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Day of Infamy speech
Franklin D. Roosevelt asked a joint session of Congress to declare war on Japan in the early afternoon of December 8, 1941, and the whole address runs about six and a half minutes. On film you see what radio listeners could only imagine: a president delivering a short, flat list of Japanese attacks rather than soaring rhetoric, and the chamber's response. His early draft called it a date which will live "in world history"; he changed it to "in infamy." Congress declared war 33 minutes after he finished, which makes this the rare speech whose consequence arrived the same afternoon.
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Charles de Gaulle
Born
"Paris libéré" speech at the Hôtel de Ville, Paris, August 25, 1944
Charles de Gaulle improvised this on the evening Paris was freed, and it remains one of his most famous speeches, built around the run of words "Paris outragé! Paris brisé! Paris martyrisé! mais Paris libéré!" The point to watch for is whose victory he describes: the speech claims the liberation for Paris and for France. Newsreel cameras caught him at the microphone in the first hours of liberation, so students can see the leader of Free France step forward and speak for the nation. The text is short and repays a slow reading alongside a translation.
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Douglas MacArthur
Born
Farewell address to a joint session of Congress, April 19, 1951
Eight days after President Truman relieved him of command in Korea, Douglas MacArthur came home to a hero's welcome and defended his conduct of the war before Congress and a national television audience. It is the clearest case on this list of a speech as a public argument against a sitting president's policy, delivered by a general. Most people know only the ending, where he quotes an old army ballad and says he will "just fade away." The full film shows the case he made first, about the Communist threat in Asia and his view of how the war should be fought.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address
A five-star general and two-term president used a farewell television broadcast on January 17, 1961, three days before leaving office, to warn the country about the military-industrial complex. That is the line everyone remembers, but the roughly 15-minute address also cautions that public policy could become "the captive of a scientific-technological elite," a warning that reads differently now. CBS, NBC and ABC all carried it. The delivery is the reason to watch: no crowd and no applause, just Eisenhower reading carefully to the camera, which makes the warning sound graver than any rally speech could.
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Inauguration of John F. Kennedy
Inaugural address, East Portico of the U.S. Capitol, January 20, 1961
John F. Kennedy's inaugural is short, at 1,366 words, and it was the first inaugural address delivered to a television audience in color. A snowstorm had hit Washington the day before, and the glare off the snow stopped Robert Frost from reading his papers, so he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory instead. Watch the whole address rather than the clip of "ask not what your country can do for you": hearing the full speech puts that line back among the Cold War pledges around it, and the setting of a cold, bright Capitol is part of what made the day memorable.
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We choose to go to the Moon
The space race's defining speech was given outdoors, in Rice Stadium in Houston on September 12, 1962, to a crowd of about 40,000, many of them Rice students. That setting is why the film is worth seeing: Kennedy is selling an enormous, expensive science program to a stadium crowd, and you can watch him work it. He wrote one joke into the text by hand, "Why does Rice play Texas?", a nod to a football rivalry the students knew well, and it lands just before the line "We choose to go to the Moon," repeated several times over. It is the best single film for showing students that science policy needed public persuasion.
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Ich bin ein Berliner
Twenty-two months after East Germany put up the Berlin Wall, John F. Kennedy stood on the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg in West Berlin on June 26, 1963, before a crowd estimated at 120,000. The film is essential because the crowd is half the story: listen to the roar at "Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen," "let them come to Berlin," aimed at anyone who claimed the West could work with the Communists. It also settles an old myth. The famous line was acceptable German, and the laughter came from Kennedy's joke about his interpreter, not from anyone hearing "I am a jelly doughnut."
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I Have a Dream
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, to more than 250,000 people at the March on Washington, and The New York Times's James Reston wrote that the day was better covered by television and the press than any event in the city since Kennedy's inauguration. That coverage is the gift. On film you can see the size of the crowd, hear Mahalia Jackson call out "Tell 'em about the dream, Martin!" and watch King move from the prepared argument about America's "bad check" into the passage everyone knows. Show the whole speech, not the last minutes, so the dream is heard as the answer to that opening complaint.
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Richard Nixon's resignation speech
At 9:01 p.m. Eastern time on August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon spoke from the Oval Office for 16 minutes, live on radio and television, and announced that he would resign the next day, the only American president ever to leave office that way. Watergate itself is a story of tapes, hearings and documents; this is the one moment of it that has to be seen. Students can judge for themselves how he frames the decision and his record. Pair it with the inaugural and farewell addresses higher on this list to show how differently a presidency can end.
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The lady's not for turning
Margaret Thatcher's speech to the Conservative Party Conference on October 10, 1980, came as Britain sank into recession, with unemployment at about 2 million and rising, and her critics wanted a change of course. Her answer, "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!", was written by the playwright Ronald Millar as a pun on Christopher Fry's play The Lady's Not for Burning, a reference she reportedly missed. Watching the conference film shows how the line was set up and how the hall greeted it, and it is the best single clip for understanding why "U-turn" became such a loaded word in British politics.
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Tear down this wall!
Ronald Reagan spoke near the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, behind two panes of bulletproof glass that shielded him from East Berlin. His chief of staff, Howard Baker, had called the key line "extreme" and "unpresidential," and Reagan kept it anyway: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" At the time the speech drew relatively little coverage, and its fame grew after the Wall fell in 1989, which makes it a useful lesson in how history decides which speeches matter. Watch it after Kennedy's Berlin speech on this list, given 24 years earlier about the same wall.
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Nelson Mandela
Born
First speech after his release from prison, Cape Town City Hall, February 11, 1990
Hours after walking out of Victor Verster Prison, at the end of 27 years behind bars, Nelson Mandela spoke from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall to a vast crowd on the Grand Parade. He opened, "I greet you all in the name of peace, democracy and freedom for all." The film matters because the crowd matters: one contemporary report put it at some 100,000 people, and the ANC banner hung from the balcony beside him. It is a measured speech rather than a victory lap, and students can watch him speak as a negotiator as well as a symbol.
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Mikhail Gorbachev
Born
Resignation address on Soviet television, December 25, 1991
Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation in a live televised address, and shortly afterward the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin and replaced by the Russian tricolor. The address marked the end of the Soviet Union, drawing a line under more than 74 years of Soviet history. Watch it for the contrast with the Berlin speeches on this list: no crowd and no applause, only the last Soviet leader speaking to the camera as the state the Wall was built to protect came to an end.
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Redfern Park Speech
Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating spoke in Redfern Park, Sydney, on December 10, 1992, to launch the International Year for the World's Indigenous People, before a crowd that was mostly Indigenous. Six months after the High Court's Mabo decision recognized native title, he named the harms directly: "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life." The footage shows a prime minister telling that crowd "it was we who did the dispossessing," and watching the audience take it in is part of the lesson. It was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry in 2010.
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September 2001 George W. Bush speech to a joint session of Congress
Nine days after the September 11 attacks, on September 20, 2001, George W. Bush spoke to a joint session of Congress, and overnight Nielsen ratings put the television audience at about 82 million. The speech shaped American policy for years to come: he told every nation it now had a decision to make about where it stood, and he announced a new Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, to be led by Pennsylvania's Tom Ridge. He also held up the police shield of George Howard, an officer who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others, a moment that only works on film.
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A More Perfect Union (speech)
Barack Obama gave this 37-minute speech on race at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, in the middle of the presidential primaries, after his former pastor Jeremiah Wright's remarks drew national attention. Unusually, he largely wrote it himself, dictating a long draft to his speechwriter Jon Favreau. It also found a huge audience online, with about 1.2 million YouTube views in its first 24 hours. Watch the full version: it takes on anger and resentment in both Black and white communities at length, which a short clip cannot convey.
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Malala Yousafzai
Born
Speech to the United Nations Youth Assembly, New York, July 12, 2013
On her 16th birthday, nine months after she was attacked for campaigning for girls' education, Malala Yousafzai addressed nearly 1,000 young leaders from more than 100 countries at the UN, in her first public speech since the attack. She wore a white shawl that had belonged to Benazir Bhutto, and her central line was simple: "One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen can change the world." A teenager speaking to a hall full of young people, it is an easy way in for a classroom, and a reminder that a landmark speech does not need a head of state.
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Greta Thunberg
Born
Speech at the UN Climate Action Summit, New York, September 23, 2019
Greta Thunberg was 16, and she had crossed the Atlantic by racing yacht rather than fly to New York. Facing world leaders, she opened by saying she should not be up there at all but back in school on the other side of the ocean, and she accused them of offering young people empty words while the climate crisis worsened. Reading the text gives the argument; the film shows the force of her delivery and the room of officials listening. Watch it alongside Malala Yousafzai's UN speech for two 16-year-olds addressing the same institution six years apart.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Born
Address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, December 21, 2022
On his first trip outside Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion that February, Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed Congress in person and drew repeated ovations in a nearly full House chamber. He told lawmakers that American aid was "not charity" but an investment in global security and democracy, and compared Ukraine's soldiers to the Americans who held their lines at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. Near the end he presented a Ukrainian flag signed by soldiers fighting in Bakhmut. It is the most recent speech here, and the film shows a wartime leader making his case in person to the country funding his defense.
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