I’m looking for an inspirational (or at least non-soporific) speech for a reading at a Black History Month event coming up. The “theme” this year is, “African-Americans in the Civil War,” due to the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary).
Someone else already copped the Gettysburg address, and I was offered the Emancipation Proclamation, but I’m inclined to pick something else, as the Proc is dull reading at best (“A poor Document, but a mighty Act,” as Governor John Andrew famously described it.)
I did Frederick Douglass’s Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln in a previous year:
But I wouldn’t hesitate to do a different Douglass piece if there’s a good one out there. I can and will cut down for size and to eliminate tedious parts.
I’m looking around myself, but I’ll happily consider suggestions.
It’s a very small Federal government agency, part of a series of events for Black History Month (February). This one will involve snacks and two people reading passages that have some relevance to the theme. I used “inspirational” mainly to indicate that I’m hoping to find something interesting enough to keep attendees from dozing off, slumping out of their chairs, and injuring themselves – it’s a safety agency, after all.
Here’s a real curveball: General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Address to the Independent Order of Pole Bearers (a precursor to the NAACP) on July 5, 1875. Though it was ten years after the war, the connection is easy: Forrest was one the Confederacy’s best generals, and is usually seen as being a virulent racist.