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Book Review
| Josh Gottheimer (ed.), Ripples of Hope: Great American Civil Rights Speeches, Basic Civitas Books, New York, 2003. pp. xlii + 502. $30.00 (US) cloth.
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Josh Gottheimer, with a background as a scholar in civil rights and an advisor to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, was employed as a speech writer for President Bill Clinton in 1998. He was very impressed with, and learnt much from, Clinton's commitment to civil rights. Gottheimer writes that while
rummaging through the bookshelves of the White House Library, I discovered that few civil rights speech anthologies exist in print ... This collection was crafted to be a central source of civil rights speeches for writers, activists, and students of history (p. xxxiv).
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The volume comprises 96 such speeches, delivered over the period 1789 to 1998. It begins with a speech by an unknown Free Negro denouncing slavery, and concludes with an address by Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York. As Gottheimer explains, the term civil rights 'connotes the rights of any citizen, no matter what his background: however, ... the term [is used] in reference to equal rights for minorities in the United States' (p. xx). He has collected material from five distinct groups. They are African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, gays and women. He has not collected material from Native Americans, people with disabilities, and white ethnic groups because of problems with space (p. xxxvi). The material has been organised chronologically into four sub periods: 1789 to 1865 (19 speeches), 1866 to 1949 (27 speeches), 1950 to 1969 (29 speeches), and 1970 to 1998 (24 speeches). More than half of the speeches are devoted to the last 50 years of American history. |
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Before each speech Gottheimer provides a brief introduction — usually of a page or so — to give 'a sense of the speech's setting and historical time period, as well as a brief description of the orator's background' (p. xxxvii). Besides the cumulative impact of the respective speeches themselves, the inclusion of such material adds to the strength and success of this volume. A criticism that could be levelled at Gottheimer is that further information could have been provided concerning the history and activities of his various orators, if available. |
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The phrase 'Ripples of Hope' comes from a speech delivered by Robert F. Kennedy to the National Union of South African Students on 7 June 1966. It comes from the following extract of that speech:
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, these ripples, build a current which can swamp the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance (p. 288).
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The speeches, individually and collectively, make for fascinating reading; 'build[ing like] a current'! Many were made during periods of intense pressure, in which a minority had just experienced suffering at the hands — or more correctly whips, baseball bats, firesticks, lynching ropes and guns — of their fellow Americans, including state-sponsored attacks (terror?), and/or during periods of national crisis. The speeches resonate with intelligence and logic in deconstructing the doublethink of a society which preaches the gospel of all men being equal and the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with what in fact has happened; with the passion and commitment of 'we shall overcome'. |
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Many of the speeches demonstrate the power of language, rhetoric and imagery — the craft of the spoken (and written) word. To have been present at the delivery of such speeches, as they clinically hit the nail on the head of discrimination or intolerance, exposed 'wrong-doing' and injustice, would have been an exhilarating and uplifting experience. Ripples of Hope is a testament to the human condition; more especially to those who against what, at times, seemed like overwhelming odds and at great personal risk to themselves, their families and colleagues, spoke out in defence of civil and human rights. Gottheimer points to how these speeches emphasise 'dignity, self-reliance and respect' (p. xviii). They range in tone from the tradition of non-violence, through exhortations to stand up for one's rights and become politically active, to more critical analyses of the nature of American society. |
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There is a darker side to this volume, or rather its subject matter, which needs to be considered. This is the thesis which produced the antithesis which is Ripples of Hope: the history and nature of American society itself. In reading these speeches, the reader is forced to think about the various issues and events that prompted them. The speeches have been made in response to civil rights abuses. No better examples are provided than those of two Presidents, one a Republican, the other a Democrat. On 24 September 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a nationally televised address, spoke out against mob rule in Little Rock, Arkansas, the result of a protest against the integration of schools. Reflecting back on this speech, he said 'If the day comes when we can obey the order of our courts only when we personally approve of them, the end of the American system, as we know it, will not be far off' (p. 223). President Lyndon B. Johnson, on 15 March 1965, championed civil rights in another nationally televised address, after state police in Selma, Alabama, used violence to stop a voter registration drive. He said 'There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem' (p. 272). |
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Ripples of Hope draws attention to how America's growth and development (in an economic sense) was based on slavery — which Frederick Douglass described as 'the great sin and shame of America' (p. 47) —, the segregation of African Americans and the historical denial of so many of their civil rights; the historical treatment of women as property, the denial of their voting rights, and their relegation to the status of second-class citizens; discrimination against Asian Americans in schooling and at work, including the appropriation of their property and possessions, and the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II; the appropriation of the land of Hispanic Americans after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and their more recent struggles for 'fair' wages and working conditions through the actions of the United Farm Workers Union; and the discrimination and violence directed at gays and lesbians. Furthermore, note the other areas of civil rights abuses which were not examined by Gottheimer due to reasons of space (see above). |
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In 1943 Carey McWilliams, a labour lawyer, spoke out against the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Such internment resulted from an order of President Franklin Roosevelt. In the final sentence of his speech McWilliams says, 'As President Roosevelt has reminded us, Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart. Americanism is not and never has been a matter of race and ancestry' (p. 191). The more than 200 years — and remember, slavery has a long American history — covered by the speeches contained in Ripples of Hope suggest otherwise. Despite the rhetorical flourishes associated with American freedom and liberty, and its so-called role as leader of the free world, Ripples of Hope demonstrates that America is a society which has been based on 'race and ancestry', notwithstanding the struggles of civil rights activists. What this means for the American 'mind and heart', if in fact the notion has any meaning, I will leave for you to decide. |
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| University of New South Wales |
BRAHAM DABSCHECK | |
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