Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory 1787-1900 (review)

Abstract

462 Rhetoric & Public Affairs important to be glossed here; at best, something of its tone can only be suggested in his observation that "Gay rights rhetoric is almost apolitical, perhaps even antipolitical , in that it addresses the multitude as a mass of individuals, not as a political unity. Its appeal is not to de cive but to each person as a maker of his or her own destiny. It is a rhetoric of disengagement. In all this, the rhetoric of gay rights establishes itself, not as a rhetoric of judgment, but as a rhetoric of nonjudgment. There is no potential for radical commitment in such a discourse" (184). As for the rhetoric of gay rights, so for McCarthy, Welch, and all of us, all the well-intended voices for an under-obligated world. For all its darkness, however, Darsey's vision of our times is not without prospects of its own; and the many readers of this important book will come to understand that the note heard finally is itself carried by the prophet's voice. Stephen H. Browne The Pennsylvania State University 1. Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké, vol. 1, eds. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond (Glouster, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1965), 431. Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory 1787-1900. Edited by Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998; pp. xv + 925. $49.95 cloth; $24.95 paper. Every person who claims expertise in the rhetoric of the United States of America should study Lift Every Voice. That few persons will find this a self-evident proposition constitutes a sad commentary on the state of rhetorical studies. Today, the study of rhetoric is fractured into highly polarized divisions. The so-called radical wing will not read this book, because in spite of their vaunted interest in social equality, they would rather study pop culture and theory than attend to the concrete discursive actions by which the oppressed have constructed progressive social change in our history. Besides, our students prefer to study television, and catering to such preferences makes one a "cool" professor. Even African American professors and scholars recently seem caught in this trend, preferring to teach the popular subjects of movies and interpersonal dating instead of the history of the struggle for progressive change wrought by African Americans. More conservative scholars will skirt this volume with equal deftness, but for different reasons. Certainly, conservatives will shy away from the radical values of the rhetoric contained in this volume. They may resist putting themselves under the sway of the passionate eloquence of these voices, which demand justice and equality as the foundations of human civilization. Up front, however, conservatives will be predisposed to deny that most of these voices are eloquent. Applying the narrow criteria derived from studying a narrow canon, they will be unable to cope with this Book Reviews 463 truly oral rhetoric. They will (mis)judge Samuel H. Davis's plea for "Our Rightful Claims" according to standards of Anglo-American literature. Focusing on how it violates the norms of written grammar and sentence structure, they may miss the oral eloquence of his denunciation of "the tyrant, who holds in one hand the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees freedom and equal rights to every other citizen, and in the other 'the scourge dripping with gore,' drawn from the veins of his fellow man" (195). Current fads and long-term prejudices should be swept aside, however. This volume offers to educate us on one of the central struggles of U.S. history, to expand our understanding of the range of human eloquence, and to deepen our appreciation of the scope of African American oratory. For those outside the African American community it also offers the chance to increase one's understanding of what it means to be "African American." Lift Every Voice is based on the out-of-print classic Voice of Black America, which was edited by the respected historian Philip Foner. The more recent volume , completed by the rhetorician Robert Branham, is narrower in historical scope and broader in its...