Speech and Rhetoric Database
- American Rhetoric’s website
This is an amazing clearinghouse of famous American speeches. It includes text, and, when possible, audio and video. It has a searchable database as well as categories, including 100 Greatest American Political Speeches of the 20th Century and Top 100 by Women.
This isn’t just for political speeches. For instance, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell to Baseball is included here.
I think this website’s greatest weakness is that it doesn’t provide context for the speeches. So, either you have to give the context in class, or have the students research the context.
- Blackpast.org
Blackpast.org is dedicated to the African-American experience. It includes sections on primary documents, speeches, historic Black churches, important people and important places in African American history.
Another section on the website, deals with Global African culture and history. It also includes a section on speeches.
These sections have organized the speeches in chronological order, but they are tagged, so they’re searchable. The speeches are all text, no links to audio or video. Also, not all the speeches are by people of color. For instance, the first speech in the African-American speeches is about the evils of slavery by founding father, Gouverneur Morris.
This website hasn’t been updated for a few years now, but it still is a great resource. Thus course could be used in all sorts of classes, from communication studies to political science to Africana Studies.
- Gifts of Speech: Women’s Speeches from Around the World
This site has a searchable database of speeches given by women from 1848-2009. Sadly, it stopped updating a few years ago, so it doesn’t have contemporary speeches, but it still is a great resource. It has voices from across the political spectrum as well.
Many of these speeches are well known, but looking at the lesser-known ones is also useful, This website would be useful in a variety of classrooms, including speech and rhetoric courses, political science and history, and Women’s Studies.
However, the links to the speeches only provide texts. Now, this makes sense with many of the historical speeches, but having video or audio for the speeches where it’s possible would be nice.
- Queer Rhetoric
This site has a searchable database of speeches on LGBT+ issues. It also has the speeches in the database sorted by categories. Some of the speeches here are NSFW, so if you use this database in class, you need to let your students know that’s the case. This is another database that is no longer being updated, I think, but the speeches here are still worth studying.
Although all the speeches are about LGBT+ issues, not all the speeches are given by members of the LGBT+ community. For instance, the transcript of Mary K. Fisher’s A Whisper of AIDS is here, as are speeches by both former Sec. of State Hilary Rodham Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
This site also has a selection of links to other LGBT+ archives and websites.
Unfortunately, this site doesn’t include audio or video of these speeches (though it will link to some of them), nor does it provide much context except for where and when the speech took place.
- Abraham Lincoln online
Abraham Lincoln is the best speechwriter to hold the presidency. This is an overview of some of his greatest works. It includes letters, other writing, and some of his most well-known speeches, including his First and Second Inaugural Addresses, the Cooper-Union Speech, and the Gettysburg Address.
Among the other important texts on this site are The Emancipation Proclamation and The Thanksgiving Proclamation, which established Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
In fairness, I am a bit of a presidential history geek (among many other things I am geeky about). Here is a map I made of some of Lincoln’s speeches
- Winston Churchill speeches
Even though we associate Churchill with his leadership in World War II, Churchill’s career spanned decades from the dawn of the 20th Century to the 1950’s. This was a time of great upheaval, and these speeches give a window into that period.
This site has a collection of Churchill’s most famous speeches and letters. It even includes a poem he wrote about the influenza in the late 19th century. The last entry on this website isn’t one of Churchill’s speeches or letters, rather, it is JFK’s speech conferring honorary American citizenship on Churchill. While the texts are here in full, the site only provides audio snippets of some of the speeches, so you may to have to search YouTube or other sites for those recordings.
- FDR Library
The FDR Presidential Library’s online presence is here. It not only houses archival documents of all kinds about FDR, who was probably the most significant American president of the 20th century, but also about his wife, Eleanor, who was probably the most important of the modern First Ladies.
Eleanor Roosevelt was an ambassador to the UN and an activist in her own right. She traveled around the country because FDR really couldn’t, so she was his eyes and ears. Further, after WWII, she was an American Ambassador to the United Nations, where she was the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, later, a civil rights activist.
Just about any course dealing with 20th century history or politics could use this website. In many ways the FDR administration changed the relationship between the federal government and the people, and that can be explored here.
The amount of information here is staggering: this site has many audio files, and some film footage, along with the texts.
- Presidential Rhetoric
Even though I don’t think this has been updated since Obama left office, it remains a valuable resource for American history, political science, and American rhetoric.
The first tab here, “Current Speeches” highlights speeches from the Obama administration, but also has links to speeches from the Bush presidency and the 2008 and 2012 elections.
The “Historical Speeches” tab includes transcripts of all the Inaugural Addresses through the George W. Bush administration and the State of the Union addresses through the Lincoln Administration.
The “Presidents” tab lists all the presidents up to George W. Bush with links to resources about their lives and their presidencies.
The “Archives” tab links to various presidential libraries.
While the transcripts for all these speeches are here, no links to audio or video or provided. Granted, many of these speeches wouldn’t have those anyway.
- Radio Diaries
Radio Diaries is a website dedicated to presenting and preserving oral history. Many of the recordings are fascinating. This would be a great resource for helping students with self-disclosure speeches or for research for history or media classes. Even those thinking about podcasting would find this website useful because it provides some really great examples.
The site is divided into three main categories: diaries, portraits, and history. The diaries are people with a recording device talking about their lives. The portraits section discusses (in the website’s words) “Extraordinary stories from ordinary places”, so it talks to people about living in unusual circumstances. Finally, the history section presents oral histories, both of important occurrences, and less well-documented ones.
The items here can give another view of important historical times, because we tend to focus on the decision makers more than the “common people”. This site can help balance that.
The recordings here aren’t speeches, but you can think of them as interviews or documentaries. You could also use this site as examples for podcasting.
- The National Congress of American Indians Testimony and Speeches Site
The National Congress of American Indians is an organization dedicated to lobbying for the Native American population in the United States. This site really is about the contemporary political struggles of Native Americans and this particular page contains transcripts of speeches and testimony (usually before state or federal legislatures).
This website also includes sections on policy issues, resources, initiatives, news, and native youth.
If you want to discuss contemporary Native American issues, this site is a good place to start. Any type of cultural studies or intercultural studies would find this website a great resource.
However, while it includes transcripts, this site doesn’t have video or audio of their speeches/testimony
- Archive for the Documents of the Nuremberg Trials
Like The National Congress of American Indians website, this isn’t a collection of speeches. It is, however, an archive of the documents of the Nuremberg Trials. It includes trial transcripts, evidence, and many other things, that not just shed light on the horrors of the Nazi regime but also how the concept of crimes against humanity develop.
The main page has a search bar and a few tabs to help navigate the website.
The “trials” tab takes you to a document from one of the trials, but not a list of the trials or the documents associated with them. On the day I clicked on this tab, a discussion of the Doctor’s Trials (from 1946-47) was on this page.
The documents tab gives an overview of the structure of the documents and the methods of organization. It discusses the different parts of each document, such as author, date, and language. Also, it brings up the difference between trial and evidence documents.
However, this is all transcripts. Or if there is audio, I have not come across it.
This website would be useful in a variety of courses, from political science, to history, to rhetoric. Of course, you have to be careful with this site. It discusses the Holocaust, of course, and has transcripts of testimonies on medical experiments done on prisoners during the Holocaust, so trigger warnings are necessary. An instructor might want to take a dive into this site on their own before assigning it for a class.
- Academy Awards Acceptance Speeches
This is a searchable database of Academy Award Acceptance Speeches on the official website for the Academy Awards.
These are normally very short speeches and are of a different tone than most of the other speeches on this list. Many of these speeches are good examples of special occasion speeches. This would work in an Intro to Communication Studies class or a Public Speaking class if you wanted to show students how to give a speech when you have a short amount of time.
The database is searchable from several different angles, including name of the person, the award they won, the movie they won for, and the year.
These speeches are also usually happy, joyful speeches, and I think it’s important to have that kind of a resource. It is easy to be serious and somber when we teach, so having a less serious website to explore would be a nice break for both the students and the instructor.
- Story Corps
Story Corps is a collection of interviews between people who share personal stories. It is a wonderful resource on multiple levels. It collects stories from people’s lives. An instructor could use these as examples for how to structure an interview or as examples for their own classroom story corps project.
This can be used in a wide variety of courses. It could be used as a jumping off point for projects in a variety of language and speech courses, including any conversation course, introduction to communication studies, and interpersonal communication, among others. The recordings come with transcripts, so that they could be used for listening comprehension in ESL courses.
The database is searchable by location of the interview, by type of story under the collection tab, and by date. There is also a search bar where you can search by name or other criteria.
This is an amazing clearinghouse of famous American speeches. It includes text, and, when possible, audio and video. It has a searchable database as well as categories, including 100 Greatest American Political Speeches of the 20th Century and Top 100 by Women.
This isn’t just for political speeches. For instance, Lou Gehrig’s Farewell to Baseball is included here.
I think this website’s greatest weakness is that it doesn’t provide context for the speeches. So, either you have to give the context in class, or have the students research the context.
Blackpast.org is dedicated to the African-American experience. It includes sections on primary documents, speeches, historic Black churches, important people and important places in African American history.
Another section on the website, deals with Global African culture and history. It also includes a section on speeches.
These sections have organized the speeches in chronological order, but they are tagged, so they’re searchable. The speeches are all text, no links to audio or video. Also, not all the speeches are by people of color. For instance, the first speech in the African-American speeches is about the evils of slavery by founding father, Gouverneur Morris.
This website hasn’t been updated for a few years now, but it still is a great resource. Thus course could be used in all sorts of classes, from communication studies to political science to Africana Studies.
This site has a searchable database of speeches given by women from 1848-2009. Sadly, it stopped updating a few years ago, so it doesn’t have contemporary speeches, but it still is a great resource. It has voices from across the political spectrum as well.
Many of these speeches are well known, but looking at the lesser-known ones is also useful, This website would be useful in a variety of classrooms, including speech and rhetoric courses, political science and history, and Women’s Studies.
However, the links to the speeches only provide texts. Now, this makes sense with many of the historical speeches, but having video or audio for the speeches where it’s possible would be nice.
This site has a searchable database of speeches on LGBT+ issues. It also has the speeches in the database sorted by categories. Some of the speeches here are NSFW, so if you use this database in class, you need to let your students know that’s the case. This is another database that is no longer being updated, I think, but the speeches here are still worth studying.
Although all the speeches are about LGBT+ issues, not all the speeches are given by members of the LGBT+ community. For instance, the transcript of Mary K. Fisher’s A Whisper of AIDS is here, as are speeches by both former Sec. of State Hilary Rodham Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
This site also has a selection of links to other LGBT+ archives and websites.
Unfortunately, this site doesn’t include audio or video of these speeches (though it will link to some of them), nor does it provide much context except for where and when the speech took place.
Abraham Lincoln is the best speechwriter to hold the presidency. This is an overview of some of his greatest works. It includes letters, other writing, and some of his most well-known speeches, including his First and Second Inaugural Addresses, the Cooper-Union Speech, and the Gettysburg Address.
Among the other important texts on this site are The Emancipation Proclamation and The Thanksgiving Proclamation, which established Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
In fairness, I am a bit of a presidential history geek (among many other things I am geeky about). Here is a map I made of some of Lincoln’s speeches
Even though we associate Churchill with his leadership in World War II, Churchill’s career spanned decades from the dawn of the 20th Century to the 1950’s. This was a time of great upheaval, and these speeches give a window into that period.
This site has a collection of Churchill’s most famous speeches and letters. It even includes a poem he wrote about the influenza in the late 19th century. The last entry on this website isn’t one of Churchill’s speeches or letters, rather, it is JFK’s speech conferring honorary American citizenship on Churchill. While the texts are here in full, the site only provides audio snippets of some of the speeches, so you may to have to search YouTube or other sites for those recordings.
The FDR Presidential Library’s online presence is here. It not only houses archival documents of all kinds about FDR, who was probably the most significant American president of the 20th century, but also about his wife, Eleanor, who was probably the most important of the modern First Ladies.
Eleanor Roosevelt was an ambassador to the UN and an activist in her own right. She traveled around the country because FDR really couldn’t, so she was his eyes and ears. Further, after WWII, she was an American Ambassador to the United Nations, where she was the driving force behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, later, a civil rights activist.
Just about any course dealing with 20th century history or politics could use this website. In many ways the FDR administration changed the relationship between the federal government and the people, and that can be explored here.
The amount of information here is staggering: this site has many audio files, and some film footage, along with the texts.
Even though I don’t think this has been updated since Obama left office, it remains a valuable resource for American history, political science, and American rhetoric.
The first tab here, “Current Speeches” highlights speeches from the Obama administration, but also has links to speeches from the Bush presidency and the 2008 and 2012 elections.
The “Historical Speeches” tab includes transcripts of all the Inaugural Addresses through the George W. Bush administration and the State of the Union addresses through the Lincoln Administration.
The “Presidents” tab lists all the presidents up to George W. Bush with links to resources about their lives and their presidencies.
The “Archives” tab links to various presidential libraries.
While the transcripts for all these speeches are here, no links to audio or video or provided. Granted, many of these speeches wouldn’t have those anyway.
Radio Diaries is a website dedicated to presenting and preserving oral history. Many of the recordings are fascinating. This would be a great resource for helping students with self-disclosure speeches or for research for history or media classes. Even those thinking about podcasting would find this website useful because it provides some really great examples.
The site is divided into three main categories: diaries, portraits, and history. The diaries are people with a recording device talking about their lives. The portraits section discusses (in the website’s words) “Extraordinary stories from ordinary places”, so it talks to people about living in unusual circumstances. Finally, the history section presents oral histories, both of important occurrences, and less well-documented ones.
The items here can give another view of important historical times, because we tend to focus on the decision makers more than the “common people”. This site can help balance that.
The recordings here aren’t speeches, but you can think of them as interviews or documentaries. You could also use this site as examples for podcasting.
The National Congress of American Indians is an organization dedicated to lobbying for the Native American population in the United States. This site really is about the contemporary political struggles of Native Americans and this particular page contains transcripts of speeches and testimony (usually before state or federal legislatures).
This website also includes sections on policy issues, resources, initiatives, news, and native youth.
If you want to discuss contemporary Native American issues, this site is a good place to start. Any type of cultural studies or intercultural studies would find this website a great resource.
However, while it includes transcripts, this site doesn’t have video or audio of their speeches/testimony
Like The National Congress of American Indians website, this isn’t a collection of speeches. It is, however, an archive of the documents of the Nuremberg Trials. It includes trial transcripts, evidence, and many other things, that not just shed light on the horrors of the Nazi regime but also how the concept of crimes against humanity develop.
The main page has a search bar and a few tabs to help navigate the website.
The “trials” tab takes you to a document from one of the trials, but not a list of the trials or the documents associated with them. On the day I clicked on this tab, a discussion of the Doctor’s Trials (from 1946-47) was on this page.
The documents tab gives an overview of the structure of the documents and the methods of organization. It discusses the different parts of each document, such as author, date, and language. Also, it brings up the difference between trial and evidence documents.
However, this is all transcripts. Or if there is audio, I have not come across it.
This website would be useful in a variety of courses, from political science, to history, to rhetoric. Of course, you have to be careful with this site. It discusses the Holocaust, of course, and has transcripts of testimonies on medical experiments done on prisoners during the Holocaust, so trigger warnings are necessary. An instructor might want to take a dive into this site on their own before assigning it for a class.
This is a searchable database of Academy Award Acceptance Speeches on the official website for the Academy Awards.
These are normally very short speeches and are of a different tone than most of the other speeches on this list. Many of these speeches are good examples of special occasion speeches. This would work in an Intro to Communication Studies class or a Public Speaking class if you wanted to show students how to give a speech when you have a short amount of time.
The database is searchable from several different angles, including name of the person, the award they won, the movie they won for, and the year.
These speeches are also usually happy, joyful speeches, and I think it’s important to have that kind of a resource. It is easy to be serious and somber when we teach, so having a less serious website to explore would be a nice break for both the students and the instructor.
Story Corps is a collection of interviews between people who share personal stories. It is a wonderful resource on multiple levels. It collects stories from people’s lives. An instructor could use these as examples for how to structure an interview or as examples for their own classroom story corps project.
This can be used in a wide variety of courses. It could be used as a jumping off point for projects in a variety of language and speech courses, including any conversation course, introduction to communication studies, and interpersonal communication, among others. The recordings come with transcripts, so that they could be used for listening comprehension in ESL courses.
The database is searchable by location of the interview, by type of story under the collection tab, and by date. There is also a search bar where you can search by name or other criteria.
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