Lesson Two – American Leaders Speak

Actual sound recordings from the World War I era are available to us through American Leaders Speak. The Library of Congress holds fifty-nine recordings of speeches by U.S. leaders at the turn of the century. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding the war and the subsequent presidential election of 1920.

The Nation's Forum, Record album cover, 1920.
Nation's Forum Home Page Image Captions

1. The American Leaders Speak collection is made up of recordings from The Nation's Forum. The collection represents an effort to preserve the voices of prominent Americans. In most cases, these audio files are the only surviving recordings of a speaker. The Department of State's Committee on Public Information (a governmental propaganda ministry) endorsed the Nation's Forum.
   
   
2. The Gallery of World War I Speakers allows you to link to a particular speech and display the audio file and text. Listen to Franklin K. Lane's The Nation in Arms. This speech will be further studied in class using the American Leaders Speak Analysis sheet.
   
   
3. You will be assigned a speech to analyze for homework using the American Leaders Speak Analysis sheet. There are eighteen speeches in the gallery. The speeches of Pershing and Lane (already analyzed by the class) will not be assigned to individual students. You will be given library research time to use print resources in order to respond to question #10 on the worksheet.
   
   
4. When students have completed the lesson two assignment, the teacher will pay particular attention to the responses to question #9: "Select a theme, event, or issue mentioned or alluded to in the speech that you wish to further investigate". Use this feedback to assign each student to a relevant department or topic for the newspaper assignment in lesson three.