Category Archives: History Rhetoric

Obama invokes history in eulogy for Charleston pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney

President Obama’s rhetoric about history in his eulogy at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney at the College of Charleston’s campus.

Reverend Pinckney once said, “Across the south, we have a deep appreciation of history. We haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.”

What is true in the south is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other; that my liberty depends on you being free, too.

That — that history can’t be a sword to justify injustice or a shield against progress. It must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, how to break the cycle, a roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind. But more importantly, an open heart.

Source: Transcript: Obama delivers eulogy for Charleston pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney

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…not if you consider history as something alive that can live and breathe and bleed.

We should speak of it as an attack on history, which it was. This was the church founded by Denmark Vesey, who planned a slave revolt in 1822. Vesey was convicted in a secret trial in which many of the witnesses testified after being tortured. After they hung him, a mob burned down the church he built. His sons rebuilt it. On Wednesday night, someone turned it into a slaughter pen.

We should speak of it as an assault on the idea of a political commonwealth, which is what it was. And we should speak of it as one more example of all of these, another link in a bloody chain of events that reaches all the way back to African wharves and Southern docks. It is not an isolated incident, not if you consider history as something alive that can live and breathe and bleed.

Source: Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable

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