Speech Comments:

Michael Chiang: Your tone and eye contact was great. I think your transitions and flow was really great. You seemed confident of your topic, which made it really effective. Good speech!

Alex: Good attention getter. You did a really good job establishing your credibility by refering back to your woman's study course. Your main points were clear. Overall, well done!

Derek: Your speech was great, you had a good intro, kept good eye contact throughout, and had a good speaking voice. Didn't really have any negatives that i saw, and if there are any they aren't major things so great job!

Carolyn: You had a great attention getter and an intriguing topic. You had very nice delivery as well. Your volume, pace, and inflection were all very well done. You also seemed very confident. I also liked the parallelism you used in much of your speech, like when you repeated "She spoke .." it had a very nice effect. Overall very well done!

Joe DeArmitt: Your speech was great, you had good eye contact, a good tone, and you spoke very clearly.

Sarah Dunning: You had a great opening! You are very eloquent with a really good voice level.. you have a good voice level and tone. Your points were very clear and you seemed to know your information very well. When you stumbled on Anthony's niece's quote you regained your composure really quickly and you handled it very well. I was impressed with your poise! Overall, very comfortable in front of a crowd-great, great job!

Liz Peters: You chose an appealing topic and I was sespeciall interested because it made me think about myself being able to vote in the upcoming election. You have a good speaking voice and changed the tone when you needed to so that you could get certain points across which i liked. Just make sure you speak loud enough because at certain points you were hard to hear. Your transitions were great and flowed from one topic to the next. I think you gave a really good speech!

Scot Brown: Good use of repetition throughout. One topic that may be worthwhile to examine is how different rights groups saw the vote as a political tool, and it's place in the overall Civil Rights struggle. Remember that there were women who believed that the vote would merely be used a tool to oppress women and distract them from their struggles for other rights.

Whitney Trompeter

Speech 1

1) Introduction

a) Attention getter: I’m sure most, if not all, of you are voting in the upcoming election. I know that I am. And although now it seems the only requirement for citizens to vote is that they are over 18, but it didn’t used to be that way.

b) Credibility: I took a women’s studies course that primarily discussed the history of suffrage in the United States. There were many women leaders who organized, petitioned, and protested in order to gain entry into the voting public.

c) Background: Susan B. Anthony was prominent activist. She committed one act of bravery that separated her from the rest. In 1872, Anthony was convicted of voting in the presidential election and was fined $100 dollars. She not only refused to pay the fine, but instead stood up and spoke to 29 districts in Monroe County, New York.

d) Thesis: Susan B. Anthony’s speech advocated for equality and it was used to speak to the country at a time when woman were suffering socially and needed a means to bridge the power gap between genders.

e) Preview of Speech. Anthony spoke to a very large audience and she spoke in order to advocate change. This was very difficult to do because of the constraints put upon women at the time.

f) Transition: I will first speak about Anthony’s audience.

2) Body

a) Audience: Anthony explained why she voted and her beliefs of equality to the whole country.

i) She spoke to the radical, moderate, and conservative suffrage groups.

ii) She spoke to male citizens and the men in power.

iii) She spoke to the women who felt they couldn’t afford to be in women’s groups and who thought that suffrage was a concern only for middle class women (Wikipedia 2008).

iv) She spoke to people who agreed with her, mainly women, and those who did not.

v) She spoke to men, like Representative John H. Reagan who was quoted in the New York Times saying, “When a woman so far misunderstands her duty as to want to go to work on the roads and making rails and serving in the militia and going into the Army, I want to protect her against it” (Brooke 1984).

(1) Beliefs like these were common in society at the time.

(2) Women were ruled by men in the home, at work, and at church and had no voice to change their circumstance or “misunderstand their duty”.

vi) Transition: Anthony was determined in her pursuit for equality and this served as one of her exigencies (Susan B. Anthony).

b) Exigence: She needed to not only address the reasons for her actions, but also the larger picture of what needed to be changed in society.

i) Anthony was an advocate for equal rights between genders as well as races, but she devoted herself to women’s rights after the 15th amendment was passed in 1870, which only granted universal male suffrage (Caswell 2001 and Wikipedia 2008).

ii) According to a website on Anthony’s trial, she believed that all other problems facing women were due to their lack of vote (Linder 2001).

(1) With a vote, women could gain a say in the issues that were controlling their lives.

(2) With a vote, they could take bigger steps towards gaining equality (Susan B. Anthony).

(a) Women could vote on equal pay for equal work.

(b) They could change divorce laws that were taking away their kids.

(c) They could employ domestic abuse laws.

(d) Women wanted to change divorce laws.

(e) They could fight for equal college educations

iii) Transition: Because Anthony was a woman, and also experienced all the things I just talking about, she definitely had constraints to what she could say in her speech.

c) Constraints: Despite the desperate need for equality, Anthony needed to keep in mind how she thought was the best way to go about achieving change.

i) Anthony grew up a Quaker and was a naturally peaceful person.

(1) She believed that a moderate approach would be a smarter and more realistic way to gain equality (Wikipedia 2008).

ii) Although she often worked with radicals like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she wanted to unite all women suffragists.

(1) She constantly made alliances with radical, moderate, and conservative organizations.

(2) She believed that although they had different ideas about how they wanted to attack the conflict, they needed everybody’s cooperation and concentration to gain the vote (Wikipedia 2008).

iii) That said, Anthony’s speech addressing her decision to vote in the 1872 election needed to represent all women.

iv) She needed to seem collected, determined, and smart.

v) She also had to keep in mind that she was addressing men and others who did not agree with her.

(1) She couldn’t say anything outrageous, or else she would turn people off.

(2) She needed to subtly, yet strongly, prove to the country that women are citizens, but more importantly that they are people who deserve rights.

vi) With a clear understanding of what could and could not be said to the nation on this controversial subject, Anthony paved the way for change.

vii) Transition: Audience, exigence, and constraints were all important to Anthony’s speech.

3) Conclusion: Anthony used this speech to fight for women’s rights and equality and give women the right to vote so that they could help themselves socially.

a) Anthony addressed all of America despite their beliefs on the role of women.

b) She spoke because women are people too and deserve to be treated equally to men.

c) And she spoke in a way that would persuade her audience and give a positive view on women.

d) Anthony’s niece talked about her aunt in website on Anthony’s achievements. It is because of Anthony’s perseverance that women have the privileges they do today (Susan B. Anthony).

e) Speaking to all men and women, to all races and creeds, speaking for all women of America, Anthony took a giant step in proving the need for gender equality and continued to fight for that right until the day she died in 1906 (Wikipedia 2008).

Bibliography

Brooke, James. (1984, September 23). Birthplace of suffragist to get new recognition.

The New York Times. Retrieved February 3, 2008, from http://www.lexinexis.com.

Caswell, Thomas C. (2001). Suffrage. Retrieved February 2, 2008, from

http://regentsprep.org/Regents/ushisgov/themes/reform/suffrage.htm.

Linder, Douglas. (2001). The Anthony Trial: An Account. Retrieved February 7, 2008,

from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/sbahome.html.

Susan B. Anthony’s niece speaks of her gifts. Retrieved February 3, 2008, from

http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/sba/fourth.html.

Wikipedia. (2008, February 2). Susan B. Anthony. Retrieved February 3, 2008, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony.

Whitney Trompeter