historical association, the massachusetts historical society and our newest inaugural lifetime institutional member the gerald r ford presidential foundation. we're glad to have you with us. in the interests of time. i'd like to take this next few minutes to introduce the four people who will be part of the afternoon's program. we're going to be starting with nancy keegan smith. nancy is former director of the presidential materials division at the national archives and records administration. she has written lectured and published on first ladies. since the 1980s including lady bird johnson michelle obama and the records of modern first ladies a founding member and inaugural lifetime member of flair. she serves as our vice president. dr. diana carlin is professor emerita of communication at saint louis university and a retired professor of communication studies at the university of kansas. she has researched and taught about first ladies for 30 years and has written chapters on martha, washington lady bird johnson, barbara bush hillary clinton and michelle obama. diana is also a founding member and an inaugural lifetime member of flair and she serves the organization as our treasurer. dr. ann mattina is professor and chair of communication at stonehill college her research focuses on american women's public activism spanning from the early 19th century to the current day. in addition to conference presentations on first ladies. she has published several rhetorical studies of hillary rodham clinton. and is an inaugural lifetime member of flare. and finally, but certainly not least dr. tammy v hill tammy is associate professor of communication and the senior associate dean of the college of communication at boston university. dr. viejo's books include moms in chief the rhetoric of republican motherhood and the spouses of presidential nominees 1992 through 2016, melania and michelle first ladies in a new era and connecting with constituents identification building and blocking in the contemporary national convention addresses. tammy is also an inaugural lifetime member of flair. it's my pleasure at this moment to turn the program over to nancy keegan smith. nancy you're muted it's a pleasure to be here today and to welcome all of our people and i think we have a very interesting program lined up recent first ladies and their speeches have often tackled issues as leaders of society ladybird johnson said that while the job had no assign duties a podium is there she chooses to use it from the very rich holdings of the presidential libraries of the national archives and records administration on first ladies. we will hear four keyments of speeches by barbara bush hillary clinton laura bush and michelle obama, which had a powerful impact after watching these our panel of experts will analyze and discuss them. we can go to the next slide on mrs. bush. mrs. purchase humor and attitude toward what is important in life are clearly shown in a speech. she made at wellesley college on june 1st 1990. she had not been the first choice and her selection caused controversy on the campus. let's see and hear some of her speech. and diana now, i know your first choice today was alice walker. guess how i know. known for the color purple instead. you got me known for the color of my hair and as you said off from wellesley, i hope that many of you will consider. making three very special choices the first is to believe in something larger than yourself to get involved in some of the big ideas of our time i chose literacy because i honestly believe that if more people could read write and comprehend we would be that much closer to solving so many of the problems that plague our nation and our society. early on i made another choice, which i hope you'll make as well whether you're talking about education career or service. you're talking about life and life really must have joy. it's supposed to be fun. one of the reasons. i made the most important decision of my life to marry george bush is because he made me laugh. it's true. sometimes we laugh through our tears, but that shared laughter has been one of our strongest bonds. find the joy in life because his ferris bueller said on his day off. life moves pretty fast and you don't stop and look around once a while you're gonna miss it. i'm not gonna tell george you clap more. paris and your clap for george the third choice that must not be missed is to cherish your human connections your relationships with family and friends. for several years you've had impressed upon you the importance to your career dedication and hard work. and of course, that's true but as important as your obligations as a doctor a lawyer a business leader will be you are a human being first and those human connections with spouses with children with friends or the most important investment you will ever make from that powerful speech we will go to mrs. clinton mrs. clinton was clearly a first lady with many different public roles one of which was to use her platformist first lady to push strongly throughout the world for equal rights for women. let's hear some of her there is one message that echoes forth from this conference. let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights rights once and for all and among those rights are the right to speak freely and the right to be heard women must enjoy the rights to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want. freedom and democracy to thrive and endure it is indefensible that many women in non-governmental organizations who wish to participate in this conference have not been able to attend or have been prohibited from fully taking part. let me be clear. freedom means the right of people to assemble organize and debate openly it means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. it means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them mistreating them or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions. just like mrs. johnson mrs. bush's early role was defined by an unexpected national tragedy 9/11 on november 17th. 2001 laura bush made history while advocating for a worldwide effort to focus on the brutal treatment of afghan women and children by the town van machine during the weekly presidential radio address, mrs. bush was the first first lady to deliver the address in its entirely good morning. i'm laura bush and i'm delivering this week's radio address to kickoff a worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-qaeda terrorist network and the regime its supports in afghanistan the taliban. that regime is now in retreat across much of the country and the people of afghanistan especially women are rejoicing afghan women know through hard experience what the rest of the world is discovering the brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorist. long before the current war began the taliban and its terrorist allies were making the lives of children and women in afghanistan miserable 70% of the afghan people are malnourished one in every four children won't live past the age of five because health care is not available. in may of 2013 mr. obama in her speech to bowie state university students challenges them in a way only misses obama can do to make education a priority and to set an example for those who will follow them. when it comes to getting an education. too many of our young people. just can be bothered. today instead of walking miles every day to school. they're sitting on couches for hours playing video games watching tv. instead of dream and of being a teacher or lawyer business leader, they're fantasized and about being a baller or rapper. right now right now one in three african american students are dropping out of high school. only one in five african americans between the ages of 25 and 29 has gotten a college degree. one in five but let's be very clear today getting an education is as important if not more important than it was back when this university was founded. as my husband stand up and reject the slander that says a black child with a book is trying to act white. reject that in short be an example of excellence for the next generation and do everything you can to help them understand the power and purpose of a good education. we have now heard four segments were first ladies have effectively used their podium on subjects as different as a role of a woman in society on the taliban on human rights and on the importance of education, i would now like to turn over the panel to my good friend and colleague diana carlin to start the discussion and analysis of these and other first lady speeches. thank you, nancy. and ann and tammy are joining me here. we're going to run this more or less like a panel. so you'll see all three of us as nancy said we're just going to take the speeches in order and also we'll probably throw in some examples of some other women if it fits that particular speech and i would say please put your questions. there's an email address to send the questions to and you don't have to ask just about these first ladies these four if you have questions about any others, please do that also as nancy said when she started barbara bush's speech was mired in controversy. alice walker was the choice of the class and when she turned them down the administration decided on their own to invite barbara bush. i did a lot of research on this speech. it's a bush library and among the many papers. i found related to it where the scheduling papers where they had originally decided. you know, they just put this invitation in as if it were any other commencement address they weren't aware of what had happened to get barber the invitation and at one point they weren't even sure they were going to include it because the gorbachevs were going to be in town and she had another commitment in boston to go dedicate something the watch out for the ducklings at a park. so then they decided to do it and when they worked on this speech they worked on it at along with all of our other commencement addresses. so it wasn't that much different from our other commencement addresses one thing nancy didn't mention was this speech was one of the top third speeches of the 20th century as was hillary clinton's beijing speech george hw bush did not have a speech in the top 100 that barbara did so to kind of kick this off, you know commencement speeches aren't usually very memorable. and don't capture first ladies give tons of these they don't capture a whole lot of attention except for the city where they happened and this one got worldwide attention. not just because the controversy but also because of the message and to kind of put this in a little more context. she was the last of the world war two generation first ladies, then we got to the baby boomers with hillary clinton, and she was really dealing with some general issues. so tammy and ann, i don't know which he wants to start first. why do you think this captured the attention of these women after they were not really excited about having somebody who they believed had simply gotten where she was because of who she married um, go ahead kim if you'd like to start. sure, no problem. so i think there are a couple of things about this speech that make it worthwhile and well, they're a bunch of things that make it worthwhile, but i think one of the reasons why it was so captivating particularly for that audience was possibly because it was so unexpected. they had sort of come into as an audience come into the speech with a bit of a chip on their shoulder with those expectations of what can she possibly say to us and the speech itself is really built around the question of diversity and embracing diversity in different kinds of ways and i think couching the conversation that she did in couching the conversation the way that she did barbara bush actually made it so much more relatable to these the women in the audience and then also the broader audience and so because it was unexpected because they didn't think she was going to deliver much and because she brought so much of her personality into this speech as well and demonstrated her ability to be thoughtful to be engaging to be really respectful of who they were and also challenging them to be more than what they thought in ways that they might not have expected. i think that's all why it kind of captivated the particular audience and then the ways in which she used different kinds of metaphors and stories and anecdotes throughout and also had lots of wonderful little laugh lines. some of them were planned some of them were, you know, spontaneous. i think those moments just made her so endearing and also reinforced the overall message that she was trying to across and so i think that's why it's a message that still endures. plus the message itself is enduring. i mean believing in something larger than yourself life must have joy cherish your human connections like it's hard not to really like that message and then the way that she delivered it. great. i also was very interested in the fact that one of the things that she does immediately in. this speech is recognized the controversy. we heard the little clip at the beginning about i know you wanted alice walk or known for the color purple. she makes a joke, obviously about the color of her hair, but there's also a line in the very beginning as well that we didn't see where she kind of gives a shout out to the class president her new best friend. that's how she refers to her. so you can you can only imagine and and nancy you probably know the answer to this. they must have had some discussion amongst the platform party prior to them actually arriving on the scene, you know up on the up on the podium to deliver that speech. she clearly had with the class president. clear about this. so what she's trying to do, i think in what she does beautifully in this speech is she gives us i think a subtle very gentle reproach to this to this class. and it is about women choices in life. and she does it in that only only the way that barbara bush could do it in terms of her humor and that self-deprecating humor and also a little bit of pop culture in there. i won't tell george you loud you had a ferris bueller had a higher louder applause line and he did that kind of thing. she's very comfortable and she's very informal i think in a lot of ways. i also think that it's very important to point out that she had mrs gorbachev with her. i think that the two first ladies being on that stage together was also a very powerful visual for us and and in terms of historical memory as well. i would also say to you. she speaks to even though they're generally different. she speaks a lot to things that hillary clinton picks up on later as first lady and that is women's choices are women's choices. they should not be dictated by you know, whatever whatever the political. whim of the day is and that we're lucky we have these choices. so i i find it remarkable for all of those reasons. yeah, just and for for some background she and the class president had actually had a phone call. okay, she writes about this in her memoir and they had had a phone call prior to her actually arriving and and began that conversation then which is why she she really talks in the speech too about we're going to have a conversation. as i said, this was when when they were planning this speech it was going to be basically the speech she gave at saint louis university where i you was i think community college and then when the cot when the controversy hit when the students found out she'd been invited and 125 of the 600 signed a petition complaining and wanting it withdrawn. and she'd also invited ask the president if she could invite mrs. gorbachev before all the controversy started so it wasn't like she did that as a way of deflecting the controversy. she actually had done that ahead of time. and so then when all this hit they they pulled in some of george bush's speech writers said we have to do something a little even though we have the basic message, and she said that she didn't want to complain explain or apologize in any way for any of this and one other thing she did at the beginning that you didn't see. i wish you all need to just go watch the whole speech. it's you and at the president at the bush library site, but she talked about the fact that she had been invited along with her husband too wellesley when they came back from china. and you know her husband was the wasn't an ambassador yet, but they went to china right after nixon opened it and that the two of them jointly spoke and she talked about how open the students were and how they embraced diversity so tammy's point. she really set this up to say, this is a place where you accept diverse people you accept diverse ideas and and she even went on to say, you know, i'm at a different era and i followed the path of my era. you're following yours. you don't necessarily understand mine and understand yours, and then there was that final incredible line. yeah, tammy you want to give it? oh, no that i was just i was just loving to build up the go ahead. i don't want to step on you. okay, so, you know, she then says that the conversation doesn't end here and and i think you're absolutely right. this was a bigger conversation then about her being married to somebody famous. it really was about choices and the struggles that women have and she talked about how the hoop race had originally been whoever won. it would be the first one to get married. i think about the the julia roberts movie with julia stiles and some of those you know at i don't remember if they were well, so i did it was a similar wellesley smith, you know, they were getting married. that was what they were there for to get their mrs. and then it became who was going to be the ceo or on her own first company and then she said so now, you know, it's which of you will achieve your personal dream not societies, but your dream and she said and one day in this audience, you know one day you may be listening to another presidential spouse and i wish him well and that of course just got the standing ovation, but it was you know, everything i think everybody says fantastic so that brings go ahead tammy. i just saying and just kind of they're just a couple of quick notes. when is that when she finishes she says may your may your future be worthy of your dreams? supposed to reinforce that idea of not society's dreams, but your own personal dreams, and i thought that was a really nice closing but one of the other things that i really enjoyed about this speech and honestly, every time i watch it or hear it or read it, i find other things that just kind of bubble up out of it each and every time it's such a wonderful experience to have but one of the things that i couldn't help but think was this was an interesting thing to have happened the speech in 1990 as a sort of preview for what happened in 1992 when we had barbara bush and hillary rodham clinton as the two potential first ladies in that potent that campaign and so some of the conversation that came up with barbara bush and the wellesley speech came up over and over and over again in the 1992 campaign. and so i think this as a preview to that and as a as a sort of earlier than happened response to it was also kind of an interesting historical moment. the other thing i always think about when i hear this speech, i don't know if any of you remember an article that anne-marie slaughter who was working for secretary of state hillary clinton at the time wrote. i believe in the atlantic about and she left the state department because she had i think child in middle school and one in