Interesting Reads related to the Inauguration

The inauguration of Barack Obama is historic by any standards. For many older African-Americans it must be one of the momentous events in their lives and one that many would never have believed possible in the dark days of Jim Crow.

As a humorous inspirational keynote business speaker (sorry, I’ve got to use that hyperbole to attract search engines and anyone looking for a keynote speaker, humorous, inspiration, Irish, Chicago based etc!), I’ve read a lot of books on the Civil Rights era. Some months ago, I posted a review of Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr . Given what has transpired in recent days I thought it might be interesting to present it here again.
Other relevant material on this subject includes my review of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by Congressman John Lewis. This is one of my favorite books, written by a truly brave man.
Something that might also be of interest is Bill Clinton’s speech on What Would Martin Luther King Say – Remarks to the Convocation of the Church of God in Christ, November 1993

Following is the review of Call to Conscience.

This work is available in book form, CD and also available for download. I have it on my iPod. This is a true test to see if a download can wear out, because I listen to it a lot.

Note, some of the audio quality is not good. To fully appreciate King’s talent and speech construction, you do need the book. The advantage of the audio is that you can hear the real thing and appreciate this wonderful orator’s speech pattern, intonation and delivery.

Rosa Parks said that Martin Luther King told her he spent up to fifteen hours on sermon development. I believe it.

This book provided King’s speeches in chronological order and it is interesting to see how his style develops from the first speech referenced to his final poignant, prophetic address in Memphis, April 3rd 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

Three things strike me about this era as I go through the work.
1) The horrors, humiliation and fear which the “negro” community endured and which King fought so hard to overcome are painted graphically in some of his speeches. Probably the most poignant speech is the address at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama following the murder of four young children.
King’s words are powerful, full of pain, anguish, and controlled anger. But it is the audience response that hit me hard. In almost every other speech on this work, the reaction is upbeat and lively. Here, there is just pain and sadness in the intermittent responses of his congregation. This speech came after King’s acclaimed “I have a dream” speech and the march on Washington, which may have led the leaders of the black community to a misleading sense of hope for the immediate future.

2) The genuine Christian ethic that pervaded King’s thinking. He regularly extols his audience to “love” their persecutors. He does differentiate strongly between “mushy” love, but he continuously asks his audience, many of whom suffered dreadful hardship and pain during this era, to forgive their persecutors.

3) King was a brave man. Not just because of his defiance of the whole “Jim Crow” ethic which ultimately resulted in his assassination. This was a fate that probably would not have surprised him, given the murders of other activists including Medgar Evers. However, his bravest speech may well have been “Beyond Vietnam” April 4th 1967, where he stingingly indicted the United States for its involvement in the war. It was a war which he saw as “an enemy of the poor” because it diverted resources from the war on poverty. But his criticism was even more basic.
“We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.”

King knew the speech would be seen by Lyndon Johnson as a stab in the back. It also raised to an even greater level, the ire of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who was paranoid about King’s activities.

King undoubtedly was an inspirational speaker and motivator. His speeches got better as his audience warmed to him. This, I think is proof positive, that a speech is not just about the words but the delivery of those words. The great speaker feeds of the audience, accepting applause almost as a fuel to deliver even greater energy. This is very obvious with his “I have a dream” speeches, (yes speeches) where great motivating words generate great audience reaction which generates greater energy from the speaker. Compare this to his address on receipt of The Nobel Peace Price, December 1964, where before a very high profile audience, he is restrained and projects little charisma.

Critiquing King is difficult and maybe even foolhardy. But on a few occasions I think he broke one of the key rules for a good speech – speak the language of your audience. For instance in his “Where do we go from here” speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he said:
“My inspiration didn't come from Karl Marx; my inspiration didn't come from Engels; my inspiration didn't come from Trotsky; my inspiration didn't come from Lenin. Yes, I read Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital a long time ago, and I saw that maybe Marx didn't follow Hegel enough. He took his dialectics, but he left out his idealism and his spiritualism. And he went over to a German philosopher by the name of Feuerbach, and took his materialism and made it into a system that he called "dialectical materialism."
On this and a few other occasions, King I think liked to show the audience how clever he was.

The other area where he could genuinely be criticized is in the length of his speeches. Maybe this is part of the Baptist tradition he was raised in, but sometimes ‘less is more’. King also had a tendency to reference the fact that he was moving to a conclusion, one that would not occur for maybe another ten minutes.

These are minor criticisms of a wonderful motivational inspirational speaker whose greatest skill was the ability to paint pictures with words. His use of imagery and imagery enhancing adjectives brought so much life to his speeches. He truly is an inspiration to the keynote speaker (inspirational, humorous, motivational, business - whatever) who wishes to craft inspirational, motivating speeches.