On in the kitchen. Thank you julia. Thank you, naren. And thanks, all of you for coming. Okay, so books available. We have we have a lot of books on amazon and find naren whos going to facilitate that tonight. Thank you you aim really excits event. This book feels a very, very big blank in the story of this country. And its a really important book for that reason. Its called speaking while female, 75 extraordinary speeches by american women and its surprise that donna rubin is the one who produced it. Ive known you for as we have friends in common. Weve known each other for many, many weve had some similar career paths. But its great to have you here in this. And you came and spoke to my group about new york city, about ten years ago. I remember that. Yes, i do that. And we have some other i just say we have some inhouse speechwriting celebrities here. Three of my former colleagues or a couple of my colleagues on white house, jeff shesol, tom bossert and paul orzulak are sitting in the back. Theyre three guys who came to this to hear about womens speeches. You guys are great. They also to be extraordinarily talented speechwriters. So they can give you a lot more tips than i could. Im sure so don, a former journalist, shes also a former speechwriter. Shes now a consultant, helped, writes and speaks about thought leadership. Shes very committed to figuring out ways to cultivate Diverse Voices those voices into the public sphere one of her big missions is to ensure that women feel comfortable find ways to speak and platforms speak and also have their voices and opinions heard as part of the ongoing public dialog in this country, which sadly, even to this day does happen often enough. The book actually is just a piece of a much bigger broader project, which is to to bring womens voices to the public sphere in a number of different ways. Theres a book which is an anthology, as i said, of 75 speeches. She has what she calls the speaking while females speech bank, which is exactly what it sounds like. It is a repository by genre, by speaker, by i mean, its its huge repository of speeches by women and shes adding to it all the time. Its incredible its really worth looking at on online and am i missing anything. I dont think so. That was very comprehensive. Well, there we go. So anyway, thats that. And i just want to say that, as i said at the outset, this is this is just a really important book. You know, the history this country is, in fact, often the his story of this country and its time that its also her story. And this book is helping us get. So thank you so much for putting this collection together is amazing and also for being here tonight. I really appreciate it what a beautiful introduction. Thank you. I love hearing you describe it. Yeah, i took. Oh, i should say one other thing i it truth and advertise. Why am i moderating tonight. Well like to moderate because im coowner of the store so its fun and i enjoy it but i have a real special, deep, profound and concern about this issue. I care about issue because i also, as a former, i was a journalist, too, but i was a speechwriter for one of the people who has a speech in your collection, Hillary Rodham clinton. So i have a deep in the subject, and im just so glad that you are bringing all voices, especially the lesser voices, to people like all of you and to hopefully many, many more people, professors and universities and classes are contacting you because theres such a dearth knowledge about womens voices and women, womens experiences, and then talking it. So thats that for me. So why dont we get started . Lets just start with the basics. What led you to do this collection . Well, it became obvious to me that it was necessary, but how did that happen for one thing is i do a lot of speech coaching and i lead classes and workshop and i would always ask the attendee is the students sometimes as students what fame as women speakers in history do know about. And i would out and see a sea of blank faces sometimes. Times they would mention is adjourned or truth maybe. Elizabeth cady stanton or Susan B Anthony more. They would say Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton, but aside from that, nobody i mean, they just no knowledge at all that. Women have been speaking in American History. But if i would say what male speakers, do you know about . Well, practically any student would know Patrick Henry or, abe lincoln or Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther king jr or john kennedy or rfk or. Ronald reagan or barack obama. I mean, they just can rattle off the names of these men and they associate the act of oratory, the act of rhetorical discourse with, male activity and started to really started bother me. It got under my skin. I my skin i guess you could say i got kind of angry about it. And and as we know, anger is a motivator. And the other is i also judge speech contests, speech writing contests. And i cant tell you how many times ive seen quotes by winston churchill. Now, we all know we all know that he knew he was the hero of second world war, world war two, his rhetoric was for the ages. But really, i mean, even in speeches had nothing to do with his time and period. Always speeches by churchill thought, where are all the women . So you had this question and then you had to answer it, which isnt necessarily easy because theyre unlike men. Women speeches have not always been recorded. But and you were trying to cover for years of women speaking or making their voices heard. Theyre actually not always speeches which we discover in this collection. So where did you start . How did you end up with five y 75 . How many did have to call it down from . Seems like such a Herculean Task . Thats ten questions. Lisa okay. Well, okay, i know you can answer. So i started by looking at other speech anthologies and because im such a something of a completionist, i started collecting them then i just couldnt stop. I bought and i bought and i bought and i would look at them and i would open them up to the table of contents and. I would see almost no speeches by women. Most of them, in fact, had no speeches by women. But nevertheless, i got very good at buying. I bought old ones. I bought new ones and all i bought about 230 speech anthologies. There were that many speeches and these are only ones in the english language. And then i made a big infographic you can see it on the website and its its called how the history of speech forgot about womens speech forgot about womens speech. And i forgot is really its sarcastic, of course, because no one just forgets about something. Its a you know, its a process or result of a number of influences or a number of circumstances. But the bottom line is that they just care. They didnt care what women had to say. Women were speaking. You said not just speeches. Theyre speeches. Theyre addresses theyre testimony often in a courtroom their legacy is, you know, speeches in the halls of congress. Theyre all spoken some eulogies and sermons, a house of worship, but theyre all speech words and women been doing it for over 400 years. And the anthology did not collect them. The anthologies did not do the work of digging to see that the that they existed in more or less. They just reinvented the wheel over and over and over again the same old speeches the same collections over and over. And it really frustrated me and i felt like it was i felt as if it were in to the women who had spoken out and had made an impact with their words. And it also was a misrepresentation. Our history. Yeah, definitely of the above. And you know, seems like it was sort of required the skill of a kind anthropologist archeologist and journalist to figure out where to go to find some of these. Because you there were a number of different kinds of officials sources, but werent there also sources . Yeah, well, there are all kinds of sources. I mean, first of all, to be to be clear, the process i was able to engage in was enhanced. In fact, you could say made possible by the digitization that took place beginning in the early 2000s. And that was a huge boon to me. All kinds of old journals, old newspapers became available to all kinds of scholars and researchers that just it would be impossible to track down otherwise youd be schlepping from library to library, to archive to archive. So that was a big boon to me. Most would say most of the research i did online, but id have visited archives. I have gone through the dusty old papers and files and i was just determined to find diverse. Thats really important that to emphasize that this book represents the richness of variety the different kinds of voices that make up this this thing we call voice. So there are women of classes and all backgrounds, all races, different religions, different of view across the spectrum. I really worked hard to to make collection both to and throughout the speech back online. And this collection representative of the possible diversity and would say even cacophony of possible. And there are a lot of times that opinions of voices clash this one with one another. People have differing opinions. And i think thats extremely healthy. I welcome that. I love showing people that women have different points of view about. Every single and every issue that women spoke out about, their women who argued them and had a different point of view and. I think thats what thats the foundation of our democracy. Thats that should be the character of our national discourse. And so im proud that thats reflected in the book. Yeah, and well follow in a sec with the range of. I mean professions were of work careers in quotes in some cases that these have were represented in book. Its vast, its you forget that women were doing that many kinds of things over these 400 years. Right. And i made sure to represent women from all classes not just educated upper class women of course, obviously not just white women, but women of all classes. Women who didnt even have werent even literate in the class in the traditional sense. So that was really an objective of mine. And i feel very sad aside that that thats reflected there. Yeah, very much so. Just, i just want to go back to one thing you said earlier in terms of the official records of women and you know, womens history wasnt regarded as important or necessary. So you have to dig around to find even records and even transcripts or documentation of what women were saying. I just want to say and jeff, you i dont think out the white house until after this had rectified but when i started in 1993, there were no people transcribing Hillary Clintons speeches. The white house stenographers did not transfer by a first lady speeches. Now, let me remind you that at that time, clinton had been put in charge of reforming one seventh of the nations economy, the health care system, and yet somehow, whatever said about that was not worth valuable time of the white house stenographers to transcribe what she said. And so a small little coterie of you know young, unpaid interns who were working at bars at night to make to be able to pay the rent, would come in and transcribe these things. And that stayed the case for a few years until, you know, enough people the stink about it that we finally got her her speech is transcribed its kind of insane when you really stop and think about it. Well, you know i point out in the introduction to the book, if a woman was speaking, a woman spoke, if an editor of a newspaper was almost always a man. There were a few, with a few exceptions, almost a man. If that person didnt elect, not to send a journalist to cover that, or if there was no stenographer, it was a conference. If there was a stenographer writing with that woman said, then her words not recorded. If her words were not recorded, then she wouldnt be or a journalist didnt write them down. She wouldnt be quoted in the next days paper if she wasnt quoted in the next days paper, she wouldnt appear in other speeches. Comments wouldnt get disseminated in our discourse. And of course she wouldnt end up in the anthology books or the history. So, you know, there is a chain, an information chain, and there are gatekeepers all along way. And those gatekeepers for very long time in our history, did not think what women had say mattered. Yeah. And i to say that as much progress as weve made, its still a challenge and well get to that in a second. You you know, you made the point to me when i first receive the galley of books a while back that, you dont really have to read this book cover to, cover. Its not its not a narrative per se. Its a collection of and yet i sort of did try to go through it chronologically and i found that really interesting in the sense of, first of all, oh my god, how far have we not come so . Many of the issues are the same. So many of the of the challenges are the same for women. So many of the ways that these are being articulated are the same. So there is continuum. I think one of the points youve made is that that, you know, each speech builds to the next speech. To the next speech. Can you talk that a little bit . The story, historical arc . Well, i think its in a kind of funny way. It is a book of speeches. And speeches are at the center, the project. But in a funny if you just read the introductions and dont even bother with the speeches you really get the the sweep of history the sweep of American History and you see that at every critical juncture, every historical point women were speaking. Were you also see an increase of access and increase of authority and increase of reach, you might say, for their ideas. But you start out in the beginning when women were at the you know, were completely at the at the mercy subject is subjected to domination by male and the progress see is the progress that parallels the progress that women have made in this country. And so i find its a very heartening story. You to the end and you feel an enormous sense of of in the progress, in the arc of the progress. But you also come away with a sense of enormous obligation debt to the women. At the beginning, you realize that the only reason that we here today that all of us can speak and have our voices heard and matter is because these women did it earlier. So, i mean, thats true of all history. Thats why we learn history because we a greater appreciation for how we got to be we are today. But its especially true in, you know, in this little niche of niche, which is the womens voices. Well, you know, theres something that was almost counterintuitive to me in this and its not really but it sort of felt that way going through the biographies and the speeches themselves and that on the one hand, you i mean, im a speechwriter. Ive spent a lot of my life is i had not heard of a of these women of the 75 i didnt know about speeches, which tells you something. And i dont think its because i dont care. I think its because there was no place to access them, they werent widely disseminated. And so going the anthology, you do realize, god, women have been speaking out for a long time in a lot of venues and a lot of ways and very forcefully at great risk to themselves thats the one hand but on the other hand we dont know what we we dont know about them. So its a weird kind of counterintuitive thing. And youre saying its because people havent paid attention to them. Yes. Yes. And my deepest hope is that this book will be a catalyst for an integral nation of these womens voices into the curricula, into the courses, into the history, into the civics classes, into the american classes, and also into read a study rhetoric. What is it, the study of, when ministers or preachers learn, what is that word when they learn how to gives analytics, right . How melodic . So i know im very close with a friend who teaches her analytics. I think these speeches be an example for women in all those fields and it should be kind of an adjunct to the traditional history books that have left out women altogether. So yes, on the one hand, its a heartening story. On the other, it is kind of appalling that when see the extent of the omission. So forgive me all you for a little selfpromotion here, but im working on a book at the moment that actually has a little to do with this in the sense that its really about happens to women when they do assert voices in a and try to claim power in. A traditional domain of male political power. In my case, its about Hillary Clinton, the women around her in the white house in her term as first lady and. I think some of you probably remember what happened to her when she tried to do things and out of line and did things differently. And it wasnt all very pretty. And that has happened to a lot of women over time. So women have taken great risks to speak out. And there are a of examples of, not just name you nasty. I mean, we all know about nasty name calling in the political sphere all well in the last few years, but nasty name calling, vitriol, a lot of sort of sexualizing women, turning them into men, you know, they must be like men if they speak out a lot. Comments. And this happened to hillary, the time about their voice, i think i forget whether it was Angelina Graham kay or one of the the speeches in your book, the speaker was criticized for the hurt, the quality and tone of her voice. And then finally, by the way, agreeing to that would have been 1860s, 1860s. Yeah. So even then women, you know, if they spoke out, they had, you know, a nasty voice, an angry voice, an aggressive voice, whatever it was but but there was also violence directed them. And i think its important to think that in the current moment. Well, absolutely. I mean, there was nastiness of all sorts. There were projectiles hurled at them. You know, one time fanny wright was giving a speech and somebody turned out the gas and the hall was plunged darkness. Angelina grim, when she spoke at pennsylvania hall, there were rocks. She was speaking to a a mixed audience, black white audience. And she was talking about abolition, which was antislavery which was extremely controversial. And. In 1848, 1848, and there were rocks hurled at the beginning at the windows and, they were chased out of the building. And the next day the building was burned down, burned to the ground. Lets see. Oh, theres a famous story about sojourner truth. One time she was speaking, and like you said, they used to call it, are you a man . Are you a man . And she just ripped open her blouse. No, shes not a man. And then lets see, i was thinking of another story. Kristen bell pankhurst was giving a speech one time in birmingham and someone threw a dead mouse at her. I collect these stories. Theyre all women. Room key had a water hose fired right through a window or something. Right. The daughter writes about thats a famous story. Yeah there was was speaking was the dead of winter and broke the window behind her and poured water over her and her daughter writes that she just took her shell shawl and her shawl more tightly around her shoulders went on with her speech. I its you know, its easy to overstate what all of that means. But right now. Were in a moment in this country where, violence against women is not a trivial. It just isnt. And to see the sort of historical precedents and the fact that were dealing with it, you also have book banning. You know, Margaret Sangers and book banning, and youve got climate activism in, systemic racism, all the topics of today that sort of seminal are covered at point in our history by these women who were courageous enough to speak out and. Im wondering if, in a sense, well, first of all, how did you winnow this down to 75 and why 75 . Well, how did i with difficulty and why 75 . We first i first started when i initially was thinking about the idea and kind of kicking it around with my publisher. I suggested 35 and then quickly we got up to 50. So it was 50. It was 50 for a long time. I did a Kickstarter Campaign to raise some money to, you know, and to create an audience for the project. And i promoted as 50 speeches and after we raised that money and i actually sat down to compile the book, i created an excel spreadsheet and started the beginning and the first for the first i would say 100 years. It was pretty easy. There werent that many examples and i was just filling them in, filling in the blanks. But then when you get to about the 18 well, lets see, 1830s, 1840s, anti slavery, abolition, tempora its and then after that, during civil war. Clara barton Harriet Livermore there were Anna Dickinson there were a number of very prominent speakers during the civil war and then after civil war course, womens rights vote started heating up the issue right through to world war one. And all of a sudden there was a deluge. So i had a spreadsheet and. I was looking for that diversity that i mentioned and i just kept filling in women and then crossing out women and filling in women and crossing out women. And the ones that ended up on the cutting floor really, really bother me. It my heart that emma goldman is not in this. I wanted to ask you, i think would be the hardest thing is letting go of people who deserve to be in it. So. Goldman why and what would have said . Well, it was i was trying to represent that period. Emma goldman spoke about Birth Control and got arrested for speaking about Birth Control before Margaret Sanger did like. Im going to im going to say like maybe 1912 or Something Like that. And the golden talking about Birth Control. But she also was anti conscription anti world war one. She was an anarchist. She spoke about anarchism. She also spoke about and she spoke in english, but also yiddish. She gave speeches, yiddish and maybe russian, too. And she was really quite brilliant and why did i leave her out . Because in the end, i decided to include Jeannette Rankin, who was our first female congresswoman, and she also was against world war one. She cast a famous vote against world war one and world war two, and she made this speech thats in the book in, which she argues its the end of, the war and of war one. And she said shes actually it was testimony before congress. And she said here, you have all of these thousands of women who have and stepped up during the war and served their country. Gentlemen, and now you deny them the vote. Theyve been fighting for democracy abroad, gentlemen. And now you would deny the vote here in america and i thought Jeannette Rankin and mcgovern, you know, anarchist patriot. I just thought id better put it to rankin. I just couldnt. I really came down to one or the other because i. Couldnt splitting hairs. Yeah. Anyway, so have to say that once i compiled the list i just had to go back and add more and so it went 62 and then it was 65, then it was 74 as it is, you know, as is now, i have two versions of a speech by truth. I was going to ask the original one and then of course the one, the bastardized version. So it was, you know, i could easily have done 100, but then it would have been approaching doorstop territory. Yeah, no, 75 is a good number it seemed. I mean, i just wondered how you arrived at it and how hard that must have been to win it and painful it must be to have to up speeches that, you know, are and compelling. And im wondering how you think you you do what a lot of historians now must do, which is to really look at the nuances of. Some of these historical figures they all people to be lionize just they didnt make Margaret Sanger did Amazing Things she the godmother of Birth Control this country but she was in favor of eugenics. And you talk about that in the biography of her. And i think you were careful to sort of try make sure you were reflecting these in their full portraits. When we look at these speeches, should we be looking at them only in the context of, the moment in which they were given, or how much should we apply a lens of history . Because i think sometimes unfairly we apply the lens, modern history in a way that dismisses some of the good things that people do. Right. I mean i think in a shorthand way you could say people getting canceled because they hold views 100 years ago that dont seem right today. And i feel very strongly that thats not that we really do need to situate person within the time period that he or she was living. But its undeniable at the same time that the people that we to the past that we that we look to the for inspiration from to draw inspiration from and to inspire us, had held views or articulated views that still inspire us today because. They remain true today. So i would say thats a tension that all us who care about history and we look to the past, to from have to navigate. I mean person by person. We really have to its quite delicate territory to say whos who endured us as a hero or who endures as someone to look up to and. Who do we decide . No. Think theyre you know, theyre representative of the views that we can leave behind because. We have to go forward. We we have to progress a society as a culture, as a as a species. There have to be ideas that we champion and other ideas that we leave behind. And the people who embodied or articulated those ideas, they reflect humanity and they reflect all of us in the sense that all of us have flood has hold views and in activities that tomorrow and next year. You know, sometimes think what are people going to think about us that you know we were eating meat right how is the future going to judge us and none of us has that that ability to look ahead and see i think we have to have some of curious combination of compassion jet judgment, curiosity to look at these people and recognize them in their full flawed but admirable complexity. Yeah, and i think you did a great job of that. I mean, some of these you know, these are figures, some of them living in really times dealing with sorts of things we dont have to deal with now. And its hard to always to pass past that. And i think im really glad that you did because it gives a much richer and truer portrait of the person. The speech and the context of it, and sort of in the same vein, how do you when youre judging speeches but also collect making this collection, how you measure impact . And was that a criterion for inclusion in your anthology . Well, impact, as i just talk about this a little bit in the introduction, impact, hard to measure sometimes there are people whose words are women whose words had an immediate impact. The one that comes to mind most readily is Clara Shortridge foltz. Shes the first woman lawyer in california. And the fact the first woman lawyer on the west coast, she introduced bill to get to allow women take the bar exam in california. And then she she fought the up to the Supreme Court in california so that women could practice law in california. So she was intrepid. She trailblazing, she was dogged and determined. And in 1893, she stepped up to the microphone at. The chicago worlds exposition, and made the argument that we needed a public defender system because she had been in the court, in the courtroom and she had seen the to which an indigent, a poor defendant was completely steamrolled by the prosecutor, by the prosecutorial power. And that idea took hold in america, that was 1893, i believe it was 1920s, when the first office of public defender opened in San Francisco when she was alive to see that. So changed the world with her speech. The speech was an arctic collation or reflection of her ideas she gained in the court, i mean, in the court of law, where she saw what happened with her own eye, you know, with her own eyes, her own professional experience. So to me, thats a thats the perfect example of a woman who used her experience, her thought, so to speak, to make a proposition. And that actually came into law and made societal change. But then there are all these other women who its not so easy to map for whom its not so easy to measure their. But if a woman introduced, an idea or any speaker introduces idea and it percolates throughout our society, it pushes advance our ideas a little bit, that idea gets taken up by someone else and its taken up by someone else. That too an impact. That too has impact. And as i mentioned in the introduction, you know, an emma goldman or walter reed declare or kate ohare, all anarchists of the 1920s, you know, if they did not persuade a large portion of america to become an anarchist never, the less the the impact of their about social legislation, the need to protect the you know, the indigent, the poor, about about immigrants, our attitude towards all these ideas were part of their political agenda that crept into our thinking. So even if the entirety of their were not adopted, they helped move needle forward. And that too, even though we cant measure it with a tape matters when youre making important point. Oh, by the way, if you have questions. Now is a good time to start migrating toward the the microphone and more. Well go to you in a second. Youre youre point which is great that you dont have to be famous and have a big fancy platform to make a difference right right. And it is in of those examples you just mentioned. And then there are women who do have a platform and how do they use it . And even a woman is introduces ideas that are outlandish in a way, you know way far afield. Nevertheless, ideas are making do make an impact and are picked up the discourse. So i dont i believe that all those women in the book, all the 75 who i chose in some their ideas did ripple through and are pertinent today. You know, one woman who had a platform and made difference, obviously, was Eleanor Roosevelt. And the speech that you include from 1940 about, you know, her kind of manifesto on civil rights, that speech could be given literally almost word, word, dont you think . Yes, i do. I thought that was a very decision for me because really speech that Eleanor Roosevelt, you could you can make the argument that it was a more important speech, the one that she made in 1948, about universal declaration of human rights. Thats the one thats included in most. And i could i really could go back and forth that the reason i included this one is because i so admire the way in which Eleanor Roosevelt pushed forward and theres social agenda about an america her vision of america as a as a place where civil rights were extended to everyone and specifically to black americans. And she pushed agenda at a time when her husband either did not want to or wasnt able to for political reasons. And course, for much of the presidency, there was he was preoccupied with the war and he had to a coalition for for the foreign policy. But on the social she was constantly constantly pushing this idea that black americans were denied their civil rights, that we, all of us were a response able for for changing that she would do things like she, of course, very famously she invited Marian Anderson sing at the Lincoln Memorial when Marian Anderson was denied the ability to sing by the at Constitution Hall by day. All right. So that was one thing thats well known, but she also befriended mary mcleod bethune, and she made sure that she was photographed with her. She wanted everyone to see that she was friends, the black woman. Right. And that thats important she also, as i mentioned there, she also invited some little black children, some black girls to have a picnic on the lawn of the white house. And that made a lot of people angry. And i wouldnt be surprised if it also made her husband angry because he would get flak for it. Hed get political flack for it. But she felt very strongly that it was her role to push these things forward. And so thats thats why i chose that speech. But it was a close call. So i was really glad. You did. Because youre right, the 1948 speech is much better known and this one has a lot of nuance. But it could be given. I really recommend you read it. It could be given word for word for today sorry to keep you waiting. No problem. Im thank you so much for being here. Really was a wonderful discussion. My name is nathan my name is nathan weisler. I am. Im a recent graduate of Montgomery College and im hoping to attend Teaching College to teach and to teach in civil rights history. My question in looking at the in looking at the many different and speeches in the book, one thing that ones read, one individual who particularly stood for me is Dorothy Thompson. And and her report and her reporting and the real she showed in her work in nazi and her reporting on kristallnacht. I was wondering, what did find throughout research . What did you find to be particularly about Dorothy Thompson . Would you able to speak some about her and what youve about Dorothy Thompson and what found most interesting about her . Oh, thank you so much for asking about her. Im such a fan of Dorothy Thompson. Shes so little known today. I dont know somebody be working on a biography about her because she is a great subject. She she went to europe and a correspondent at a time when, you know, she didnt have any journalism experience. She just went over to europe became a correspond and and found herself face to face hitler. I mean, she got an one on one interview with hitler. And she very famously underestimated him. She thought was a little meat. She called him a little man. But of course, subsequent lead this was like 33 or 1933, 34 or Something Like that before he became the figure that he later became, before it became chancellor. But she was there on the ground she saw the rise of fascism. She the rise of the National Socialists and she reported on it. And she asked as it went on the went on she became the voice of of outrage. She eventually actually was kicked out of nazi germany. The gestapo kicked her out, but she reported from the states about nazi germany and. The speech thats in this collection is thats another one that i had a close call between different speeches. I was trying to decide between one or the other. But the one i included is the one when she gives testimony before congress about about rosa velt. Fdr planned to enlarge the Supreme Court. And she was very against that, which jeff wrote a book about. Right she was very much against that. And she as she explains in this testimony, but she that her reason why is she thought it was so important that the populace, the public held these institutions in respect. And she felt that if fdr could just expand the court and it would be seen as a naked political play that it would undermine the legitimate see in the respect of the court. And she said she drew an analogy to nazi germany that thats what the nazis, one by one, they took these of society, the courts the press, the civil rights, they took the legislation and they civil rights. And they took these one by one and destroyed their credibility. And thats how they made their their political hay. And so the other speech that i really wanted to use was one in which she called for support for hershel greenspan, was the young man who killed the german attache and his family was up in the holocaust. And anyway made an appeal for him for on behalf of him because she wanted him to get a fair trial in nazi germany, which he sadly he did not. But she took so many courageous over and over and over she stood for unpopular causes. And i think mentioned that in the in the biography of her. I stuck it in at the bottom. Yeah i noticed. Thats a great question. Thank you so much. Where you in great. So this book is very exciting. I have two questions if possible. The first is what are the most important things you learned through this process . And the second is what messages do you think this holds for young women . Well, actually, i think i can answer them both with one answer and always been interested in history and book is an outgrowth of my lifelong interest in history. But i really think that what we learn from it is something profound and present for the present, which is that we look in the past and we see that things were different and we see that they are different today, that we are not arent living in the same place. The past is a country. We realize that its different today because people took action then people took steps. They use their voices, they step forward, they created projects, they pushed for legislation that creates world that we live in today. So if theres problems, challenges, issues that we want today, we can draw message. The obvious conclusion that from that is that we can change them ourselves, that the world doesnt to be the world. Instead, its not static that its ever changing and that we too be agents of change in our own way. And thats the message that i want young people to have, young women, because i know young women do in aggregate everyone. But in aggregate they have a harder time using their voices than young men do. But i want everyone to feel that sense of empowerment. The things dont. I mean, none of us would want to go back to i mean, i was thinking about today just even a few years know none of us want to go back to before the metoo movement. Right . I mean, the world is changing all the time. Its progressing and when you look back at the way things were, you realize, yes, we can change. We can change the future. We can change the future. And i just going to jump in quickly until do you have a question . Okay. Just jump in with one thought that came up while you were answering. Do people with platforms have an obligation to use their voices and speak out. Im thinking of you include Oprah Winfrey speech about metoo which is pretty shes going to make not make a lot of people happy with that you have obama i mean you could pick up im sure you had trouble picking of Michelle Obamas speech but you picked one that famous graduation speech you gave it and why where she really talked about the nations diversity in the middle of the 2016 president ial campaign when that ideal was being roundly assaulted by certain republican president ial candidate Hillary Clinton. Beijing speech did these women were it did have an obligation to do. They did. Do you feel . Oh, i strongly feel that they do. They did have an obligation that we all have an obligation. I really do. I mean, does every Single Person need to speak . Well, some people dont like to speak. Some people hate to speak in public. But a voice is an after all. A voice is a metaphor. A voice can be the you know, the sounds that come out of your mouth. A voice can be a speech or testimony a voice can also be expressed an idea in some way. If you dont want to speak public, you can write, you can support, you can support number of causes. And that can be an expression that can be a mode for using your voice. But yes, i think they do. I think we all have an obligation to our voices. Well, you know, im thinking of billie jean king. I think she blurbed it. Right. And how much she spoke out at great cost to career and her financial wellbeing, everything else. And right now. I dont know how many of you are following the french open tennis. Forgive me. I am. But theres big dispute with one of the belorussian players about whether shes speaking out enough and the ukrainian players will not shake her hand. And theyre very angry it and theres a big debate going on whether this belarussian player should be saying more. Its a you know, its a tough call, but i agree with you. I mean, i think people who have a platform should speak. I dont think they should hide behind the platform. You have a question . Thank. And i think your point the speech has made certainly over 200 years ago may not have great gained traction at the time, perhaps women were sowing the seeds for further social reform. You know, ten, 20, 30 years. Im just interested the research that you did, whether there was any how long did that change take . You know, was it uniformly . I suppose its not uniformly, but from the time that the the women were the speeches, raising the issues did it take, you know, a century or 50 years or 20 years for the cause to be taken on . And if there was any in any particular actions that they were taking to, raise the profile of the issues they were making . Well, thats very complicated question. And dont think the answer can be as generalized or sweeping as youre as youre suggesting, because i think youd have to at issues discreetly, like one by one. But just take, for example, the case of womens suffrage. Women wanted when the miracle were pushing for the Vote Campaign speaking for the vote for 70 years, seven decades and england or the united kingdom, i think it was about the same a little longer because it took them a little longer. I mean, just think about that for something that seems so basic and obvious today, it took them seven decades to do that. Now, if you look at an issue like abolition, it also took many decades for that idea to prevail. I mean, the idea that one group of human beings shouldnt own another group of human beings, it took many decades. It seemed obvious to one group of people, but to the of society, it wasnt at all. It was opponents of. Abolition believes they had the right the law was on their side. They believed that that was in the natural order of things they believed that the bible justify their i mean its astonishing to think of how obdurate how how durable some of the opposition to these ideas are that we take for granted today as basic human rights as basic fundamental fundamental rights. So i dont think theres any one way to answer your your question. But heres something to about one of the pros fits, you might say, of the Environmental Movement is Rachel Carson and tragically died way too early she died of cancer but her she is i have included her in this anthology with a commencement speech that she gave. But of course Rachel Carson is known for sounding alarm about pesticides and the damage that humankind was doing to our environment and to our environment. By environment, she met our species as as she included humanity in the full scope of of the planet of the planet. And her words were, but here we are today with a level of environmental degradation and fears about the of Climate Change that are worse than ever worse than ever. So some of these have been resolved, but others are enduring. And were still fighting for them. Okay. Thank you for that. I think i was and thats really interesting that there wasnt one theme such as Health Health care rights or social reform that gained traction than others. So thank you so much much. I thank you for here. I really admire anyone who does the research for the women who havent had light shining on them and are so deserving they. Have those shown on them . So great to lose to you. You mentioned grimly and those i assume that you read the of womens eye. I was drawn to charleston last october for a wedding and the family arranged a tour by guide to follow the peace sisters life there which i would recommend to anyone. The tour guide is very high up in the tour guides there and i think she conducts like 19 different tours and it was very informative. So are there is any other grim key book that you use for your research or it just that, well, first of all, thank you, im dying to go to charleston. I havent been and but i want go so badly charleston and savannah both i know how much history there is there. You know, theres a brand new book out about the Graham Carrie greenwich. Did she did she come here . Im sure you must have her book. Her book is really a multigenerational of the grimm family. Okay and that her book came out just so i wasnt i didnt use it as a source. But there are other wonderful books. Gerda look, gerda lerner wrote a wonderful book about the grimm case. Sisters back in the in 1907. Those theres quite a bit written about them theyre fascinating and know another historian whos working on a book the two sisters angelina and sarah to ill tell you Something Interesting about them is sarah and angelina grimm. They were sisters from charleston from those for of you who dont know. And they grew up in a slave holding. Their father was a judge in South Carolina so a very family and they rebelled against it. They rebelled against all the values of their family and their society around them. And they went to the east coast and became quakers and spent the rest of their life fighting, basically fighting against slavery. But both them spoke. Sarah angelina both spoke and. Both had reputations as fiery speakers. And to my knowledge, we have no speeches. No none of sarahs words at all. And i have about five speeches by angelina in my one in this book. And i think five or six in the speech bank. But it breaks my heart that we have none of sarahs words. I do believe remain somewhere in some archives, somewhere or in some old newspapers somewhere theyll turn up. So part of the mission is, my book is to put out a call for researchers to keep looking for those manuscripts. If you go to charleston, youll find it in the libraries, the research facilities. And if you make contact with the tour guide that i used, im sure theres a wealth of it right down. Thats a good suggestion. I will do that. Its on my bucket list. Ill you Something Interesting. Thank you. Thank you for. Saying that i was just talking to somebody who collects americana like a manuscript collector. And i asked him if he had papers or, manuscripts or documents related to womens oratory, and he said no to all kinds of americana. He has all kinds of from every, you know, colonial period, early American Revolutionary period, know nothing about womens oratory. Why not . He says it never comes up on the market. So i said, do you think it could be the case that . Its there, but youre just dont know it is. So youre not looking for it. I mean, im sure these documents, im sure, but if that i mean, is before if tree falls in the forest, if the document exists but no one values it, no one thinks its what it puts a price tag on it, then no ones collecting it. Its a its a paradox that they exist, but theyre not collect the bull. Well, youre making erasing something that i recently spoke to somebody i think some of you know if she teaches a class youre Betsy Griffith the great feminist historian whos just written a book called formidable, which is a history of womens rights in america. And she telling me that until there were womens studies in college until there was a curriculum that actually acknowledged that women had their history. None of this ever found none of these kinds of and documents were found or even for but the reason they started getting looked for and the reason that womens studies came into existence is because men were shipped off to the vietnam war in the 1960s, which left a lot of places open and graduate schools that women finally could fill. And when women went to graduate school, they wanted to study what they were interested, and they were interested in their own history. And thats when there was a great sort of undertaking and and unplanned but of women researchers into family documents, letters, journals the sorts of things that were tucked away in attics and that produced a lot of material that otherwise would have just collected dust and. Nobody would have known about this. It the also that that was coincident with or even causative with the rise of social whats called social history the social History Movement like the 1960s 1970s, when people like history from the bottom up, not just the great men and the history from that those who were in power and upper echelons of society. But then the mill workers, the farmers, the people who were laborers. I think thats true. And i think her point was just that these there are these documents. Theyre not official. Theyre in collections or soandsos letters, but theyre there if people will start looking for them. People will value. Yeah. No, exactly. Yeah. You a question. This may have to be our last question. Unless anybody runs the microphone. Thank you very much for being here and for writing this book. When you talked about your selection process, as you talked about, i forget which decade it was that there you. It went from few speeches to many and curious to know, to what do you attribute. Well, i think i dont really have a specific answer. I think there was just acceptance of women speakers probably 1840s, 1850s. There was just more and more women speaking, more acceptance of women speaking. And so more for me to choose from. But there were i think its important to know to parse that a little bit and say there were women speaking earlier, we dont have access to their speeches, we dont have them. So. So do you think it was more platforms publishing them, external events . I dont know. But there were there were specific. I dont exactly how to answer the question. Im not sure. And im also not a historian im more of a dilettante. Right. So dont exactly know. But i do speechwriter journalists. Yeah. Thats all you need to know about. I think about the fact that the temperance cause originally men owned the temperance cause and they didnt want women to speak. But then women made incursions very forcefully an entered into the temperance cause and took really took it out took it over. Women became the dominant voice in temperance. So there was the temperance clause that became a womens cause, and there was the court, the anti abolition was very much became a womens court, women driven cause in an oratorical sense and also of course womens rights. So maybe when those issues became more acceptable and women stepped forward to articulate those points of view, there were more women populating the the lecterns and the platforms and the conferences and venues like that. Thank you. I mean, also, you get to the sixties and seventies and eighties, theyre just more women in public spaces doing things. Theyre, you know, theyre starting be more women lawyers. Theyre starting to be more women elected to office in the professions in the professions, which doesnt account for more working class women. But so to change the subject just for a minute, could speak just a little bit about the speech, hillary thats in the book that you know, so much about and how many those do we have know . I would really love it if you would share with me and with audience little bit about tell us what tell us what speech im referring to. Okay. Thank you for thats very of you to ask. This is really meant to be about donna in her book. But youre youre very kind to ask. This was Hillary Clintons speech, 1995 to the fourth world conference on women that was sponsored by the united nations. Its famous for a line. Rights are womens rights and womens rights are human rights. And whats interesting about the speech and i think its durability comes from well, first of all it was very controversial she was going to go to beijing at all. And there was a period leading up to the speech where. It didnt look like she was going. In fact, nobody wanted her to go except her husband and her staff. Everybody else, including president ial advisors in the west wing, the state department, people in congress on the left and the right and the reason was that the chinese a couple of months before this conference, did something really dumb, which was to arrest a guy who emigrated to the United States and had come back and into the country. And they accused him of spying. And then that threw hillarys trip into the air. I think what happened was eventually, after several months of playing chicken with the Us Government over whether she would go or not, they realized and remember this was china in 1995, this was china just coming out of the dark ages seeking legitimacy on the global stage, wanting to be taken seriously. And i think they realized if hillary doesnt come, were not going to get all this credit for hosting this big united conference. We better just put up with her. So they convicted guy harry wu and kicked him out and she had the green light. That was about 11 days before. The speech. But, you know, there were so my point is that there were it was very fraught setting for this speech. She had been blamed for the demise of health care reform. She had been for the democratic disasters in the 1994 midterms. She was just sort of trying to change direction and Step International issues, social, develop womens rights, human rights. And this was going to be a big stepping stone for her to kind of get her her wheels back and and in and be able to speak about something she cared deeply about. But then it became so fraught and when the chinese arrested harry wu, it just drew more attention to this conference, actually amplified attention on the conference and the west wing was very nervous about her going and actually my book i was joking to dan have a chapter about this the making the speech so it was a tense situation and what was great about the speech was that she and i talked about this she was determined to absolutely unequivocal and unwavering and in her support of womens rights. And you have in the little precis that you do with the speech, this litany that she did about the abuses and, injustices toward women around the world. And it was i would have to say, the most graphic depiction of what women go through in their lives around the world that had ever been spoken in that kind of a setting. And it was, you know, it was very compelling and very powerful. And then that line just crazily became this mantra and literally years afterward, when she would travel around the world and i dont know, i went to like 65 countries with or something crazy people would run up clutching copies of that speech and they would be saying womens rights are human rights, human rights, womens rights. And it was just we were all of taken aback because we it was a good line, but we didnt think it was that. And anyway, so the has had a lot of durability. Did you go to beijing . Oh, yeah. Oh, me . Yes. Theres a whole story about what was happening while shes giving speeches. Ill let you wait for my book for that. Ill be anyway. It i do think it was, if not her best one of her two best speeches ever, largely because of her. I just want point out also one of the points that i make in my to that speech is that she wrote an essay quite recently about it that she was nervous before she gave it and love that because so many women that i coach today, so many women in my workshops are nervous about speaking and i want people to know that yes, Hillary Clinton was nervous about her speech. There was a lot riding on it. There was a lot riding on her. And there was a lot riding on it. And anyway, i talk i do talk that i talk about the challenge of writing that speech for a woman in that situation. We can talk more about whenever this book is ever finished, hopefully will not be. Hopefully well all still be around for it. But darn it, thank you so much. What a great conversation. As i said, could go on for hours. The book is speaking of all female. I hope you all have a copy. You get copies. Its a great gift for all sorts of people. And don, ill be happy. Sign up here at the table. 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