Find speeches recorded in video and audio or in transcripts:
President Franklin D. Roosevelt First Inaugural Address, 1933. run time: 20:13 mins source: LearnOutLoud.com via YouTube
Context: The United States "Great Depression" began in 1929
Read Transcript (Transcript Source: History Matters, George Mason Univ)
Lou Gehrig, Farewell Speech, 1939. run time: Source: YouTube
Context: Gehrig retired from baseball because of the degenerative disease that would eventually take his life and is now named after him (Lou Gehrig's disease).
Winston Churchill, We Shall Fight on the Beaches, 1940. run time: 12:16 mins (incomplete) Source: YouTube
Context: Speech to the House of Commons following the evacuation of 338,000 Allied troups to English Shores, World War II
Get Transcript (complete) Source of Transcript: Churchill Center and Museum
Candidate Richard M. Nixon, Checkers, 1952. run time: 5:22 mins. Source: AmericanRhetoric.com
Context: as vice-presidential running mate of presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nixon offered an apologetic explanation of his finances to ward off scandal.
President John F. Kennedy Inaugural Speech, 1961. run time: 16 mins Source: American History in Video
Context: mid to late 1950s - beginning of the space race, civil rights movement, forced school desegregation. JFK is the youngest person elected president
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - I Have A Dream, 1963. run time: 17:28 mins source: YouTube
Context: Civil Rights movement
Read Transcript (Transcript Source: American Rehtoric)
Mary Fisher, A Whisper of AIDS, 1992. run time: 6:41 Source: YouTube
Context: AIDS spreading, still considered a "homosexual disease"
Read Transcript (Transcript source: AmericanRhetoric.com)
Nelson Mandela, Free at Last, 1994. run time: 2:12 mins Source: YouTube
Context: End of South Africa's "Apartheid"
Read Transcript (Transcript source: University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center)
Elie Wiesel. The Perils of Indifference, 1999. run time: 8:41 Source: AmericanRhetoric.com
Context: Hungarian-born Jewish-American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
Steve Jobs, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, 2005. run time: 15:05 mins Source: YouTube
Context: Stanford University Commencement Address
Read Transcript (Transcript source: Stanford University News)
Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture, 2007 run time: 1 hour 16:27 mins. Source: YouTube
Context: Pausch was a computer programmer at Carnegie Mellon University when in 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
