Product Details
Make It Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out

Make It Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out
By Vernon Jordan Jr.

List Price: $24.95
Price: $18.96 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com

74 new or used available from $0.01

Average customer review:

Product Description

Black Americans have always relied on the oral tradition—storytelling, preaching, and speechmaking—to assert their rights and preserve and pass on their history and culture. In the pulpit, courtroom, or cotton field, they have understood the power of words, distinctively delivered, to educate and inspire.

Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., one of the nation’s finest speakers, imbibed this tradition as a young man and has given it his own unique inflection from his work on the civil rights front lines, to the National Urban League, to positions of influence at the highest level of business and politics. A friend and confidant to presidents, Jordan has never forgotten the men and women—from Ruby Hurley to Wiley Branton to Gardner C. Taylor to Martin Luther King, Jr.—whose oratorical skill in service to social justice deeply influenced him. Their examples and voices, reflected in Vernon’s own, make this book both a history and an embodiment of black speech at its finest: Full of emotion, controlled force, righteous indignation, love of country, and awe in front of the God-given challenges ahead.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #282035 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-11-03
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 272 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. is a senior managing director of Lazard Frères & Co., LLC in New York. He was previously president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League, executive director of the United Negro College Fund, Inc., and director of the Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council. He served as chairman of the Clinton Presidential Transition Team in 1992 and is senior counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews

Make It Plain5
This is an excellent addition to my collection of historical books about this period in our history. This was my young adult period, so I have an active, personal account of things. His speeches give a deeper perspective of the times when taken with the other writings in my collection.

Well-written and great oral history of civil rights movement4
Item received on time and in new condition. Great concept for book: short explanation of speech circumstances followed by complete text of speech delivered by Mr. Jordan. Follows chronological history of civil rights from 1960's to 1980's. Very enlightening. Would buy again. A++.