do you have any other favorites? I don't know any famous Canadian speeches.

1. Lincoln - Gettysburg address
2. jfk inaugural "ask not ……
3. king "I have a dream"
4. wm Jennings bryan "cross of gold"
5. fdr "day that will live in infamy"
6. fdr 1st inaugural "nothing to fear but fear inself
7. jfk "ich bin ein Berliner"
8. Reagan "tear down this wall"

there are many with reputations as great speakers before 1900, but little remains to compare with the speeches since the invention of sound recording. I include Lincoln only because it has long been taught to every school child in the usa.

The speech itself was a staged photo op....interjecting himself in something he had no hand in bringing about

but the speech was fairly rousing and memorable

1.) Frederick Douglass "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July" (1852)
2.) Malcolm X "The Ballot or the Bullet" (1964)
3.) Barack Obama "A More Perfect Union" (2008)

I sure wish some time traveler could visit 1852 with a video recorder. Fredrick douglass must have been an awesome speaker.

I need to look up that Malcolm x speech. I sure hope someone has posted it to u tube.

working at the school's radio station, that they had that speech on an LP in the station's library. It was the first time I had heard the whole thing. But also be aware that at that time, he was a Black Nationalist so his themes are from that perspective. However the speech also highlights the contrasting and often conflicting ideologies of the major players in Civil Rights movement and the dilemma of how to bring about meaningful change in the 60s.

ETA - I know that Morgan Freeman did a reading of an excerpt from Douglass' speech -

I was only 12 in 1964, but my father did consider Malcolm x (and king and ali) to be dangerous commie "nigras." dick Gregory, on the other hand, was dad's partner in a few business ventures so he just "had a few funny ideas. " (hell, dad, Gregory was a comedian. he had funny ideas for a living). Gregory died very recently, dad a long time ago.

more than 50 years. I thought (well, hoped) we were past that, but here is this truly uncouth billionaire who has nothing better to do in his old age except unleash this basket of ignorant deplorables once again.

sorry to take you back to the segregated south for that moment.

but I do know about Dick Gregory and as a regular listener to Joe Madison (he's on SiriusXM Urban View channel), he had Dick on all the time and helped him to finally get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.



My mother was a fan of him and Redd Foxx and I used to record Dick Gregory's appearances on Madison's show and give them to her. And I remember when he did pass on - which was just a couple years ago this summer. Definitely a loss. But one of his daughters (Ayanna) has been carrying on his activism and actually has performed a 1-woman play celebrating his life.

I always used to chuckle about how he would always carry around his jam-packed portfolio-briefcase full of newspaper articles that he had collected over many years about all the stuff that was literally "hiding in plain sight".

every kind of deadly diet plan and the kind of exercise equipment that you might see on late night tv. they actually tried to sell some of this stuff but I don't think think it ever paid off like they speculated.

and then later he had various diet programs (and was a total vegetarian who did cleanses and whatnot). He was 2 years younger than my mom (who passed away 2 years before he did). That generation was something else but my mom always said that they grew up through the Depression so life definitely wasn't easy... But then I always told her that her generation were a bunch of radicals (but didn't "show" it).