Say it loud: great speeches on civil rights and African American identity

"The ballot or the bullet," 1964 / Malcolm X

"The Black revolution and the White backlash," 1964 / Lorraine Hansberry

Eulogy for Malcolm X, 1965 / Ossie Davis

"Where do we go from here?" 1967 / Martin Luther King, Jr.

Speech on the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968 / Roy Wilkins

Eulogy for Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968 / Benjamin E. Mays

Speech delivered at memorial service for Bobby Hutton, 1968 / Kathleen Cleaver

Speech delivered at the Kaleidoscope Theater, 1968 / Bobby Seale

Speech to Southern Conference Education Fund, 1968 / Ella Baker

Speech at Howard University, 1969 / Shirley Chisholm

Speech delivered at the Embassy Auditorium, 1972 / Angela Y. Davis

Speech delivered at the National Press Club, 1978 / Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.

Speech delivered at the first Scholarly Conference on Black Women, 1979 / Dorothy I. Height

"The relationship of the Christian faith to political praxis," 1980 / James H. Cone

Nobel Prize lecture, 1993 / Toni Morrison

Commencement address at Howard University, 1994 / Colin Powell

"One hundredth anniversary of Plessy v. Ferguson," 1996 / Mary Frances Berry

"America : a nation of equals," 1998 / Ward Connerly

Speech to National Council of Negro Women, 2001 / Condoleezza Rice

"Youth and the political process," 2003 / Maxine Waters

"America beyond the color line," 2004 / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"Has the Black middle class lost its mind?" 2005 / Michael Eric Dyson

"A more perfect union," 2008 / Barack Obama.