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Joshua Gottheimer (Ed.), RIPPLES OF HOPE: GREAT AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS SPEECHES. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003; pp. 544, $30.00 paper, ISBN: 0465027520.
Students of civil rights rhetoric, broadly conceived, do not have it easy when it comes to locating comprehensive anthologies. Selections may be snatched from Ronald Reid's American Rhetorical Discourse (1995) or mined from volumes like George Breitman's Malcolm X Speaks (1990). Although these have much to recommend them, Reid's intermittent civil rights addresses limit comparison of advocates' rhetorical evolution, and Breitman's thick concentration promotes rhetorical myopia.
A student of civil rights rhetoric and American history, Josh Gottheimer realized there were few civil rights speech anthologies "while rummaging through the bookshelves of the White House Libraiy" (p. xxxiv). He lamented, "I could not find one book to put on my office shelf, no single volume containing the fiery rhetoric of Du Bois, the drawling prose of Lyndon Johnson, and the measured verse of Betty Friedan" (p. xxxiv). Ripples of Hope-the title is from a line of Robert F. Kennedy's June 1966 "Day of Affirmation" address-aims to fill this gap. A former speechwriter for President Clinton, Gottheimer evinces an unabashed faith in words. While in the speechwriting office, he and his colleagues:
never delivered a draft of a civil rights speech to the president without first reading the texts of celebrated figures, whether that included Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, or Cesar Chavez. Their words, and their approach,...