Say It Plain is a vivid, moving portrait of how black Americans have sounded the charge against injustice, exhorting the country to live up to its democratic principles. In "full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), this unique anthology collects the transcribed speeches of the twentieth century's leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures, many of them never before available in printed form. From an 1895 speech by Booker T. Washington to Julian Bond's harp assessment of school segregation on the fiftieth anniversary of.;PREFACE; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; INTRODUCTION; 1. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856-1915); 2. MARCUS GARVEY (1887-1940); 3. MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE (1875-1955); 4. WALTER WHITE (1893-1955); 5. CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON (1895-1950); 6. THURGOOD MARSHALL (1908-1993); 7. HOWARD THURMAN (1899-1981); 8. DICK GREGORY (1932- ); 9. FANNIE LOU HAMER (1917-1977); 10. STOKELY CARMICHAEL (1941-1998); 11. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. (1929-1968); 12. JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN (1915- ); 13. SHIRLEY CHISHOLM (1924- ); 14. BARBARA JORDAN (1936-1996); 15. BENJAMIN L. HOOKS (1925- ); 16. JOSEPH LOWERY (1924- ).