Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965 ed. by Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon (review)

Davis Houck and David Dixon have completed another volume of speeches from the civil rights movement. This volume presents mainly lost speeches, some from well-known speakers, such as Andrew Young, the Congressman and Atlanta mayor, and some from less known speakers, such as William Pipes, the first African American to complete a Ph.D. in the field of speech communication. This volume was preceded by Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965 (volume 1), which was published in 2006, and Women in the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1965, which was published in 2009. The first volume contains 130 speeches, and the volume on women contains 39 speeches by 39 different women. This latest volume contains 50 speeches. Each of these anthologies is bookended by the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The purpose of the volume under review here was to fill in some of the remaining fissures in the collection by adding a new layer of speeches to provide more local and regional voices. The author–editors traveled the country, particularly the south, to find them. Thus, in terms of venue, genre, and style, this anthology goes deep into the archeology of the civil rights movement by providing transcripts of previously unavailable speeches. For example, the authors discovered that African American newspapers often contained the full text of local speeches and that the Moses Moon Audio Archive at the Smithsonian Museum contained a treasure trove of 80 hours of speeches that the editors transcribed.

Each of the speeches, radio addresses, sermons, or dialogues is introduced by a headnote that sets out a brief biography of the speaker, the context of the discourse, and a summary its major points. Aside from some passing remarks on rhetorical strategies, critical analysis is left to the reader. The editors do a wonderful job of providing the archival location of the discourses included in the volume. This collection contains disparate speakers such as Ralph McGill, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution; William Sloan Coffin, the spy-turned-pacifist demonstrator; and Ralph Bunch, who worked for human rights from his post at the United Nations. The discourses, which are many different lengths and from diverse venues, are arranged in chronological order.

Although the purpose of the editors was to provide material for future research, they found some interesting items along the way. One of the most important was that “women led local movements” (7). This phenomenon occurred in part because women were less likely to be physically attacked than men participating in the movement, with Viola Liuzzo being a notable exception. The editors also examine competing uses of the Bible to support arguments for and against integration. It may come as a surprise to some readers that “Roman Catholicism engendered a far more outspoken and integrationist rhetoric since church leaders were often progressive on the race question” (11). They also found that the neologism, “what would Jesus do,” was not uncommon as early as 1963.

Reading through the headnotes and speeches provides a march through a different time and place marked by important rhetorical strategies, including lines of arguments and generic forms. Those speeches contained on audio tapes would also be available for delivery analysis, one of the most neglected canons in our literature. The author-editors are to be applauded not only for their lucid headnotes but also for their careful and diligent transcribing, authenticating, and editing of these 50 speeches. They have extended a rich tradition, going back to the beginning of the field of communication studies.

In my opinion, this achievement warrants another volume that examines speeches in the civil rights movement from 1966 to 1975. The era is ripe for examination because the protests linked to the war in Vietnam accelerated and further empowered...