Ben Tillman's Speech Supporting Autocratic Rule

Senator Ben Tillman

Autocrats must be brazen and overconfident. Even the wickedest autocrat must inspire dedicated supporters, and that requires them to convert voters into true believers. Tyrants must state a value system, no matter how corrupt that value system might be, explain policies to achieve their vile goals, and muster funding and acceptance. Autocrats of today – autocrats of the past – are all the same. At some point, they must show their motives. Thus, speaking to the United States Senate on March 23, 1900, South Carolina’s Benjamin Tillman said that the victims, not the perpetrators, created South Carolina’s voting rights riots. He never pretended to support the rights of nonwhite voters:

“It was the riots before the election, precipitated by their own hotheadedness in attempting to hold the government, that brought on conflicts between the races and caused the shotgun to be used.”

“Shotgun?” “Hotheadedness?” Wanting to exercise voting rights was hotheaded? What shameless word choices!

Shameless or not, the fight for white supremacy in the post-Civil War United States impelled white conservatives in the South to evade the 15th Amendment of the United States Constitution, suppress the African American vote, and establish a police state to maintain their rule. Such a massive project might or might not start with some kind of conspiracy, but its execution required public persuasion. Yes, Tillman’s views were autocratic, but he felt a need to justify his values. So, as his speech continued, Tillman denied that African Americans received the ballot after the Civil War “to protect themselves against the indignities and wrongs,” but only because radical members of Congress wanted to oppress white people. Indeed, Tillman literally insisted that African Americans, who would suffer the indignities of chattel slavery and the Ku Klux Klan, were the autocrats, while their shotgun-wielding white overlords were victims:

“I say that [the Negroes were given the ballot] because the Republicans of that day, led by Thad Stevens, wanted to put white necks under black heels and to get revenge.” [brackets added by historical editor]

So, to Tillman, putting “white necks under black heels” counted as oppression, while having black necks under white heels, seemed okay, I guess, and the idea that everybody should have equal rights evidently escaped Tillman entirely. White supremacy was his value system. Us versus them. White versus black. With that clarified, Tillman laid out the mathematical fact that letting African Americans vote would surely put them in power:

“In my State, there were 135,000 Negro voters, or Negroes of voting age, and some 90,000 or 95,000 white voters. General Canby set up a carpetbag government there and turned our State over to this majority. Now, I want to ask you, with a free vote and a fair count, how are you going to beat 135,000 to 95,000? How are you going to do it? You had set us an impossible task.”

Tillman’s twisted value system assumed, as if no argument could arise against it, that white rule was the only possible rule. Tillman rejected “a free vote and a fair count” because it contradicted his morally bent value system. Indeed, Tillman protested that the Radical Republicans, as they were called, had offered white people no choice:

“You had handcuffed us [and] thrown away the key, and you propped your carpet bag Negro government with bayonets. Whenever it was necessary to sustain the government, you held it up by the Army.”

Fannie Lou Hamer, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired," Gave a Voting Rights Speech in Narrative Style

Susan B. Anthony's Speech about the Right to Vote

 Although the 15th Amendment made it illegal to deny the right to vote on account of race, creed, or color, the former Confederate states and some Northern states accomplished the same purpose with subterfuges: unfair literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and off-the-books intimidation. There were always excuses, since it seemed reasonable to expect voters to be informed. These discriminatory practices continued well into the 1960s, and, as a Southerner myself, I can testify that they have, even to this day, not totally died. In fact, just now, there is talk of sending the National Guard to key voting sites, presumably to intimidate Latina/Latino voters.

The post-Civil War constitutional amendments – the 13th Amendment that freed the slaves, the 14th Amendment that provided for equal rights, and the 15th Amendment that guaranteed the right to vote, never sat well with conservatives. Anyone who follows the news, even today, can see that the 14th and 15th Amendments continued to anger American conservatives. The so-called SAVE Act currently under debate, which is based on the false premise that illegal immigrants are voting in large numbers, follows that path. Conservatives today, disturbed that women and racial minorities don’t always vote for them, invent seemingly reasonable requirements (voter ID, but with the ID requirements made absurdly bureaucratic, restricting mail voting, and so forth) when their obvious purpose is to tilt election outcomes. Although less intense than Tillman's shotgun, such moves surely remind us of the old Jim Crow literacy tests, which sounded so reasonable, but whose purpose was to oppress.

Thus, Benjamin Tillman delivered a clear, specific speech. With no hint of conscience, he insisted that voter suppression was the only way to obtain white supremacy in the South. That is, obviously, almost as true today as it was then.

Ben Tillman Cartoon, Chicago Tribune

Do Tillman’s arguments stun the reader? Why? They should surprise no one. Tillman’s position prevailed throughout large parts of the United States for decades. In his effort to obtain support and justify his arguments, Tillman revealed Southern conservatives’ true motives. It is not as if those motives were ever well hidden, but at some point, the autocrat needs clarity. The autocrat’s followers need to know what their policies are, why they are felt to be necessary, and how they should be executed. Thus, Tillman chose to be explicit.

I am not saying that politicians never conspire in secret. After all, who knows? Nevertheless, a secret conspiracy can never garner public support. Thus, evil voices face a dilemma. Yes, they need to gather support, and that requires them to state their ideas. Yet, however, once they have posted their ideas, good people can (usually slowly, excruciatingly slowly) spot the danger and work against it.

Tillman protested that racial equality could only be upheld by “the bayonet.” In the year 2026, have the past’s civil rights accomplishments made us complacent? Do we not need to remember the struggle for freedom, year after year, century after century, against the forces of oppression that still wield power and threaten at any moment to replay the old tragedies?

The so-called Radical Republicans of post-Civil War America voted for the absolute abolition of slavery, equal protection of the law, birthright citizenship, voting rights, and employment opportunities. These basic rights, which we too often take for granted, were adopted only because former Confederate soldiers were denied the right to vote until they petitioned to be reinstated. An odd voting paradox, is it not? Odder yet, to my way of thinking, is the way the Republican Party of 2026 now stands foursquarely against the rights that their forbears provided us. Yes, the Radical Republicans were indeed considered radical. Their ideas still sound radical today, to the extent that President Donald Trump constantly rails against “radical left lunatics) whose ideas still resemble those of the old Radical Republicans. Let us not fool ourselves, for freedom and liberty have long been radical concepts.

Yes, Benjamin Tillman laid out a rhetorical path that still infests the political scene. He stated his motive, which was to preserve white rule. He stated his method, which was to suppress African American voters. He placed blame on the oppressed and their defenders, while picturing himself as the morally outraged victim. He flat-out admitted that democracy could not preserve white rule in the South. Tillman’s ruthless and bold rhetoric not only expressed his strategy, but gave it a philosophical justification. Tillman’s critics could call him crazy or evil. Did he care? Why should he? Autocrats seek power, not justice; obedience, not admiration. 

By William D. Harpine

Copyright 2026 by William D. Harpine

Portrait of Ben Tillman, G. V. Buck, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ben Tillman Cartoon, 1906 Chicago Tribune, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Stokely Carmichael in 1966: Civil Rights Laws Enforce Rights that Already Exist

“It is ironic to talk about civilization in this country. This country is uncivilized. It needs to be civilized. It needs to be civilized.”

So said the always-shocking civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), speaking at the University of California Berkeley on October 29, 1966. That was about two years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was at that time only sporadically enforced. Carmichael, a former Freedom Rider and the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, wanted his audience to look in a mirror and see the opposite side of their well-meaning but self-centered viewpoint.

Carmichael reidentified the civil rights problem. That is, he refocused his audience’s attention. The larger question that Carmichael implied (but never fully answered) was, can the United States reform racist practices? Those practices might have included Jim Crow, Voting rights? Lynching? Housing discrimination. He left the answer to history. Indeed, he left the question to history.

One of the civil rights movement’s more polarizing figures, Carmichael was, like Martin Luther King, Jr., shadowed by the FBI as a potential subversive. Although he shared King’s nonviolent approach, his speeches carried a bit of sting. 

_______________

"The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Churches and the Struggle for Justice

_______________

How did Carmichael argue for his point? All arguments start with premises. Here are two possible premises about the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. At the most, only one can be true.

Premise #1: The regular idea, right out of the history books, says that civil rights laws gave rights to minority people.

Premise #2: Carmichael instead insisted that everyone already has rights, while civil rights laws merely help white racists control their behavior.

If, like many of us today in 2024, we think the problem is Premise #1, we still put white people in charge. Only if we see Premise #2 do we understand universal civil rights. Do we believe in #1? Or #2? Not an easy question! If it is #1, the majority generously (or grudgingly) shares its rights. Suppose, however, that we agree with the United States of America’s Founders that rights are universal, given by God: “endowed by their Creator,” as the Declaration of Independence says, “with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That would be Premise #2. Right?

Conventional Analysis:

In other words, Carmichael reversed our conventional vision. The conventional view says that civil rights laws opened doors that had blocked minority individuals from making economic, political, and social progress. As the History Channel explains:

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.”

Lyndon Johnson Signs Civil Rights Act of 1964

See the point? In this dramatic photo, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with an almost entirely white entourage. Now, by the conventional analysis, civil rights laws expanded human rights, protecting minority groups from oppression. “Ended segregation,” it says, and “banned employment discrimination.” We often think of civil rights legislation as a case of the majority voters, who were, in the mid-1960’s, mostly white, generously turning loose of their control and granting voting rights and other rights to African Americans and other minority groups. 

Carmichael, however, utterly denied that analysis. He said that those rights already existed.


Carmichael’s Analysis

Looking at the mirror image of civil rights, Carmichael’s point was that Black people—all people, actually—already have rights. After reviewing a vast intellectual tradition, including the founders of the American Republic and existentialist philosophers, Carmichael insisted that we all have rights by virtue of being human. We don’t, Carmichael insisted, have rights just because someone passed a law granting us rights that otherwise would escape us. That, he said, was a contradiction:

“The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself.”

Carmichael said no. Carmichael said that it makes no sense to think that a white racist society could pass laws condemning its own nature. Instead, he explained that society would never, could never, condemn itself.

A Horrifying Example

To illustrate that point, Carmichael gave a stark example from 1964’s infamous “Mississippi burning” case. In that horror (two short years before Carmichael’s speech), vigilantes, with unofficial support from the Neshoba County, Mississippi government, had murdered three civil rights workers. Carmichael showed that the people who elected a racist sheriff would never condemn that same sheriff for doing the evil things that they elected him to do:

“On a more immediate scene, the officials and the population—the white population—in Neshoba County, Mississippi—that’s where Philadelphia is—could not—could not condemn [Sheriff] Rainey, his deputies, and the other fourteen men that killed three human beings. They could not because they elected Mr. Rainey to do precisely what he did; and that for them to condemn him will be for them to condemn themselves.”

And Carmichael had a point! After the Mississippi trial, the judge gave the killers light sentences, commenting that “They killed one n*****, one Jew, and a white man. I gave them what I thought they deserved.”

In that example, racism vanquished justice, and the judge made a ruling that fit his racist beliefs.


Carmichael Sided with Thomas Jefferson!

That is why Carmichael said the nation was “uncivilized.” His harsh idea was not new. Thomas Jefferson, his words now engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, stated:

“Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

Likewise, said Carmichael, it was white people who needed a civil rights law, precisely to restrain racist behavior:

“You need a civil rights bill, not me. I know I can live where I want to live.” [italics added]

Sometimes, an exceptional speaker like Carmichael, like Jefferson, turns a controversial issue around, showing us a new light, giving us a new way to think.

Black people, Carmichael insisted, already understood the issue:

“I knew that I could vote and that that wasn’t a privilege; it was my right. Every time I tried, I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill for white people to tell them, ‘When a Black man comes to vote, don’t bother him.’ That bill, again, was for white people, not for Black people; so that when you talk about open occupancy, I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live.”

Yet, Carmichael pointed out the contradiction: civil rights laws, passed by a white majority, could never condemn the people who wrote and passed them. So, could civil rights laws, in any important sense, undo racism’s basic wickedness? Or is it Carmichael, who, wrapped up in his existentialist pessimism, could not see the nation make progress? As we work through the year 2024, those vital questions remain on the books. 


Don’t Civil Rights Already Exist?

So, didn’t that Mississippi burning judge miss the point? For, if Carmichael was right, if the Declaration of Independence is correct, if the 14th Amendment is still valid, Black people already had rights. This led Carmichael to call civil rights legislation incoherent to the core. For, he insisted, American society could never turn against itself:

“So that the failures to pass a civil rights bill isn’t because of Black Power, isn’t because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; it’s not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the major cities. It is incapability of whites to deal with their own problems inside their own communities. That is the problem of the failure of the civil rights bill.”

Was Carmichael’s attitude cynical to the extreme? Obviously yes. But the real question is, do we in 2024 have a better attitude? Is there a way to move forward toward the United States of America’s ideals of freedom without ripping down the entire system, as Carmichael threatened to do? I certainly hope so, but Carmichael’s challenge has not been answered, not conclusively, even today, has it?


Do We Still Ask the Same Questions?

Is Premise #1 true? Or is it Premise #2? For it cannot be both. Do we agree with Premise #1, smugly saying that freedom is a gift, generously bestowed by the laws that benevolent rulers adopt? Or do we side with Premise #2, that we all have rights? That is the challenge that Stokely Carmichael offered in this dramatic speech.

And that, I suppose, is why Carmichael concluded his speech with two opposing prongs. He offered a prong of hope:

“We are tired of trying to explain to white people that we’re not going to hurt them.”

Then, he ended with a prong of threat:

“Will white people overcome their racism and allow for that to happen in this country? If that does not happen, brothers and sisters, we have no choice but to say very clearly, ‘Move over, or we’re going to move on over you.’”

So many speakers over the centuries offer simple, glib solutions to overwhelming problems. Can simple, glib solutions solve our civil rights problems? Given the Donald Trump revolution, I have my doubts. The Republican Party’s ongoing battle against what they call “woke” policies and diversity initiatives suggests ongoing negative attitudes. The Trump-era brings back the question of whether nonwhite people have rights, too.

The key problem is that, if we govern by Premise #1, the country can take away people’s rights as easily as it grants them. Is there a solution? Voters elected Donald Trump in 2016 and might elect him again in 2024. Will Trump’s voters condemn themselves for Trump’s actions? Carmichael would say that it would be impossible for Trump’s voters to condemn him, for they would have to condemn themselves.

Carmichael’s speech didn’t offer solutions. Instead, he stated stark problems in stark terms. He asked people to think. He challenged his audience. The answers to his challenge are the answers to the United States’ future.

By William D. Harpine

________________  

Earlier Civil Rights Posts:

Malcolm X at the University of California: Striking at America's Myths

James Baldwin's 1963 Speech Ripped Away Two American Myths

Fannie Lou Hamer, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired," Gave a Voting Rights Speech in Narrative Style

Copyright © 2024, William D. Harpine

Image: Cecil Stoughton, White House Press Office, public domain

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Mountains

Metaphors push people to see hidden insights, to uncover difficult truths, to investigate our own minds. As people, we can move away from old mountains and build mountains. People face challenges and sometimes abandon traditional evils. Speaking at Temple Israel Hollywood, a Reform Jewish synagogue, on February 26, 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about the mountains we all face. In this sermon, King’s metaphor of mountains told us about challenges that the world faces, obstacles that humanity needs to overcome, magnificent goals to seek, and triumphs to achieve, as, King explained, people work toward a biblical Promised Land of love and justice. This magnificent speech presaged 1968’s triumphant culmination, “I Have Been to the Mountain Top.” 

____________

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Mountaintop in Memphis, Tennessee: A Speech for the Ages

____________

Mount Sinai

A skilled rhetorician, King used the mountain metaphor to make one point after another. He posed moral challenges that still confront us, as too many Americans seek to turn back to the old mountains of oppression and indignity.

King’s thesis connected his powerful metaphor to the scriptural story of Israel escaping from Egypt, a story that reminded the congregation of their shared history of human bondage:

“Tonight I would like to have you think with me from the subject, Keep Moving from this Mountain. I would like to take your minds back many, many centuries into a familiar experience so significantly recorded in the sacred Scriptures. The Children of Israel had been reduced into the bondage of physical slavery.”

Let us look at all the twists King gave to the mountain metaphor.

First, mountains pose terrible obstacles, which must be faced and overcome. As they fled slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel, King said they:

“… had to realize that before they could get to the Promised Land, they had to face gigantic mountains and prodigious hilltops.”

This challenge divided the people into three camps. The first two groups feared the challenges:

“One group said in substance that ‘We would rather go back to Egypt.’ They preferred the flesh pots of Egypt to the challenges of the Promised Land. A second group that abhorred the idea of going back to Egypt, and yet they abhorred the idea of facing the difficulties of moving ahead to the Promised Land and they somehow wanted to remain stationary and choose the line of least resistance.”

The third group, however, after the Promised Land was spied out, decided, according to King, that the land would be a difficult goal to reach, but they could achieve it all the same:

“There was a third group…who admitted that there were giants in the land but who said, ‘We can possess the land.’”

That last group saw the challenges, but determined to overcome them:

“This group said in substance that ‘We will go on in spite of...,’ that ‘We will not allow anything to stop us,’ that ‘We will move on amid the difficulties, amid the trials, amid the tribulations.’”

By now, King was not just talking about physical mountains, but about dangers and conflicts that awaited the people. The metaphor had grown.

Second, King explained that people sometimes must stop climbing one mountain and turn to another:

“The first chapter of the book of Deuteronomy said, ‘Ye have been in this mountain long enough. Turn you and take your journey and go to the mount of the Amorites.’”

In King’s interpretation, God always wants us to look ahead, not behind. This means to face new and different mountains:

“Whenever God speaks, he says, ‘Move on from mountains of stagnant complacency and deadening pacifity.’ So this is the great challenge that always stands before men.”

Third, advancing on the Hebrew scriptures, King talked about mountains that America faced in his own time:

“Tonight, I would like to suggest some of the symbolic mountains that we have occupied long enough and that we must leave if we are to move on to the promised land of justice, peace, and brotherhood.”

Toward that end, King said that, instead of pursuing crass materialism and greed, we must aim at spiritual goals:

“We must move on to that mountain which says in substance, ‘What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world of means -- airplanes, televisions, electric lights -- and lose the end: the soul?’”

Moving toward the mountain that leads us to our souls? That might be the steepest of all climbs. We must, he said, move away from the “mountain of racial injustice:”

“Now the other mountain that we’ve occupied long enough, and certainly it is quite relevant to discuss this at this time when we think of brotherhood -- we’ve been in the mountain of racial injustice long enough. And now it is time for us to move on to that great and noble realm of justice and brotherhood.”

King then spun the globe to discuss world-wide injustice. He found yet another mountain that faced the world: “the mountain of indifference:

“And we’ve been in the mountain of indifference too long and ultimately we must be concerned about the least of these; we must be concerned about the poverty-stricken because our destinies are tied together.”

Nearing his sermon’s end, King said that we must leave “the mountain of violence and hatred.” He said that “violence is both impractical and immoral.” Indeed, he warned, “We’ve been in the mountain of violence and hatred too long.”

Returning to scriptural themes, King concluded by quoting the prophet Isaiah. The prophet said that every mountain must be leveled, and every plain must be raised. Metaphorically, everything evil that society praises must be laid down, and justice must rise, and only then will be see God’s glory:

“Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain and the crooked places straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

King’s metaphors pushed his audience to face deep, even frightening, moral challenges. He spoke of how people move away from old mountains; people build mountains; people face challenges, and, most important, how people can abandon traditional evils. In this speech, King challenged the world’s moral foundation (or lack thereof). Such powerful truths. Truths that emerged from the metaphor of mountains. Is it any wonder that so many people hated and feared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? For truth is the most terrifying threat of all.

Quotations from this speech are from AmericanRhetoric.com, an outstanding website established by my  former classmate, the late Martin J. Medhurst. Marty was one of the top scholars in the history of United States public speaking, and his remarkable contributions are deeply missed. 

____________

Earlier Posts about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Rhetoric 

Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:" The Civil Rights Movement’s Philosophical Foundation

Did Donald Trump Turn Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into a Conformist Right-Wing Fanatic? I Don’t Think So, but He Tried. Let’s Look at the Mount Rushmore Speech

"The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:" Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech about Church and the Struggle for Justice

For a complete list, enter "Martin Luther King" in the search box on the right. 

By William D. Harpine

Copyright © William D. Harpine

Image: photo by Mohammed Moussa, Creative Commons license, not edited 

How Did "I Have a Dream" Matter to My Neighbors in 1963?

Lincoln Memorial

On this date in history, August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his immortal speech, “I Have a Dream,” from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. So many people have written and said so many things about this great speech. The speech was not really about a dream. King’s powerful images shook people’s hearts, but metaphors were not his point. His point was freedom. Let me back up and tell a story.

On August 29, 1963, the morning after the speech, I was an 11 (almost 12) year old boy waiting for the school bus on the corner a half-block from my house. The Lincoln Memorial was less than 20 miles from my parents’ almost new split-level. I was excited to start seventh grade at Sidney Lanier Intermediate. My biggest fear was to wonder how I would navigate the seemingly huge school.

The neighborhood was buzzing with commentary, not only about King’s speech, which disturbed and frightened almost everyone I knew, but also the massive demonstration on the Washington Mall. At the time, the crowd’s size and impatience dominated my neighbors’ thinking. Folks shook their heads at what they perceived to be a chaotic mess. And, indeed, my young friends at the bus stop shared in the excitement—and the concern. It is no secret that King terrified many white people. As should surprise no one, my neighborhood was (like almost all Virginia neighborhoods at the time) strictly segregated.

For the most part, my friends and their parents were not racists in any of the usual senses, at least not as white people understood racism in 1963. My schoolmates were nice kids who grew up in loving homes. They did not seethe with ill will. They were not angry.

Yet, one of my bus-stop companions asked, with disgust in his voice, “What do they want?” My best friend, Duncan, calmly replied, “They want their freedom.” I was never so proud to know him. Duncan grew up in a conservative home, much more conservative than my own, but he understood human dignity with a wisdom that belied his youth, his crewcut, and his traditional Oxford shirt. Somehow, I had never before understood civil rights with such simplicity, such clarity.

No one responded. Not even me. Awkward silence continued until the bus showed up a few minutes later. It was a learning moment for me, maybe for all of us. Yes, the clips of King’s speech on the news the night before thrilled the ears. In the long run, however, it is the audience, not the speaker, that makes a speech successful. What message did the audience need to hear? “They want their freedom.”

Dreaming was King’s metaphor, but it was not his main point. No, instead, his point was freedom. His thrilling conclusion talked about the centuries-long struggle for freedom:

“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

“Free at last! Free at last!

“Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Did the struggle for freedom end in victory? On the one hand, yes. Congress soon passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On the other hand, no. It seems that every few weeks in 2022 we hear about a police officer shooting an unarmed Black person. Mistakenly thinking that the struggle for civil rights was over, the United States Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Even the freest nation is never more than one election from tyranny. King’s message: People want their freedom.


Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Three Warnings about Political Action From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech”


P.S. Of course, as times change, we notice that King didn’t mention freedom for women: “black men and white men.”

Image: National Park Service

“Somebody Must Have Sense Enough to Dim the Lights:” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Sermon about the Power of Love

Strength comes from love.

In November 1957, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. His theme was Jesus Christ’s commandment to “love your enemies.” King applied that moral precept to the growing Civil Rights movement, insisting that hate must be met with love, and violence with peace. King laid out many of the themes that would come to mark the movement. He warned that hate endangered everyone. He advocated nonviolent resistance and called for the Western democracies to uphold their noble values. Centrally, he insisted on an attitude of compassion and love toward one’s enemies. His sermon delved deeply into Christian theology and political theory. His practical application – the philosophy of civil disobedience – would arise from moral imperatives.

King’s proposition must seem like a massive paradox: for he taught that true strength comes from love and goodness, never from violence and hatred.

King’s eloquence and depth of thought belies the fact that, defying his physician’s orders, he dragged himself out of a sickbed to give this speech. Like most good preachers, he based his sermon on a text, in this case, Matthew 5:43-45 from the Bible.

_____________________________

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

_____________________________

King felt that his argument was not only moral, but practical. To King, love overpowers hate by its very nature. He explained that by “love,” he meant what the ancient Greeks called agape, which is unselfish love. Such unconditional love often runs against our impulses. Instead, our impulses often drive us to respond harshly when someone wrongs us. This inclination, King told the congregation, only makes things worse:

“Hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends.”

King told a story about when he and his brother were driving across Tennessee. The other drivers were not dimming their lights. King’s brother threatened to shine his brights at the next car. But King protested that this could only cause an accident:

“Somebody must have sense enough to dim the lights, and that is the trouble, isn’t it? That as all of the civilizations of the world move up the highway of history, so many civilizations, having looked at other civilizations that refused to dim the lights, and they decided to refuse to dim theirs.”

That simple analogy led King to a powerful point. If nations respond to anger with more anger, if people respond to hate with more hate, we enter the down-ramp to mutual destruction. That is why King insisted that hate must be confronted with love. Hate does not defeat hate. That never works, he said. Instead, love was the universe’s greatest power:

“Somewhere, somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.”

African Americans in the 1950s suffered from horrible injustices. Especially in the states of the former Confederacy, African Americans lacked the most basic rights that other people took for granted. They could not stay in nice hotels or even drink at a cold water fountain. Laws excluded them from the best schools. A Black person in the South registered to vote only at the risk of her life. Emmitt Till had been lynched a scant two years before King’s sermon, and the Mississippi Burning murders awaited the future. By no stretch of the imagination was United States of 1957 a free country for African Americans.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s Voting Rights Speech, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired"

Yet, King insisted that monstrous injustices must be met by love.

King’s sermon gives us much to think about in 2022. Recently, people have been going to school board meetings, screaming in rage to stop their children from learning Black history. King’s message would be to confront such hatred with love, not anger.

Similarly, when people in 2022 give in to fear and vote for the angriest, meanest politician because they think that person is strong, do they not contradict King’s teaching? And was King not right? Strong leaders like Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin did not keep their people safe. Did they?

King’s speech taught a powerful lesson. Isn’t that the best reason to give a speech? And will we listen to his lesson? Can we, as a nation, as a human species, learn that love truly is more powerful than hate? Or will we succumb to fear and ignorance? Can Christian believers find the courage to love their enemies? Not to give in to evil; that’s not what King meant, but to love their enemies? To face down evil with good? Many years later, King said that, “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Can people summon the courage to believe that this is true?

_____________________________

Martin Luther King, Jr. Said, "The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless"

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Mountaintop in Memphis, Tennessee: A Speech for the Ages

Rabbi Cahana's Sermon about the Summer of Love: Is Love the Answer to Nazism?

_____________________________

P.S.: Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is now on the National Register of Historic Places

Oprah Winfrey's Eulogy for Rosa Parks: A Speech about Opposing Traditions

With Black History Month underway, let’s look back at Oprah Winfrey’s eulogy for Rosa Parks. Parks is the woman who refused to give up her seat to a white man, triggering the Montgomery bus boycott. Parks came to symbolize the heroism of ordinary people who inspired the civil rights movement. Speaking in 2005 at the Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington DC, Winfrey compared and contrasted two different kinds of tradition. We had, on the one hand, a southern tradition that Black people should defer to white people. But, on the other hand, Rosa Parks started a new tradition. Although her actions shocked southern racists in the 1950s, Parks’ new tradition inspired generations to come.


The Old Tradition: Racial Oppression

We often think that things are good just because they are old. Well, many old things are good. Time and tradition have tested Shakespeare’s plays, homemade ice cream, and the First Amendment. When something works for many years, we think that is good.

At the same time, however, tradition can never excuse injustice or wrongful deeds. A long tradition, enshrined in Alabama law, had deprived African Americans of basic rights. One of those was the simple right to occupy a bus seat that one has paid for. Indeed, just because we have done a wrong thing for a long time does not mean that we should continue to do it. Winfrey explained:

“So I thank you again, Sister Rosa, for not only confronting the one white man whose seat you took, not only confronting the bus driver, not only for confronting the law, but for confronting history, a history that for 400 years said that you were not even worthy of a glance, certainly no consideration. I thank you for not moving.”

Yes, time had tested a 400-year tradition. But when that tradition proved to be wrong, over, and over, and over, it was time to change. Rosa Parks, in her turn, started a new tradition.


A New Tradition Arose

Yes, when Rosa Parks refused to leave her seat, she rejected the old tradition. What she did was new. In Jim Crow Alabama, it was almost unprecedented. But Oprah Winfrey thanked Rosa Parks for making possible new opportunities and new traditions:

“That day that you refused to give up your seat on the bus, you, Sister Rosa, changed the trajectory of my life and the lives of so many other people in the world. I would not be standing here today nor standing where I stand every day had she not chosen to sit down. I know that. I know that. I know that. I know that, and I honor that.”

In part because of Parks’ actions, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s has now been enshrined in law and (often, but not always) in the way Americans treat one another today. What was once new has become accepted. Every tradition started with an innovation. In her brief eulogy, Oprah Winfrey acknowledged the courage and wisdom of the woman who started the new tradition.


Will We Forget?

This does not mean that the battle has ended. Across large parts of the United States of America, angry people – white people – attend school board meetings to scream in rage because their children are being taught Black history. Many schools are backing down, removing essential parts of American history from their bookshelves for fear of offending white people who don’t want to remember people like Rosa Parks. So, the danger still exists that the evil tradition against which Parks protested could rise like a murderous zombie. Yes, racism can be violent. Black people who confronted law enforcement in the 1950s South often disappeared into jail, never to be seen again. Never underestimate Parks’ courage.

A eulogy’s purpose is to honor a person’s life by showing how that person can inspire us today. It is not enough to honor Rosa Parks. People today need to find the courage and wisdom to stand up against the forces of wickedness, no matter how old – how traditional – those forces might be. That is why Winfrey ended her speech with these defiant words:

“I owe you – to succeed.

“I will not be moved.”

__________________

Barack Obama’s Eulogy of Clementa Pinckney

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience"

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech and the Christian Right

__________________

P. S. “I will not be moved” referred to the old Christian hymn, “I Shall Not Be Moved.” Winfrey’s audience surely picked up the illusion instantly.

The Memorial African Methodist Episcopal Church was also the home church of Frederick Douglass. Located a few blocks north of the White House, it is on the National Register of Historic Places.

I continue to express my gratitude to my graduate school classmate, the late Martin Medhurst, and the other good people at Americanrhetoric.com who assembled such a treasure house of American public speeches.

__________________

Research Note: Howard Kahane’s book, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, introduced the idea that it is a fallacy to appeal to tradition. In contrast, Boyd and Richerson’s book, Culture and the Evolutionary Process, argues that people are not very good at reasoning and are often wise to rely instead on tradition. I’m on the fence: I think that tradition is often valuable – if you click on “William D. Harpine’s Publications” above, you’ll see that I’ve often written that tradition helps us make decisions. At the same time, Kahane is right that something is not necessarily good just because it is old. Racial oppression is traditional, but it is always wrong.

Image: Ahmer Jamil Khan, via Wikimedia

Martin Luther King's Speech “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:” The Radical Tradition

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose national holiday we celebrate today, gave his most influential speech on November 16, 1961. This speech is called “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.” Like many speakers before and since, King showed that his seemingly radical ideas rested on strong traditions and historical precedents. He showed that people stand in an ancient tradition when they break unjust laws.


A Thoughtful Speech

The speech, which he presented to a group of student civil rights workers, did not rise to the heights of thrilling oratorical excellence for which King was remembered. So, why do I say that it was influential? That’s because “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” was a carefully reasoned speech that shaped, justified, and explained the principle of nonviolent resistance to racial oppression. This speech, now largely forgotten, guided the Civil Rights movement. That movement would reach its climax three years later, during the Birmingham demonstrations, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the now-gutted Voting Rights Act of 1965 soon to follow.

In my previous post, I explained how this speech laid out the Civil Rights’ movement’s philosophical and moral foundation. The speech also justified the principle of nonviolent resistance to unjust laws. While King’s philosophical foundation relied heavily on Christian theology, his principle of nonviolent resistance owed more to Mohandas Gandhi and New England transcendentalism. Like many speakers before and since, King showed that his seemingly radical ideas rested on strong traditions and historical precedents.

Radicals, like King, seek social change. Conservatives look to tradition. Paradoxically, King combined the two opposing ideas. His agenda, which called for sweeping social and legal change, were considered radical in 1961. They would still be considered radical in 2022.

Yet, King’s astute persuasive tactic helped make his methods seem – well, not radical at all. By tying nonviolent resistance to history and tradition, King implied that his movement’s actions were traditional. More than that, however, he turned his critics’ arguments against them. It was they and not King, who rejected tradition – the tradition of civil disobedience. This was King’s subtext.


The History of Civil Disobedience

To begin with, King started with Greek philosophy. “There is nothing new about this,” King insisted. Indeed, he said that “We go back and read the Apology and the Crito, and you see Socrates practicing civil disobedience.” King also appealed to religious tradition, pointing out that early Christians also refused to obey unjust laws:

“The early Christians practiced civil disobedience in a superb manner, to a point where they were willing to be thrown to the lions. They were willing to face all kinds of suffering in order to stand up for what they knew was right even though they knew it was against the laws of the Roman Empire.”

How many conservative Christians have thought about that? About a time when the very act of worshipping as a Christian was civil disobedience? Not stopping there, King reminded the students that the United States of America has a long history of civil disobedience. He mentioned the Boston Tea Party and the work of pre-Civil War abolitionists:

“And even let us come up to America. Our nation in a sense came into being through a massive act of civil disobedience, for the Boston Tea Party was nothing but a massive act of civil disobedience. Those who stood up against the slave laws, the abolitionists, by and large practiced civil disobedience.”

The point here? Few of King’s opponents in 1961 would try to say that slavery was just. The abolitionists, who were the radicals of the 1850s, worked against the monstrous laws that perpetuated slavery. History now admires them. They became heroes – to later generations – by helping slaves to escape. However, they were heroes only because they broke the law. That obvious fact gave King a powerful historical and moral precedent.

There is, however, the other side. Are laws not supposed to be the guardians of public order and morality? Are we doing the right thing when we follow the law? Sometimes, King said, we are not.

 

What Is Legal Isn’t Always Right

In other words, that something is legal does not, in King’s philosophy, mean that it is right. Indeed, the law might require you to do something wrong. That was a radical concept – it is hard to imagine a more radical idea – and yet King’s logic seems inescapable. Throughout large parts of the United States in 1961, racial discrimination and oppression were actually required by law. Did that make it right? Was it right for people to obey such laws?

King offered a powerful rebuttal, founded on history and yet tied to the present day. King insisted that actions are not always righteous just because they are legal. He asked people to rise above popular morality and legal principles. He said that we should instead live by conscience. That is a difficult challenge, to which few of us ever rise.

For example, King reminded the students that Nazi Germany applied the force of law to commit acts of stunning evil. Evil people created Nazi law for evil purposes. King called for his workers to have the courage to reject legal but monstrous evil like Hitler’s:

“We must never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal.’ It was illegal to aid and comfort a Jew, in the days of Hitler's Germany. But I believe that if I had the same attitude then as I have now I would publicly aid and comfort my Jewish brothers in Germany if Hitler were alive today calling this an illegal process.”

King also reminded the students that the Union of South Africa was, in 1961, a white supremacist nation. In South Africa, racial justice was actually a crime. King expressed support for the resistance that Black-majority leaders offered against South Africa’s cruel, but legal, regime:

“If I lived in South Africa today in the midst of the white supremacy law in South Africa, I would join Chief Luthuli and others in saying, break these unjust laws.”

For, yes indeed, apartheid (which was legally required racial oppression) was enshrined in South African law. Yet, it was obviously wicked and unjust.

What Is Legal? What Is Right?   

These examples led King to a powerful but daring conclusion. He insisted that the students in his audience, who were organizing nonviolent resistance, actually represented tradition. That claim utterly conflicted with conventional attitudes. Yet, King gave his opponents a chance to ask themselves some hard questions. Would they have supported Hitler? South African apartheid was legal. But was it right? King put his opponents in difficult position. Were they prepared to defend some of the century’s most horrible laws? Were they prepared to defend oppression in the United States?

Two years later, King would write his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” That letter, which I recommend in the highest terms, laid out, in much more detail, the same historical and philosophical principles that King had already explained in “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.” King’s speech made nonviolent resistance into a moral obligation. King tied civil disobedience to tradition, while rejecting unjust laws. And it was in this now-forgotten speech that King laid out the philosophy that guided the Civil Rights movement for years to come. 

________________

 

Related Public Speaking Posts: 

Read First Post about King's speech: 

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:” The Civil Rights Movement’s Philosophical Foundation

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Mountaintop in Memphis, Tennessee: A Speech for the Ages

French President Macron Reminds the USA of Its Traditions

Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana’s Sermon about the Summer of Love: Is Love the Answer to Nazism?

________________

Research Note: Radicals often look for ways to tie their ideas to tradition. In his award-winning book, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America, Professor James Darsey shows how radical speakers often quote the Hebrew prophets.

Was “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” totally neglected? No, not entirely. It was reprinted in several editions of an advanced communication textbook, Contemporary American Speeches, which was co-edited by my professor Richard L. Johannesen.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:" The Civil Rights Movement’s Philosophical Foundation

What does it mean to be good? How do we resist evil? Where should we put our faith: in goodness, or in violence? Martin Luther King, Jr.’s carefully-reasoned speech, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” delivered to a group of civil rights workers, laid out the Civil Rights Movement’s profound values. King’s carefully-reasoned exposition gave the movement its philosophical underpinning. Drawing on his academic background in Christian theology, South Asian philosophy, and New England transcendentalism, King did not merely guide his workers. More importantly, he called the United States to its better nature.

King did not give his speech with the overall public in mind. He delivered this speech on November 16, 1961 in Atlanta, Georgia to a student group called the Fellowship of the Concerned. He did not instruct them about movement tactics. Instead, he delved into the morality on which the movement rested. That moral foundation is King’s eternal legacy.

Although most remembered for fiery heights of eloquence like his “Mountaintop” and “I Have a Dream” speeches, King also guided his movement with deep moral arguments. In “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” King began with the idea that people are capable of great goodness. King also showed that it is never right to cooperate with evil, just as, in contrast, we should have boundless faith a future of justice. Let us look at each of those ideas in turn.


Are People Basically Good?

King’s first profound insight was that human beings are good. That insight was remarkable because the United States was, at the time, dominated by appalling racial wickedness. A few months earlier, a crowd of white people had fire-bombed a bus full of the Freedom Riders, viciously beating the men and women as they escaped.

Let us remember that, in 1961, racial discrimination was still the law of the land, particularly in the states of the former Confederacy. In my home state of Virginia, interracial marriage was still a serious crime. Not until I started my Master of Arts degree at Northern Illinois University did I attend an integrated school. (My high schools and undergraduate college enrolled only one or two token minority students.) The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown versus the Board of Education was merely a document on paper. It made little difference to education. John Birch Society stickers plastered my middle-class neighborhood.

Many people imagine that chain gangs are a relic of the distant past, but I often witnessed this horror as an adolescent in the 1960s. There were no body cams to bring justice to the victims of police brutality. Rural areas of the Deep South were still, for all practical purposes, police states. African-Americans who went to the voting booth feared for their lives, and people who were arrested and taken to southern jails were often never seen again. Lynching continued openly as late as 1981, when the Ku Klux Klan hanged Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama. And, yet, King insisted that people are capable of great goodness. His ultimate point, his foundation, was to assume that the Civil Rights movement could appeal to kindness rather than hate. Love could replace anger. King explained it like this:

“I think this is what Jesus meant when he said, ‘love your enemies.’ I’m very happy that he didn’t say ‘like your enemies.’ because it is very difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive, creative, goodwill for all men. And it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of the student movement.”

And he summed it up with this simple message of hope:

“There is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness.”

Are violence and hate the only ways to defeat our enemies? If so, King’s philosophy of civil disobedience comes to nothing. If we reach our opponents’ hearts, he suggested, people could hope for a better future.


Do Not Cooperate with Evil

Yet, King made another point, which was not to cooperate with evil. This principle applied to the movement’s followers, just as it applied to the racists and politicians who perpetuated evil. He did not say to “resist evil,” which we hear more often. Instead, he reached more deeply. He told his followers not to acquiesce to evil:

“It is as much a moral obligation to refuse to cooperate with evil as it is to cooperate with good. Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as the cooperation with good.”

My late mother, who loved to read history books, often commented that people like Hitler and Stalin could only come to power if a great number of people helped them. Even more so, of course, it is so easy to go along with injustices. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned the students to avoid that temptation.

It is from that principle, that we should not cooperate with evil, that led King to the idea that not to give in to unjust laws, such as Jim Crow laws and legalized racial discrimination. While conservatives value social order above all else, King asked the students to value morality above all else.


And Have Faith in the Future

Many people, in 1961 and 2022 alike, prefer to glory in a mythical past. Instead, King offered hope for a better future. The Christian concept of “faith” can equally be translated as “trust.” Thus, King asked the students to hope, expect, and, most of all, work for, a better future:

“This movement is a movement based on faith in the future. It is a movement based on a philosophy, the possibility of the future bringing into being something real and meaningful. It is a movement based on hope.”

The message of American conservativism is, obviously enough, that we don’t need to solve our problems if we pretend we don’t have any. Yet, never mentioning his opponents’ philosophy, King’s speech did not merely ask the students to recognize the horrors that racism had brought to the United States. He also asked them to hope and work toward a better day when justice could triumph:

“With this faith in the future, with this determined struggle, we will be able to emerge from bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”

In a later post, I’ll talk about this speech’s justification for civil disobedience. For now, however, let us remember that King’s speech showed faith in humanity’s goodness. He reminded his workers never to cooperate with evil. Still, while recognizing evil, he expressed profound faith – profound trust – that they could work toward a glorious future of just peace and human kindness. He presaged the vision that he would express two years later from the Lincoln Memorial, “With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” As the United States somewhat reluctantly celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. during this three-day holiday weekend, is his work finished? I think not. Should we still remember to deny cooperation with evil? I think yes. Do we still need to remember King’s message of love, hope, and faith? Obviously, we do.

Part of King’s genius is that he rarely bothered to refute the fallacious arguments that conservative racists made against him. Instead, he offered a powerful vision. That vision overcame whatever venom or false promises his opponents might talk about. He did not condemn his opponents; instead, he offered them a chance to reform. He did not fact-check the liars; he overwhelmed them with moral power. With the resurgence of brazen Jim Crow laws across the South, we still need his lesson today.

Peace to all.

 
_____________

Other Posts about Martin Luther King's Speeches:

“The Law Can’t Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech about Church and the Struggle for Justice

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Give Us the Ballot” Speech Drew on Uplifting Christian Concepts

Joe Biden's Juneteenth Speech Used Values to Support Policies

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden at Juneteenth Ceremony

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived with his Union army in Galveston, Texas.
Enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation, he decreed that all Texas slaves were now free and equal. Juneteenth commemorates the formal abolition of slavery in Texas. By extension, it has become a national a symbol of liberation. Texas has proudly celebrated June 19 as a state holiday since 1979. Two days ago, President Joe Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth a national holiday. His White House speech did not merely celebrate slavery’s end, but also challenged the nation to adopt further civil rights legislation. Biden did not make the usual kinds of policy arguments that we expect from Democrats: for example, he didn’t give facts and figures about racial oppression, nor did he cite examples from recent history of African Americans needlessly killed by police.

Instead, following the example of all good ceremonial speakers, Biden moved straight from values to policy. Juneteenth represents values. Facts and figures prove truth, which is excellent, but it is values – the distinctions between good and evil, the contrast between what is worthy of praise and what deserves blame – that warms people’s hearts and moves them to action.

First, Biden Praised Juneteenth

Starting his argument, Biden contrasted the horrors of slavery against the promise of liberation that Juneteenth celebrates:

“Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come. This is a day of profound — in my view — profound weight and profound power.”

Instead of hiding from the evils of slavery, as too many politicians do, Biden describes slavery as “the moral stain,” and referred to it as “America’s original sin.”

In a clever rhetorical move, Biden praised the bipartisanship which enabled Democrats and Republicans in Congress alike to vote for the bill that made Juneteenth a national holiday:

“I’m especially pleased that we showed the nation that we can come together as Democrats and Republicans to commemorate this day with the overwhelming bipartisan support of the Congress.”

Finally, to bring home the human side of Juneteenth, he introduced Ms. Opal Lee, a 94-year-old African-American woman from Texas who had celebrated Juneteenth since her girlhood. Lee had been campaigning on foot for decades to make Juneteenth a holiday.


Second, Biden Transitioned to the Need for Change

People only change if they feel a compelling need. Biden reminded his audience that we had just noted the anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. He concluded that:

“Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. They don’t ignore those moments of the past. They embrace them. Great nations don’t walk away. . . . And in remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger.”

Third, Biden Called for New Policies

Having celebrated the values of Juneteenth, and having reminded the audience that we need changes, Biden listed a series of new policies:

“To honor the true meaning of Juneteenth, we have to continue toward that promise because we’ve not gotten there yet.”

Biden felt that it was important to increase homeownership by African-Americans. So, the first policy that Biden advocated was to overcome housing discrimination:

“That’s why we’ve launched an aggressive effort to combat racial discrimination in housing — finally address the cruel fact that a home owned, to this day, by a Black American family is usually appraised at a lower rate for a similar home owned by a white family in a similar area.”

Recognizing the importance of education, Biden advocated improved public preschool education:

“That’s why we’re working to give each and every child, three and four years of age, not daycare, but school — in a school. (Applause.)”

Next in his policy list, Biden turned to college education. His idea was to increase the opportunities for African American students to participate in faculty research. He said that he sought to encourage “the incredibly creative and innovation – innovation of the history – of our Historical Black Colleges and Universities.” Biden said that increased research centers at those schools would help their students prepare for advanced industrial jobs.


And Voting Rights

None of those good things will happen if people don’t vote. Ever since Reconstruction ended, African-Americans have struggled for the right to vote. Republican legislatures across the country are even now proposing and often passing laws that make it harder for people to vote, especially if they are elderly or live in urban or rural areas. These restrictions will presumably impact minority voting at a high level, just as literacy tests impacted African-American voting in the Jim Crow era. Biden faced voting rights head-on:

“We see this assault from restrictive laws, threats of intimidation, voter purges, and more — an assault that offends the very democracy — our very democracy.”

Once again, Biden focused on values: “offends . . . our very democracy.”


And, Finally, Back to Values

We started this discussion by looking at how ceremonial speeches talk about values. Ceremonial speakers push their policies with values, not detailed proof. Going full-circle in his conclusion, Biden returned to the values of Juneteenth:

“We can’t rest until the promise of equality is fulfilled for every one of us in every corner of this nation. That, to me, is the meaning of Juneteenth. That’s what it’s about.”

History. Values. Equality. African-American tradition. A long, ugly heritage of slavery and voter suppression. Conservatives, of course, often prefer to ignore these things. If we admit something is wrong, we concede the need to change.

Mike Pence’s Speech at the Marine Barracks: Policy without Proof?

Given Congress’ extreme partisanship, combined with the Republican impulse to oppose anything and everything, Biden wisely emphasized the bipartisan legislation that established Juneteenth. Maybe, one hopes, if Republicans get in the habit of occasionally voting for good things, we might be able to move forward.

And, yes, Biden is right. Our mistakes are better teachers than our triumphs. Slavery and racial oppression were horrible mistakes. Biden supported his list of policies by citing values – values that Republicans and Democrats alike had endorsed in legislation. Celebrating Juneteenth’s values, Biden urged the nation to move forward. As the United States celebrates the first national Juneteenth holiday, are we ready to move into the future?



P.S. American slavery did not end at once. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in areas that were not under Union control, so its effect was delayed. The 13th Amendment came later. In real life, slavery continued in the South, at a reduced level, well into the 1920s under various legalistic tricks. For further information about one of those tricks, check out the movie Sounder and watch it with your family. Chain gangs, in which African-American men received long prison terms at forced labor on trumped-up charges, were supposedly abolished before World War II. However, I often saw them in rural Virginia as late as the 1960s.

Research Note

An extensive research literature shows how ceremonial speakers use values and traditions to advocate policies. I have contributed a few papers and chapters to the topic. I’m happiest about “African-American Rhetoric of Greeting during McKinley’s Front Porch Campaign,” which I published in 2010 in the Howard Journal of Communication. To read an almost-final copy at no charge, click William D. Harpine’s Publications above. In the technical literature, ceremonial speaking is also called epideictic speaking (from a Greek word that means “showing forth”) or “occasional speaking” (which refers to a speech given on a particular occasion.)

Image: White House YouTube channel. 

Fannie Lou Hamer, "Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired," Gave a Voting Rights Speech in Narrative Style

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, let’s remember the influential voting rights speech that Fannie Lou Hamer presented in Harlem, New York on December 20, 1964. She shared the platform with civil rights leader Malcolm X.

Although she had little formal education, Hamer skillfully used a public speaking technique called the narrative style. Her point was that the nation had a problem. A radical organizer might have called this a consciousness-raising speech. For, once one admits out loud that there was a problem, the solution – racial justice – becomes obvious.

Hamer’s simple thesis was that the United States had a values problem.  She put it like this near her conclusion: “And I’ve been tired so long, now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we want to change.” She didn’t, however, prove her point with logic. In narrative style, a speaker doesn’t present an argument like this:

“I believe that X, Y, and Z because the following evidence and proof show that I am right…”

No, instead, in the narrative style, a speaker tells a story, and the audience draws a conclusion from the story. And narrative is less like a debater’s proof; it is more a matter of telling a story that gives a moral or lesson. Sometimes the speaker states the lesson out right, and sometimes the speaker lets the audience figure out what the point is for themselves. In her speech, Hamer told her story and pounded the lesson into her audience as if she were wielding a sledgehammer. 

Starting in her second paragraph, Hamer started her story:

“It was 31 August of 1962, the 18 of us traveled 26 miles to the country courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to try to register to become first-class citizens. It was 31 August 1962, that I was fired for trying to become a first-class citizen.”

That’s quite a narrative hook, isn’t it? And she didn’t say “register to vote.” She said, with incisive word choice, “try to register to become first-class citizens.” She continued her story:

“When we got to Indianola on 31 August 1962, we was met there by the state highway patrolmen, the city policemen and anybody – as some of you know that it worked in Mississippi, any white man that is able to wear khaki pair of pants without them falling off him and holding two guns can make a good law officer.” 

She then explained to taking the literacy test that was required for her to register to vote. She reported that the test had 21 questions. One of them asked “by whom are you employed – so we can be fired by the time we get back home.” She then had to copy and narrate an explanation of part of the state constitution. 

"The Law Can't Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:" Martin Luther King, Jr. 

After not being allowed to register, she explained that she traveled back home, only to discover that she had already lost her job. She then took refuge in a friend’s home only to find that:

“On 10 September 1962, 16 bullets were fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker, where I’d been living after I was fired from this plantation.”

She then hold how the FBI swarmed the community without managing to make a single arrest. She narrated how she later traveled to a voter education conference, when “a man jumped out of his car and said, “you are under arrest.” When she arrived in her jail cell, an officer asked where she was from, and she said she was from Ruleville. The officer said, “You’s from Ruleville all right and we are going to make you wish you was dead.” In matter-of-fact style, she explained that she endured several beatings, with one man replacing another when the first became too exhausted from swinging a blackjack at her. The beating left her with permanent injuries. 

Her story was spellbinding. She then responded to the old excuse that racial justice will take time:

“And you can always hear this long sob story: ‘You know it takes time.’ For three hundred years, we’ve given them time. And I’ve been tired so long, now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we want a change.”

That was not the only excuse she refuted. When people want to pretend they are not doing evil, they tell lies. Hamer would have none of that:

“The truth is the only thing going is to free us. . . .  If we want America to be a free society we have to stop telling lies, that’s all. Because we’re not free and you know were not free.”

Her only proof was her story. However, everyone listening – and everyone reading her story today – knows perfectly well that her story could be told thousands of times over. That is what gave it power. That is what made it convincing. We all know that she did not suffer injustice alone. That is why her conclusion could take a broad sweep: 

“But this is something we going to have to learn to do and quit saying that we are free in America when I know we are not free. You are not free in Harlem. The people are not free in Chicago, because I’ve been there, too. They are not free in Philadelphia, because I’ve been there, too and when you get it over with all the way around, some of the places is a Mississippi in disguise. And we want a change.”

Decades later, after citing some poorly-informed statistics, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said that the South has changed. Well, of course, in many ways it has. African-Americans are no longer routinely arrested and beaten half to death just for trying to register to vote. Nevertheless, the sweeping voter suppression laws being proposed, and sometimes passed, around the nation show that many white people still fear minority votes. Fannie Lou Hamer’s battle is not over. We should take care to remember her story.

We human beings are not really all that logical. A good story can convince people faster than any kind of logical argument.

 

Research Note: For more information about the narrative method of persuasion, this article by Walter R. Fisher is a good place to begin.  

More about Fannie Lou Hamer