What today's commemoration of the 50th year since the Selma to Montgomery march means is so clearly embodied in having John Lewis and Barack Obama there on the same stage. We have seen something occur that seemed impossible, a Black POTUS, and a historical event which came from very impossible and dangerous times, both of which still seem omnipresent with the current need to ensure voting rights. In speeches given on nearly the exact spot where he was beaten, Representative John Lewis (D-GA) introduced one product of that struggle as President Barack Obama pointed the way to the future.
In that bloody context of 1965, one can understand still loving this country and with all the patriotic jingoism that comes with it, the good and the bad, the history of genocide and the mass killing of so many wars, within and without. This is a country filled with as much or more bias as anywhere else. What makes it different and even better is that there are some rights available to all that other countries cannot ensure, even more rights, despite the desire of others to disenfranchise others in the name of some poorly understood power, real or imagined. My love for this country is not selective and it is as exceptional as anyone else's nationalism regardless of country, and writing diaries here often takes on that preachiness.
PBO has always tried to adopt the cadence, rhythm, and structure of African American church preaching for these kinds of speeches, much as it was important for all rhetorical tasks in churches of all faiths that were more than a liturgy. The homiletics or sermon writing in African American preaching is a common feature in his speeches some more than others and POTUS's remarks on 7 March 2015 in Selma Alabama are no different.
As a text it's important to look at how PBO closes speeches usually with the same structure as when he's been on the stump of making a series of regional speeches to support a policy initiative. This brief diary is on the closing or peroration of that Selma speech, a commemorative speech that will no doubt endure as one of his major speeches.
Because Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” (Applause.) That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.
Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished, but we’re getting closer. Two hundred and thirty-nine years after this nation’s founding our union is not yet perfect, but we are getting closer. Our job’s easier because somebody already got us through that first mile. Somebody already got us over that bridge. When it feels the road is too hard, when the torch we’ve been passed feels too heavy, we will remember these early travelers, and draw strength from their example, and hold firmly the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on [the] wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.” (Applause.)
We honor those who walked so we could run. We must run so our children soar. And we will not grow weary. For we believe in the power of an awesome God, and we believe in this country’s sacred promise.
May He bless those warriors of justice no longer with us, and bless the United States of America. Thank you, everybody. (Applause.)
This was a well received speech with all the emotion of the occasion including the presence of some of those who were there at the event being commemorated, so witnessing was also built into the message. But it is this echo of this early section that becomes more vibrant in the above closing section:
What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals? (Applause.)
That’s why Selma is not some outlier in the American experience. That’s why it’s not a museum or a static monument to behold from a distance. It is instead the manifestation of a creed written into our founding documents: “We the People…in order to form a more perfect union.” “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” (Applause.)
This early portion gets echoed in the peroration as should all good speeches, after the other message elements: lists of information, commemoration, and policy advocacy. It makes the idea of humans marching as both militant and collective, an elegiac yet celebratory action.
Like Lincoln, certain classical elements of rhetoric as well as the citation of biblical verse and Founders documents are embodied in PBO's style or with respect, his speech writers, although it is clear that unlike his predecessor, he knows more about the relation between a written and a performed text. Seeing GWB there on the stage one wonders whether he could have delivered the same speech - perhaps GWB's best speeches were not commemorative as they were crisis-driven and opportunistically framed.
The style of the Peoria speech (by Lincoln) includes other literary techniques seen in classical rhetoric: for example, sentences with structural parallelism and contrasting ideas (antithesis). Many of the sentences of the last paragraph of section five (again, the peroration of the speech at Springfield) gain impact through the repetition of initial phrasing (anaphora). Lincolnian writers have generated extensive and ongoing publications about his style. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/...
Much historical scholarship will be expended on PBO's speeches, but in this moment it's important to see how the peroration has certain structural elements that ring not only true of church preaching, but of a consistent and memorable style. His not "red state or blue state but a United States of America" message returns in most of his speeches if not explicitly invoked, much to our chagrin seeing a relentless GOP intransigence.
The speech is about an American collective agency, deflecting the individual agency of a presidency or even "hucksters" about which should be written an entire piece in terms of its invocation of Reconstruction as well as the current crop of 'baggers. It closes as it begins, "we", as equal under the law rather than "the project of any one person". As such, "we" exist with collectively owned rights, and yet the "perfect union" of the Constitution has not yet been achieved and of course the invocation of MLK and his speeches ring thoughout, beginning from the first mile and over the bridge leading to the Bible verse and the implication that what sustains any march is the idea of endurance in numbers as one carries a torch of hope and faith. It closes of course on the images of children as soaring eagles and the notion that some higher power might validate that collective effort by the "social justice warriors" that 'baggers so often mock, as though the Founders might not have been so interested in it. This speech signals perhaps the mid-point in a path that will create even as some of us may not live to see it, a very different nation in 2065. Lift every voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring
note how well the peroration is constructed