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Speech Is Power Of Speech Changed The Course Of History Essay

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Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the importance of speech in one short sentence: “Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.” In 2008, the power of speech changed the course of history; the first African American president was elected, transcending years of racial inequality. For many blacks in the U.S., and many around the world, Barack Obama’s presidency was a step closer to righting America’s 400-year-old wrong: slavery and subsequent discrimination toward the black race. Obama’s victory was traced back to his powerful speech and his natural ability to charismatically orate. In the end, however, it was Obama’s political philosophy that persuaded individuals to support him. Following his victory in 2008, President Barack Obama used rhetoric to advocate for change, hope, and a united America where the window of opportunity could remain open for all. The son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama II spent most of his life feeling excluded in the racially homogenous state of Hawaii. Despite his childhood hardships, Obama graduated from Columbia University with a political science major in 1983. Later, he entered Harvard Law School where he became the first black “president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review” in 1990 (Nelson). Although a great majority of the journal’s staff was conservative, Obama won as a liberal by promising that he would treat all political beliefs equally and fairly—a promise he was famously known

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