As a former journalist and a communications expert, Dana Rubin understands the power of words. Dana's passion for amplifying diverse voices in public discourse inspired her to explore public speeches by women from across time and around the world. The result was the Speaking While Female Speech Bank, an online repository of speeches by women and a book featuring 75 extraordinary speeches by American women. Dana shares the stories of some of these remarkable women and why they matter.
Seventy-seven years ago this month, Helen Gahagan Douglas squared off against Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare in an historic speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. "Mr. Speaker," she began, "I think we all know that Communism is no real threat to the democratic institutions of our country. But the irresponsible way the term "Communism" is used to falsely label the thing that the majority of us believe in can be very dangerous."
With that speech — which has come to be known as "My Democratic Credo" — Douglas took a bold and principled stand at a time of massive political cowardice. She was among the first to publicly denounce the smear campaign by Senator Joseph McCarthy — and her words have gone down in history.
A Democratic member of Congress from California, Douglas had been internationally famous as a Broadway actress and opera singer before entering politics. She was also married to Hollywood leading man Melvyn Douglas, which gave her a glamorous edge. As a U.S. Representative in the public eye, her strong stage presence and public speaking skills were among her key strengths.
She kept up a hectic speaking itinerary around the country on behalf of issues like postwar price controls, labor rights, and the regulation of atomic energy. She spoke out forcefully for civil rights at a time when Jim Crow segregation laws prevailed in much of the country. She was the first White member of Congress to hire Black Americans on her staff. She pushed to desegregate restaurants in Washington, D.C. And she used her voice during a bleak chapter in our country's history by standing up to the House Un-American Activities Committee, then investigating supposed Communist sympathizers.
Helen Gahagan Douglas is a particular hero of mine. That's why I chose her image for the cover of my new anthology of women's speech, Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women. The cover image shows an elegant marble bust of Douglas sculpted in 1935 by American artist Isamu Noguchi.
With speeches from 1637 to the present, this anthology is intended to be a counter-narrative to the story we've always heard: that the greatest speeches in history were given by "great men." That's simply not true. I know, because I've spent the past few years digging through old archives and anthologies, out-of-print books and newspapers, looking for transcripts of speeches by women.
Although the history books don't acknowledge it, women have always been speaking out, putting their ideas into the public square: Black, White, Indigenous, Latina, Asian-American women, and women who've come to make their home in the U.S. from every corner of the earth, and speaking on every issue under the sun. They've shared their knowledge and ideas, made an impact with their words, and influenced the course of the nation.
This collection will finally tell the story of America through women's voices.
But the anthology is only one part of a larger project I've undertaken to revise our understanding of who spoke in history. I also created the Speaking While Female Speech Bank, a free online repository of women's speeches. With thousands of speeches by women from around the world, it's the most comprehensive and diverse collection of women's speeches in existence and includes speeches by:
- Margaret Brent, whom some call America's first female lawyer — the first woman in the English North American colonies to appear and argue her case before a court of common law, in 1648.
- Clara Shortridge Foltz, who introduced the idea of a public defender system in 1892, based on her own experience as a lawyer in the criminal courtroom.
- Nannie Helen Burroughs, who in 1909 founded a school for Black girls in Washington, D.C., with a curriculum preparing them for jobs traditionally held by men such as gardening, shoe repair, printing, barbering, and tailoring.
- Lillian Moller Gilbreth, a groundbreaking industrial engineer who argued presciently in 1933 that technological design should incorporate "the human factor."
- Josephine Baker, the Parisian nightclub sensation who returned to her hometown of St. Louis in 1952 and recalled the trauma her community experienced in the 1917 labor and race riots.
- Congresswoman Barbara Jordan's opening statement in 1974 before the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon.
- Grayce Uyehara, sent with her family to an internment camp at the outbreak of World War II, who argued before Congress in 1987 on behalf of reparations for Japanese Americans whose civil rights had been abridged.
- Hillary Clinton delivering her historic "women's rights are human rights" speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
- Temple Grandin, advocate for neurodiversity, who explained in a 2007 speech how, as an autistic individual, she applies her skills of perception and sensitivity to the humane treatment of livestock and other animals.
Ultimately, the message of Speaking While Female is that women today do indeed have an accessible and inspirational past to draw on, one that benefits our careers, the organizations we work for, and the world we want to pass on to future generations.
When Helen Gahagan Douglas spoke out against the McCarthy Red Scare in 1940, she knew she was taking a lonely stand, but she could not have anticipated that her outspokenness would torpedo her political career. But that's exactly what happened. Her critics went on the attack, viciously calling her pro-Red and a Communist "fellow traveler." When she later campaigned for the Senate, in 1950, her primary opponent called her "the pink lady" and said she was "pink right down to her underwear" — a reference to her spurious Communist sympathies.
During the general election, Douglas faced off against Republican Representative Richard M. Nixon, whose work on the high-profile Alger Hiss case had built up his bona fides as an anti-Communist. Nixon's campaign manager ordered 500,000 anti-Douglas flyers printed on pink paper. It was a cutthroat race, with Nixon assassinating Douglas's character, implying that she was a Communist sympathizer. She lost by a wide margin, bringing her political career to a close.
During the Red Scare, many innocent people lost their jobs, their careers, and their reputations because of a ruthless campaign of fear, mass hysteria, lies, and insinuation. But Helen Gahagan Douglas spoke out for reason, decency, and truth. Today, we can also appreciate her adherence to evidence-based assertions. She didn't have to make up facts to make her case.
This Women's History Month, let's honor her words and those of so many other intrepid women speakers who are today providing powerful role models for women and girls — the voices of the future.