Mine is LBJ's 3/15/65 address to a joint session of Congress and the American people on the Voting Rights Act, also called "The 'We Shall Overcome' Speech."
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. I urge every member of both parties, Americans of all Religions and of all colors, from every section of this country, to join me in that cause...
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain and the hyms and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majexty of this great government...our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man...
There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States'Rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights...
My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. And they knew, even in their youth, the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.
And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child. I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.
But now I have that chance--and I'll let you in on a secret--I mean to use it...
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/lbjweshallovercome.htmWhat are your favorites? and if possible provide a link.
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