Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches

by Josh Gottheimer

Book Overview

Ripples of Hope brings together the most influential and important civil rights speeches from the entire range of American history-from the colonial period to the present. Gathered from the great... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465027520
• ISBN13: 9780465027521
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Civitas Book Publisher
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Powerful Painful Poignant Speeches and a great history.

Admission: Had this book not been in a Barnes & Noble discount bin I probably would not have purchased it. Had I not, I would have missed a tome that in the words of those MasterCard gurus is `priceless.' I had expected to use it as a reference, one where I could dip in and out of. Instead, I have read almost every one of the 96 speeches in this excellent work. Gottheimer has set the book out in chronological order, covering not just African-American civil rights, but also Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, the suffragette movement, gays and lesbians. Rather than taking it in this chronological order, I chose to read it by subject so I read all black civil rights speeches as one block. It has been an eye-opening, hugely instructive history lesson. And that highlights one of the wonders of this book. It is not just a book of speeches. It is a history book. One of the many lessons I learned: While Martin Luther King can credibly lay claim to being the greatest orator of the civil rights movement, he most assuredly was not the only great speaker. The anger, the power, the pain, the passion of many black speakers flows aggressively and often poignantly through these pages. Never before, had I appreciated so well, the suffering of the "negro" community, a suffering was not just physical, but also mental. The evil of slavery for many was greater because the family unit was regularly broken up and abused, with the young black girl often never more than a sex slave for her white master. I never knew: That the first African American Governor, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback took office, even if in a pro tempore role in December 1872 for the state of Louisiana. That the Civil Rights act of 1875 granted all citizens, regardless of color, full access to public facilities and accommodation. Mind you it appears the Jim Crow South did not know it either! That the introduction of the sex discrimination amendment into the 1964 Civil Rights Act happened only because Congressman Howard Smith introduced it, believing that this amendment would scupper the whole Civil Rights bill. Gosh, who would have thought politicians could be so devious? I have often thought that much of Jesse Jackson's speechmaking is clich?d but some of his phrasing and imagery when he spoke at the 1984 Democratic National Convention is absolutely superb. "My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised." Or "America is not like a blanket - one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt - many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt." Gottheimer does not present Jack

Much more than a desk reference

This compilation is much more than just a desk reference for quotes ? it?s a thoroughly readable history of the civil rights movement in its leaders' own words. Ripples of Hope is a trove filled with speeches whose famous lines we?ve all heard but probably never bothered to read in their entirety, as well as several speeches that have been restored from relative obscurity. It elevates the speech from an archive to a new form ? an accessible, living source meant to be read, reflected upon, and drawn from as a source of motivation.

An invaluable collection

This book fills a stunning gap -- I've never seen another collection dedicated to the civil rights speeches that have played such a crucial role in American history. It includes all the famous speeches (I Have a Dream, etc.), but it also covers activists most of us haven't heard of, from movements most civil rights histories ignore. Each speech is accompanied by an introduction with just enough information to set the scene and put the speech in the context of its own and the other movements, but not so much that it gets in the way of the speeches themselves. Anyone who cares about how America's many peoples live together -- and how we wish they would -- must have this book on their shelf.