, with the phrase, "Giving all praise and honor to God." Although many recent presidents have been reluctant to talk in any depth about the Christian faith, Obama has often been willing to do so. His religious views, although consistent with the mainstream United Church of Christ (to which he belonged for many years), do differ from those that some conservative Protestants advocate. As a Wesleyan denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church has a long-standing commitment to tolerance, social action, and social justice. Accordingly, it is unlikely that they would share the negative attitudes toward Obama's religious beliefs that some of his more conservative Christian critics expressed. Obama neither argued with nor contradicted those who questioned his religion, he merely asserted his praise.

Obama's speech continued to discuss the church's importance in the African-American community:

Black churches served as “hush harbors” where slaves could worship in safety; praise houses where their free descendants could gather and shout hallelujah -- (applause) -- rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad; bunkers for the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement.  They have been, and continue to be, community centers where we organize for jobs and justice; places of scholarship and network; places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harm’s way, and told that they are beautiful and smart -- (applause) -- and taught that they matter. (WH Transcript)

Obama speaking in Charleston

In passages like this, Obama identified with the largely African-American audience, focusing on the religious tradition that he and they shared. He established his identification and unity with the audience. He drove that point home when he sang a verse from the old hymn "Amazing Grace" at the end of the speech. Knowing this famous song, his audience joined in the singing. Singing together is an act of unity in itself. By singing with the congregation, Obama conveyed that he did not attend as an outsider; he was actively joining in their worship service. Of course, this took much courage. Any beginning public speaking student will tell you that much courage is required simply to give a speech in front of a small group; for a non-musician to speak and sing on the world stage was something else entirely. Although it is fairly unusual for preachers or eulogists to break out into song in the churches that White Christians usually attend, singing in church is a long-standing practice in many African-American congregations.

The media described Obama's eulogy as "searing" and "Obama at his best." Kenneth Burke wrote that identification, not persuasion, as rhetoric's central term. Obama made little effort to persuade, but much effort to identify.


Here are my earlier comments about other Obama speeches.

Official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson, via Wikipedia