This bibliography should be comprehensive in articles in rhetoric/ communication on the subject of race rhetoric and the rhetoric of civil rights in America after the Civil War; and selective in books and articles from other disciplines.
Sources in Communication and Rhetoric
Antczak, Frederick J. "When 'Silence is Betrayal': An Ethical Criticism of the Revolution of Values in the Speech at Riverside Church." Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 127-146.
Appel, Edward C. "The Rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Comedy and Context in Tragic Collision." Western Journal of Communication 61 (1997): 376-.
Asante, Molefi Keti. "Television and Black Consciousness." Journal of Communication 26 (1976): 137-141.
Baszile, Denise Taliaferro. “Rhetorical Revolution: Critical Race Counterstorytelling and the Abolition of White Democracy.” Qualitative Inquiry, vol. 21, no. 3, Mar. 2015, pp. 239–249.
Benson, Thomas W. "Rhetoric and Autobiography: The Case of Malcolm X." Quarterly Journal of Speech 60 (1974): 1-13.
Bosmajian, Haig A., and Hamida Bosmajian. The Rhetoric of the Civil-Rights Movement. New York: Random House, 1969.
Branham, Robert. "I Was Gone On Debating: Malcolm X's Prison Debates and Public Confrontations." Argumentation and Advocacy 31 (1996): 117-123.
Brockriede, Wayne E., and Robert L. Scott. "Stokely Carmichael: Two Speeches on Black Power." Communication Studies 19 (1968): 3-13.
Brooks, Maegan Parker. A Voice that Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom Movement. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.
Brooks, Robert D. "Black Power: The Dimensions of a Slogan." Western Speech 34 (1970): 108-114.
Burgess, Parke G. "The Rhetoric of Black Power: A Moral Demand?" Quarterly Journal of Speech 54 (1968): 122-133.
Calloway-Thomas, Carolyn, and John Louis Lucaites, eds. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Sermonic Power of Public Discourse. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1993.
Campbell, Finley. "Voices of Thunder, Voices of Rage: A Symbolic Analysis of a Selection from Malcolm X's Speech, 'Message to the Grass Roots'." Communication Education 19 (1970): 101-110.
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. "The Rhetoric of Black Nationalism: A Case Study in Self-Conscious Criticism." Central States Speech Journal 22 (1971): 151-160.
Carson, Clayborne "Martin Luther King, Jr.: Charismatic Leadership in a Mass Struggle." Journal of American History 74 (1987): 436-481.
Clark, E. Culpepper. "The American Dilemma in King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'" Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 33-39.
Colaiaco, James A. "The American Dream Unfulilled: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'" Phylon 45 (1984): 1-18.
Colaiaco, James A. "Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Paradox of Nonviolent Direct Action." Phylon 47 (1986): 16-28.
Cook, Anthoney E. "Beyond Critical Legal Studies: The Reconstructive Theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." Harvard Law Review 103 (1990): 985-1040.
Cox, J. Robert. "The Fulfillment of Time: King's "I Have a Dream" Speech (August 28, 1963). Texts in Context: Critical Dialogues on Significant Episodes in American Political Rhetoric. Ed. Michael C. Leff and Fred J. Kauffeld. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1989. 181-204.
Dickins, Milton, and Ruth E. Schwartz. "Oral Argument Before the Supreme Court: Marshall v. Davis in the School Segregation Cases." Quarterly Journal of Speech 57 (1971): 32-42.
Digby-Junger, Richard. "The Guardian, Crisis, Messenger, and Negro World: The Early-20th-Century Black Radical Press." Howard Journal of Communications 9 1998): 263-282.
Dionisopoulos, George N., et al. "Martin Luther King, the American Dream, and Vietnam: A Collision of Rhetorical Trajectories." Western Journal of Communication 56 (1992): 91-107.
Domke, David. "The Press and 'Delusive Theories of Equality and Fraternity' in the Age of Emancipation." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13 (1996): 228 - 250.
—-. "The Press, Race Relations, and Social Change." Journal of Communication 51 (2001): 317-344.
Durham, Frank D. "Anti-Communism, Race, and Structuration: Newspaper Coverage of the Labor and Desegregation Movements in the South, 1932-40 and 1953-61." Journalism & Communication Monographs 4 (2002): 48-107.
Flynt, Wayne. "The Ethics of Democratic Persuasion and the Birmingham Crisis." Southern Speech Journal 35 (1969): 40-53.
Fulkerson, Richard P. "The Public Letter as a Rhetorical Form: Structure, Logic, and Style in King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'" Quarterly Journal of Speech 65 (1979): 121-136.
Gaipa, Mark. "'A Creative Psalm of Brotherhood': The (De)constructive Play in Martin Luther King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'." Quarterly Journal of Speech 93/1 (2007): 279-307.
Gallagher, Victoria J. "Black Power in Berkeley: Postmodern Constructions in the Rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael." Quarterly Journal of Speech 87 (2001): 144-157.
Gallagher, Victoria, and Kenneth S. Zagacki. "Visibility and Rhetoric: The Power of Visual Images in Norman Rockwell's Depictions of Civil Rights." Quarterly Journal of Speech 91/2 (2005): 175-200.
Garrow, David J. "King's Plagiarism: Imitation, Insecurity, and Transformation." Journal of American History 78 (1991): 86-92.
Gregg, Richard B., Jackson McCormack, and Douglas J. Pedersen. "The Rhetoric of Black Power: A Street Level Interpretation." Quarterly Journal of Speech 42 (1969): 151-160.
Gresson, Aaron D. "Minority Epistemology and the Rhetoric of Creation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 10 (1977): 244-262.
Hariman, Robert. "Time and the Reconstitution of Gradualism in King's Address: A Response to Cox." Texts in Context: Critical Dialogues on Significant Episodes in American Political Rhetoric. Ed. Michael C. Leff and Fred J. Kauffeld. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1989. 205-217.
Harris, Melissa Renee, and Ashley R. Hall. "My Living Shall Not Be in Vain": The Rhetorical Power of Eulogies in the Face of Civil Unrest." Journal Of Contemporary Rhetoric 8, no. 3 (July 2018): 173-183.
Harris, Thomas E., & Patrick C. Kennicott. "Booker T. Washington: A Study of Conciliatory Rhetoric." Southern Communication Journal 37 (1971): 47-59.
Harrison, Robert D., and Linda K. Harrison. "The Call from the Mountaintop: Call-Response and the Oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr." Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 162-178.
Heath, Robert L. "Dialectical Confrontation: A Strategy of Black Radicalism." Central States Speech Journal 24 (1973): 168-177.
—-. "A Time for Silence: Booker T. Washington in Atlanta." Quarterly Journal of Speech 64 (1978): 385-399.
Himmelstein, Jerry. "Rhetorical Continuities in the Politics of Race: The Closed Society Revisited." Southern Speech Communication Journal 48 (1982): 153-166.
Hoover, Judith D. "Reconstruction of the Rhetorical Situation in 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'" Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 50-65.
Holmes, D. G., (2007). Affirmative reaction: Kennedy, Nixon, King, and the evolution of color-blind rhetoric. Rhetoric Review, 26, 25 – 41.
Houck, Davis W., and David E. Dixon. Rhetoric, Religion and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965. Waco, Tex: Baylor University Press, 2006.
Hunsaker, David M. "The Rhetoric of Brown V. Board of Education: Paradigm for Contemporary Social Protest." Southern Speech Communication Journal 43 (1977): 91-109.
Jensen, Richard J., and John C. Hammerback. "'Your Tools Are Really the People': The Rhetoric of Robert Parris Moses." Communication Monographs 65 (1998): 126-140.
Johannesen, Richard L. "The Ethics of Plagiarism Reconsidered: The Oratory of Martin Luther King, Jr." Southern Communication Journal 60 (1995): 185-
Kalenga, Maulana. "The Oppositional Logic of Malcolm X: Differentiation, Engagement and Resistance." Western Journal of Black Studies 17 (1993): 6-17.
Kennicott, Patrick C., and Wayne E. Page. "H. Rap Brown: The Cambridge Incident." Quarterly Journal of Speech 57 (1971): 325-334.
Klein, Mia. "The Other Beauty of Martin Luther King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'" College Composition and Communication 32 (1981): 30-37.
Larson, Charles U. "The Trust Establishing Function of the Rhetoric of Black Power." Central States Speech Journal 21 (1970): 52-56.
Lee, Ronald L. "The Rhetorical Construction of Time in Martin Luther King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'" Southern Communication Journal 56 (1991): 279-288.
Lucaites, John Louis, and Celeste Michelle Condit. "Malcolm X and the Limits of the Rhetoric of Revolutionary Dissent." Journal of Black Studies 23 (1993): 291-314.
—-. "Reconstructing <Equality>: Culturetypal and Counter-Cultural Rhetorics in the Martyred Black Vision." Communication Monographs 57 (1990): 5-24.
—-. "Universalizing 'Equality': The Public Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 85-103.
Lynch, Christopher. "Reaffirmation of God's Anointed Prophet: The Use of Chiasm in Martin Luther King's "Mountaintop" Speech." Howard Journal of Communication 6 (1995): 12-31.
McEdwards, Mary. "Agitative Rhetoric: Its Nature And Effect." Western Journal of Communication 32 (1968): 36-43.
McPhail, Mark. "Passionate Intensity: Louis Farrakhan and the Fallacies of Racial Reasoning." Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 416-489.
Meckiffe, Donald, and Matthew Murray. "Radio and the Black Soldier during World War II." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15 (1998): 337-356.
Miller, Elizabeth Ellis. “From Enclave to Counterpublic: Doubled Rhetorical Space and the Civil Rights Mass Meeting.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, vol. 23, no. 2, Summer 2020, pp. 225–253.
Miller, Keith D. "Alabama as Egypt: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Religion of Slaves." Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 18-32.
—-. "Composing Martin Luther King, Jr." Publications of the Modern Languages Association 105 (1990): 70-82.
—-. "Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Folk Pulpit." Journal of American History 78 (1991): 120-123.
—-. "Martin Luther King, Jr., Borrows a Revolution." College English 48 (1986): 249-265.
—-. "Voice Merging and Self-Making: The Epistemology of 'I Have a Dream.'" Rhetoric Society Quarterly 19 (1989): 23-52.
Morris, A. "Black Southern Student Sit-In Movement: An Analysis of Internal Organization." American Sociological Review 46 (1981): 744-767.
—-. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Free Press, 1984.
Mott, Wesley T. "The Rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Letter from Birmingham Jail." Phylon 36 (1975): 411-421.
Murphy, John M. "Domesticating dissent: The Kennedys and the Freedom Rides." Communication Monographs 59 (1992): 61-78.
—-. "Inventing Authority: Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Orchestration of Rhetorical Traditions." Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997): 71-89.
Osborn, Michael. "The Last Mountaintop of Martin Luther King, Jr." Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 147-161.
Narnolia, Nitesh, and Naresh Kumar. “‘Crusade’ for African American Civil Rights: Female Rhetoric and Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.” Journal of African American Studies (New Brunswick, N.J.), vol. 26, no. 1, Springer US, 2022, pp. 53–62.
Nelson, Julie D. “Memorializing the Civil Rights Movement: African American Rhetorics and the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 40, no. 1, Routledge, 2021, pp. 46–58.
Nero, Charles I. "Clarence Pendleton and the Rhetoric of Paradox." Howard Journal of Communications 3/3-4 (1991): 204-217.
Osborn, Michael, and John Bakke. "The Melodramas of Memphis: Contending Narratives during the Sanitation Strike of 1968." Southern Communication Journal 63 (1998): 220-234.
Parker, Maegan. "Ironic Openings: The Interpretive Challenge of the 'Black Manifesto'." Quarterly Journal of Speech 94/3 (2008): 320-342.
Parry-Giles, Trevor. "Character, the Constitution, and the Ideological Embodiment of "Civil Rights" in the 1967 Nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court." Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 (1996): 364-382.
Patton, John H. "'I Have a Dream': The Performance of Theology Fused with the Power of Orality." Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 104-126.
Pauley, Garth. "John Lewis's 'Serious Revolution': Rhetoric, Resistance, and Revision at the March on Washington." Quarterly Journal of Speech 84 (1998): 320-340.
Pauley, John L. "Reshaping Public Persona and the Prophetic Ethos: Louis Farrakhan at the Million Man March." Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998): 523-536.
Payne, James C. The Anatomy of Black Rhetoric. Tallahassee: Graphics Communication Association, 1987.
Pollock, Arthur. "Stokely Carmichael's New Black Rhetoric." Southern Speech Communication Journal 37 (1971): 92-94.
Powell, Kimberly A. "United in Gender, Divided by Race: Reconstruction of Issue and Identity by the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching." Communication Studies 46 (1995): 34-44.
Prasch, Allison M. (2017). Harry S. Truman, "Address before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People," Washington DC. Voice of Democracy, 12, 16-44.
Raum, Richard D., and James S. Measell. "Wallace and his Ways: A Study of the Rhetorical Genre of Polarization." Central States Speech Journal 25 (1974): 28-35.
Ryan, Erin. “Telling It from the Mountain: A Rhetorical Analysis of Fannie Lou Hamer’s Speech before the Democratic National Convention”. Young Scholars in Writing, Vol. 11, Sept. 2015, pp. 80-85
Sanger, Kerran L. "Functions of Freedom Singing in the Civil Rights Movement: The Activists' Implicitly Rhetorical Theory." Howard Journal of Communications 8.2 (1997): 179-195.
Schwarz, Bill. “'Our Unadmitted Sorrow': the Rhetorics of Civil Rights Photography.” History Workshop Journal, no. 72, 2011, pp. 138–155. JSTOR.
Scott, Robert L. "Justifying Violence: The Rhetoric of Militant Black Power." Central States Speech Journal 19 (1968): 96-104.
Scott, Robert L. "Socio-Historical Perspectives of Black Oratory." Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (1970): 264-269.
Smith, Jonathan M., and Antonio de Velasco. “Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois, and Attitudes Toward Change.” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 8, no. 3 (July 2018): 146–56.
Snow, Malinda. "Martin Luther King's 'Letter from the Birmingham Jail' as Pauline Epistle." Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 317-334.
Solomon, Martha. "Covenanted Rights: The Metaphoric Matrix of 'I Have a Dream.'" Calloway-Thomas and Lucaites 66-84.
Spilliers, Hortense J. "Martin Luther King and the Style of the Black Sermon." Black Scholar 3 (1971): 14-27.
Terrill, Robert E. "Colonizing the Borderlands: Shifting Circumference in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X." Quarterly Journal of Speech 86 (2000): 67-85.
Terrill, Robert E. Malcolm X: Inventing Radical Judgment. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2004.
Terrill, R. E. (2017). The post-racial and post-ethical discourse of Donald J. Trump. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 20, 493-510.
Terrill, Robert E. "Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X." Rhetoric and Public Affairs 4 (2001): 25-53.
Towns, W. Stuart. We Want our Freedom: Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2002.
Watts, Jerry, and Michael Dyson. "Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X." Dissent 43 (1996): 114-119.
Witte, Erin. “‘Because Our Lives Be Threatened Daily’: A Rhetorical Analysis of Fannie Lou Hamer’s Testimony at the DNC.” Conference Papers — National Communication Association, Jan. 2008, p. 1.
Yousman, Bill. "Who Owns Identity? Malcolm X, Representation, and the Struggle over Meaning." Communication Quarterly 49 (2001): 1-18.
Zarefsky, David. "Civil Rights and Civil Conflict: Presidential Communication in Crisis." Central States Speech Journal 34 (1983): 59-66.
History and Biography
Branch, Taylor. At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968. New York: Simon & Schuster 2006.
—-. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. New York: Simon & Schuster 1989.
—-. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65. New York: Simon & Schuster 1999.
Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman, 1893-1930. Black Women in United States History. Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing Inc, 1990.
Sales, William. From Civil Rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Boston, MA: South End Press, c1994.
Van Deburg, William. New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975.
Selected Primary Texts
Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. 1968. Pref. Ishmael Reed. New York: Dell, 1992.
Houck, Davis W. and David E. Dixon, eds. Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965 : Volume 1. Baylor University Press, 2006.
King, Martin Luther. Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ed. James M. Washington. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.
Smith, Arthur L. The Rhetoric of Black Revolution. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1969.
Smith, Arthur L., and Stephen Robb. The Voice of Black Rhetoric. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1971.
Storing, Herbert. What Country Have I?: Political Writings by Black Americans. New York: St. Martin's P, 1970.
X, Malcolm. Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. Ed. George Brietman. New York: Pathfinder P, 1989.
X, Malcolm, with Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1965. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.