Amstud
Franklin / Green
Frederick Douglass Oratorical Contest
2010-2011
Project: To deliver an oratory to the class from Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The oratory should (must!) be delivered with style, enthusiasm, gestures, clear and powerful voice…and excellent diction.
Goals of Project:
~ Appreciate Douglass’ oratorical style and language
~ Cultivate good speaking skills
~ Practice Dramatic Readings
~ Articulate Douglass’ lyrical and descriptive narration
Grading: see rubric
A = Students will deliver their oration with style and expression. The audience is convinced of the importance of the passage. Manuscript usage is minimal, if at all.
B = Students will deliver their oration with style and expression. The audience is convinced of the importance of the passage. Manuscript usage is minimal, if at all.
C = Students will deliver their oration with style and expression. The audience is convinced of the importance of the passage. Manuscript usage is apparent, and shows only a moderate amount of preparation.
D = Students do not deliver their oration with style and expression. This presentation is a reading and not a speech.
F = Student does not complete the assignment.
Oratorical Project: Passages
Subject: Slave Spirituals
Ch. 2: “I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs…the songs of the one and of the other are promoted by the same emotion.”
Subject: Douglass’ Emotional Crisis
Ch. 10: “I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks…There is a better day coming.”
Subject: Douglass’ Grandmother
Ch. 8: “She was nevertheless left a slave – a slave for life – a slave in the hand of strangers…(skip: they are, in the language of the slave’s poet, Whittier, and preceding lines of poem)…Will not a righteous God visit for these things?”
Subject: Pathway From Slavery to Freedom is Literacy
Ch. 6: “Now, said he, if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him…I acknowledge the benefit of both.”
Subject: Influence of Sheridan’s Speeches Upon Douglass
Ch. 7: “The moral which I have gained from the dialogue was the power of truth over the conscience of even a slaveholder…it looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”
Subject: Douglass’ Mean Slaveholder, Captain Auld
Ch. 9: “Bad as all slaveholders are, we seldom meet one destitute of every element of character commanding respect…I was disappointed in both these respects.”
Subject: Plans for Escape
Ch. 10: “I talked to them of our want of manhood, if we submitted to our enslavement…now we were overtaken, and torn to pieces by the fangs of the terrible bloodhound.”
Subject: Underground Railroad
Ch. 11: “I would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations…and for which no one can be made to suffer but myself.”
Subject: A Free Man
Ch. 11: “I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State…know how to sympathize with the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.”
Subject: Douglass’ Battle with Mr. Covey
Ch. 10: “The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers…from this time I was never again what might be called fairly whipped, though I remained a slave four years afterwards. I had several fights, but was never whipped.