Why freedom matters : the spirit of the Declaration of Independence in prose, poetry, and song from 1776 to the present

Summary: Why Freedom Matters celebrates freedom in over 100 speeches, letters, essays, poems, and songs, all infused with the spirit of democracy. Here are the voices of presidents and slaves, founding fathers and hip-hop artists, suffragettes, civil rights workers, preachers, labor leaders, and baseball players. Inspired by the Declaration of Independence, the book is published in conjunction with The Declaration of Independence Road Trip, a 3 1/2-year cross-country educational tour of an extremely rare, original hand-printed copy of the Declaration. The Declaration of Independence Road Trip's mission is to energize Americans by bringing our founding document to towns small and large across the country. Like the document itself, this compelling anthology reveals America's soul as it wrestles with questions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and strives to fulfill the ideals of Thomas Jefferson's words.

Item details

ISBN: 0761132686
ISBN: 9780761132684
ISBN: 0761131655 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9780761131656 (pbk.)
Physical Description: print
xvii, 413 p. ; 24 cm.
Publisher: New York : Workman Pub., c2003.

Contents / Notes

General Note:

Includes index.

Formatted Contents Note:

In the course of human events: Argonauts of 1776 / David McCullough -- Exchange of letters / Abigail and John Adams -- Introduction to dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence / Morgan Freeman -- Declaration of Independence -- Gift outright / Robert Frost -- Public speech / Chief Seattle -- God bless America / Irving Berlin -- This land is your land / Woody Guthrie -- Bicentennial speech / Gerald R. Ford -- Speech at Independence Hall / Abraham Lincoln -- Let America be America again / Langston Hughes -- American dream / Martin Luther King Jr. -- I am a patriot / Steven Van Zandt -- Speech on the Dred Scott decision / Abraham Lincoln -- Killer angels / Michael Shaara -- Remarkable Andrew / Dalton Trumbo -- What July fourth means to me / Ronald Reagan -- Reasoning the fourth / New York Times editorial -- Life: Letter to Aunt Fannie Adoue / Marion Lee "Sandy" Kempner -- Prologue: a letter to Thoreau / E.O. Wilson -- October fullness / Pablo Neruda -- Cell door closes / Arthur Koestler -- Letter to Olga / Vaclav Havel -- Letter to president Franklin D. Roosevelt / Arthur W. Mitchell -- Diary of a young girl / Anne Frank -- Four freedoms / Franklin D. Roosevelt -- Perils of indifference / Elie Wiesel -- Freedom from fear / Aung San Suu Kyi -- Oh freedom / Traditional Negro spiritual -- Inaugural address / John F. Kennedy -- Nobel Prize acceptance speech: to endure and prevail / William Faulkner -- Song of myself / Walt Whitman -- New colossus / Emma Lazarus -- Chimes of freedom / Bob Dylan -- Women in exile / Mahnaz Afkhami -- Farewell address / Jimmy Carter -- Glimpse of home / Kathryn D. Sullivan -- Teach your children / Graham Nash -- Liberty: Ain't I a woman / Sojourner Truth -- Democracy in America / Alexis De Tocqueville -- Declaration of sentiments and resolutions -- Courtroom speech on women's right to vote / Susan B. Anthony -- Letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton / Susan B. Anthony -- Speech before Congress on women's suffrage / Carrie Chapman Catt -- Still I rise / Maya Angelou -- Letter to his former master, Captain Thomas Auld / Frederick Douglass -- Down by the riverside / Traditional Negro spiritual -- Emancipation proclamation / Abraham Lincoln -- Address to the Niagara conference / W.E.B. du Bois -- Brown v. board of education / U.S. Supreme Court -- My dungeon shook: letter to my nephew on the 100th anniversary of the emancipation / James Baldwin -- Shed a little light / James Taylor -- Reflections on the bicentennial of the United States constitution / Thurgood Marshall -- Speech from the pulpit / William J. Clinton -- Mr. Smith goes to Washington / Sidney Buchman -- Special message to the congress: the American promise / Lyndon B. Johnson -- Letter to Theodore Roosevelt / Mother Jones -- Letter to E.L. Barr Jr. / Cesar E. Chavez -- Letter to baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn / Curt Flood -- Revolution will not be televised / Gil Scott-Heron -- Letter to Charles McCarthy / Kurt Vonnegut -- Censors / D.H. Lawrence -- Spirit of liberty / Judge Learned Hand -- I am an American / Steve Connell -- Pursuit of happiness: Self-reliance / Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Road not taken / Robert Frost -- Courage / Harriet McBryde Johnson -- Letter to his son ./ William Carlos Williams -- Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young / Mary Schmich -- Poem of remembrances for a girl or boy of these states / Walt Whitman -- Letter to Walt Whitman / Mark Twain -- Commencement address at James Madison University / William Safire -- Myth of Sisyphus / Albert Camus -- I believe / John D. Rockefeller Jr. -- Something for nothing / Neil Peart and Geddy Lee -- Left-handed commencement address at Mills College / Ursula K. Le Guin -- America the beautiful / Katherine Lee Bates -- I have a dream / Martin Luther King Jr. -- Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor: Pay attention kids / Robert J. Samuelson -- America / Henry Dumas -- Great society / Lyndon B. Johnson -- Talkin' bout a revolution / Tracy Chapman -- What America means to me / Pearl S. Buck -- American cause / Archibald MacLeish -- Open letter to the poet Archibald MacLeish who has forsaken his Massachusetts farm to make propaganda for freedom / Carl Sandburg -- Let that old-time freedom ring out / John Balzar -- Why I refused the national medal for the arts / Adrienne Rich -- Congressional library / Amy Lowell -- Democratic national convention keynote address: who then will speak for the common good / Barbara Jordan -- Commencement address at Northern Arizona University / Wilma Mankiller -- Speech on senate floor: declaration of conscience / Margaret Chase Smith -- Commencement address at the college of Santa Fe / Tom Brokaw -- I will live and survive / Irina Ratushinskaya -- America's challenge: revitalizing our national community / Bill Bradley -- Commencement address at Vassar College / Tony Kushner -- To the patriots and the activist poets / Ariana Waynes -- Closing argument in the Henry Sweet trial / Clarence Darrow -- American President / Aaron Sorkin -- I sing of change / Niyi Osundare -- Keepers of democracy / Eleanor Roosevelt -- Generations of lost angles found / Beau Sia -- Devotions upon emergent occasions, number XVII / John Donne -- Constitution of the United States of America -- Universal declaration of human rights.