NPS/N. Johnson
This page is laid out in step by step details so students can follow the steps to register, prepare, and compete successfully in this year's contest. Before you get started, please read the attached guidelines for this year's contest: 2022 Oratorical Contest Guidelines 2022 Oratorical Contest Rules
Step 1: Choose a Speech Choose the Frederick Douglass speech that you want to learn to recite for your performance. This year, students must choose one of the speeches (listed below) selected for the 2022 contest: In addition to the text of the speeches, you will find historical information about the speech, where and when it was given, and other background information or historical links you can go to for more information. Knowing more about the speech and the audience for the speech will help you get into the role of orator for the speech, but may also help you to better understand the possible tone of the speech. For example, the speech "What the Black Man Wants" was delivered in front of an audience at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in April 1865 as the American Civil War was nearing its end. There were many Americans who were worried about the country's future, particularly formerly enslaved African Americans, so you can expect that Frederick Douglass was not giving a light-hearted speech that made people smile or laugh. It was likely a more reflective, serious, and matter-of-fact tone due to the circumstances. Examples of the Frederick Douglass Speeches in ASL
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
Signer Zain Ahmed performs an excerpt of Frederick Douglass' speech, "The Race Problem". Transcript“What the Black Man Wants” Speech by Frederick Douglass, April 1865, Boston, Massachusetts It was begun, I say, in the interest of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North was fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting to retain within those limits; the South fighting for new guarantees, and the North fighting for the old guarantees; —despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro. Yet, the Negro, apparently endowed with wisdom from on high, saw more clearly the end from the beginning than we did. When Seward said the status or no man in the country would be changed by the war, the Negro did not believe him. When our generals sent their underlings in shoulder-straps to hunt the flying Negro back from our lines into the jaws of slavery, from which he had escaped, the Negroes thought that a mistake had been made, and that the intentions of the Government had not been rightly understood by our officers in should-straps, and they continued to come into our lines, threading their way through bogs and fens, over briers and thorns, fording streams, swimming rivers, bringing us tidings as to the safe path to march, and pointing out the dangers that threatened us. They are our only friends in the South, and we should be true to them in this their trail hour, and see to it that they have the elective franchise. I know that we are inferior to you in some things—virtually inferior. We walk about you like dwarfs among giants. Our heads are scarcely seen above the great sea of humanity. The Germans are superior to us; the Irish are superior to us; the Yankees are superior to us; they can do what we cannot, that is, what we have not hitherto been allowed to do: But while I make this admission, I utterly deny, that we are originally or naturally, or practically, or in any way, or in any important sense, inferior to anybody on this globe. This charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions. It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo-Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it. You were down then! You are down now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also. The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for whenever men oppress their fellows, whenever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak it would hardly run downhill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to it's salvation and a part of the “Manifest Destiny” of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government. So, too, when Russia wanted to take possession of a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks were an “inferior race.” So too, when England wants to set the heel of her power more firmly in the quivering heart of old Ireland, the Celts are an “inferior race.” So, too, the Negro, when he is to be robbed of any right which is justly his, is an “inferior man.” It is said that we are ignorant; I admit it. But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote. If he knows as much when he is sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote on good American principles.
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
Signer Tyler Fortson performs an excerpt of Frederick Douglass' speech, "What the Black Man Wants". TranscriptA friendly word to Maryland: A lecture, delivered by Frederick Douglass in Bethel Church ( Baltimore), on the 17th of November, 1864 My friends: This occasion is suggestive of many reminiscences, comparisons, and contrasts — some pleasant, some sad—but all instructive I left the State of Maryland more than a quarter of a century ago, I was then in the full fresh bloom of early manhood, when each sense and faculty of the mind is wide awake, keenly alive and intensely active - not one lick of my hair was tinged by time or sorrow- I was full of the aspirations of youth, and perhaps ambition also. But now though not old, I am not young, and the early frost of winter are already beginning to thicken visibly on my head, And the many fancies of youth have yielded to the disenchanting power of time, and the stern realities of a practical life. Time has, I am glad to see, touched many of you gently. I see a few faces that I saw here thirty years ago, some of them but slightly changed. They are lit up by the same fires that warmed and cheered me in youth, but Alas! I miss from this congregation many who would have been here were they still among the living. But I will not trust myself with the train of thought and feeling which rises in this direction. I rejoice that any of us have been spared to meet again on earth, and especially that we are permitted to meet here on the soil of our birth to meet not as men but as Marylanders, children of Maryland, the land at whose sparkling fountains we first quenched our thirst, - the lands whose fields, when we were hungry, first gave us bread - to meet here, upon our own dear native soil, overspread with the holiest recollections both of joy and sorrow is an high privilege and one never to be forgotten. No speaker, I think, ever appeared before a public assembly, in circumstances more unusual and striking than I do this evening. Had any man told me, four years ago, that I should be here to-night, speaking to a Baltimore audience, I should have thought him about as insane as if he had predicted that I should some day go on a mission to the inhabitants of the moon! You have called upon me to speak, and I have obeyed your call; But what can I say, which will be half so eloquent, commanding or touching, as the thought that now fills every mind and thrills every heart. Even these dumb walls, and this silent air in all their stillness, are full of most eloquent and convincing speech. They whisper to our very inmost souls, that the spirit of liberty has been here, and like the breath of the Almighty, has touched our chains and left them broken. That Maryland is now a glorious Free State, that the revolution is genuine, full and complete, that there need be no doubt of it whatever, on the subject, the fact that I speak here to-night, and you listen, with none to molest, or make us afraid, is a satisfactory attestation, and will be so regarded wherever the fact is known. Among the contrasts suggested by this occasion, is the fact that I left here a slave, a fugitive slave, I return to you a freeman, doubly a freeman; first in that I was by nature born free, and was bought out of slavery by generous friends in England; and now, secondly, by the free constitution which Maryland has just adopted and proclaimed as the law of the State.
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
Signer Rosavetta Jackson performs an excerpt of Frederick Douglass' speech, "A Friendly Word to Maryland". TranscriptWe are here again to congratulate our brethren of the British West Indies upon their peaceful disenthrallment, and to tender them the assurance that we the oppressed, and our friends in the United States generally, watch with the deepest interest their career in the new life upon which they have entered. We are here to acknowledge and manifest our gratitude to God, the giver of every good and perfect gift , for the merciful deliv-ance of that people. We are here, too, to bless the memory of the noble men, through whose wise, unwearied, and disinterested labors this grand result was wrought out, and to hold up their pure and generous example for admiration and imitation throughout the world. But above all our profoundest wish, our interested desire, our chiefest aim, is to make this ever memorable day in some small measure the means of awakening a deeper interest in the cause of the fettered millions in our own land. We think nothing unreasonable to ask the citizens of this Republic to be as true to liberty, to be as just, as generous, and as Christian like all the subjects of the British Monarchy have shown themselves to be in this great act of Emancipation. How long may we ask, shall it be the standing reproach and shame of the American Government that while England is exerting it's mighty power, and her all-pervading influence, to emancipate mankind from Slavery, and to humanize the world, the American government is taxing it's ingenuity, and putting forth it's power, to thwart and circumvent this policy of a great and kindred nation? Only a few weeks ago the American people were placed in a most disgraceful and revolting position. We were made the patrons of pirates, the protectors of the vilest band of robbers and murders which the sea ever floated-. -I mean the slave traders of the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight. Our Government virtually gave notice not merely to slave trader, but to all manner of sea pirates that the American flag is broad enough to cover them all, and that the American arm is strong enough to defend them all. Mr. Buchanan virtually gave notice to all the Spanish, American and Portuguese stealers of men that they have only to run up the Stars and Stripes, when pursued by an honest man-of-war, to be safe from pursuit. The American flag would shield them, if loaded to the gunwales with human flesh for Cuba and Texas. Talk about the laws of nations - talk about the freedom of the seas the rights of of independent nations! Who does not know that this is all a refuge of lies? Who believes that our opposition to the exercise of the right of visit by England arises mainly out of our respect for our he law of nations, or our regard for the freedom of the seas? Who is there so dull in the discernment of motives of State, as not to know that the real explanation of our belligerent assertion of the freedom of the seas - our opposition to the right of visit, is that England is an Anti-Slavery nation while we are a slave holding and slave-trading nation? But for this, the men-of-we of both nations would move as fraternally to the Gulf of Mexico to put down the Slave-trade, as the Niagara and Agamemnon proceeded to the middle of the Atlantic to lay down the electric wire. A slave holding Government cannot consistently oppose the Slave-trade; it is the logical and legitimate deduction of Slavery and the one is as hateful as the other. They are twin monsters, both hatched in the same polluted nest. Slavery and the Slave trade together constitute what the pure-minded and pious- hearted John Wesley denominated the sum of all villainies. But to return. I rejoice to see before me white people as well as colored people to-day; for though this is our day peculiarly, it is not our day exclusively. The great truths we here recognize, the great facts we here exhibit, and the great principles which truth and fact alike establish, are world-wide in their application, and belong to no color, class or clime. They are the common property of the whole human family. The complaint is, you are aware, that certain great estates which were once prosperous and flourishing, have greatly declined since the abolition of Slavery. I do not dispute the fact; all, or nearly all that is alleged at this point, may be freely admitted, but I deny that the failure of these estates proves emancipation to be a failure. On the contrary, they prove that a new order of thing adapted to a state of freedom is indispensable to the growth and prosperity of these Islands. It is no proof that the people of Egypt are not as well off now as they were in the days of the Pharaohs, because no more pyramids are seen rising to meet the Eastern sky. It is no proof that the people of England are not as well off now as they were in the feudal ages, because huge castles with towers and turrets, walls and battlements, are not seen rising in different parts of the British Islands. It is no proof either that Britain is declining because most of those old piles, belonging to a semi barbarous age are fast crumbling to ruin. So neither is it any proof that the West Indies are declining because the old plantation system of other days is giving place to small farms as is the case in Jamaica and elsewhere.
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
Signer Diego Guerra performs an excerpt of Frederick Douglass' speech, "Freedom in the West Indies"
Step 2: Complete the Application Click here to complete the 2022 Frederick Douglass Oratorical Contest Application between October 7th and November 14th. The deadline has been extended to November 22nd. If you have any questions or concerns, email DouglassNHS@nps.gov.
Step 3: Memorize and Practice Memorizing and practicing your speech is key to being an effective orator. Here are a few helpful links for learning how to memorize the lines from the Douglass speech you've selected. 17 Ways to Quickly Memorize Lines 6 Simple Tips for Memorizing Lines Other Tips for public speaking Schooled by Kids: Presentation Skills, Part 1 Schooled by Kids: Presentation Skills, Part 2 You can also get tips from "The Columbian Orator", a classic lesson book that Frederick Douglass used when he learned how to give speeches. Another helpful way to learn is to watch others give talks or speeches. You can look online for speakers (like President Barack Obama) who are known for giving powerful speeches or watch a few TedTalks. When you watch these speeches or TedTalks, notice how the speaker uses body language, movement, emphasis, eye contact . . . Here is an example of a TedTalk from a very engaging speaker: Making Education Accessible to Deaf Children The "Podium Points" series can help to teach you different aspects of great oratory. In the videos below, Thembi Duncan (a master from Ford's Theatre) and students from Oyster-Adams Bilingual School guide you through the physical, verbal, and mental skills of oratory. They also give you tips on how to practice your oratory with others.
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
Overview of the physical points of good oration.
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
The vocal aspects of good oratory.
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
How to give and receive feedback.
Visit our keyboard shortcuts docs for details
Preparing for the big day.
Step 4: How you will be rated by the judges Want to get an idea of how the judges will evaluate your speech?
Step 5: Look for an acceptance email from the park Acceptance letters will be sent via email by Friday, November 18th. |
Last updated: November 18, 2022