In Chapter 2, Wilson explores the rhetoric of Maria Stewart in Boston. She begins by explaining the Psalm 68:31 - which states that “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands to God” - was used by black speakers to refer “to future international dominance of African people” (23). Specifically, Wilson looks at Stewart’s use of figures of communion, which “bring about increased audience identity through references to a common past, tradition, or culture…Stewart, with her frequent allusions to African origins and to Ethiopian retribution, may..have awakened latent feelings of group unity or communalism. These allusions…demonstrate a strong sense of African origins and a prevailing respect for the power of the word to effect change among a displaced people who need to recall a proud heritage” (24). Wilson also states the Stewart encouraged African American men and women to act (as opposed to passively sit and wait for the proverb to come true). Finally, Stewart believed that it was in America that blacks would overcome (as opposed to blacks returning to Africa); playing into that idea that America was a chosen nation, Steward suggested that blacks were a chosen people among the chosen people.
In Chapter 3, Wilson discusses Frances Harper’s uses of association and disassociation. Specifically, Harper uses a “theme of community interests…It was necessary to direct [her audiences’] attention to what they and those she represented did share in common, at the same time she reminded them of what they did not” (46). With this theme, Harper “attempt[ed] to reduce tension and promote collective action” (46). Harper had three assumptions about what her audience held in common: (1) “that the existence of slavery everyway endangered freedom everywhere”; (2) “that the human family was all one”; and (3) “that slavery was a sin, with the church provided the moral ground for its abolition” (51). Harper, however, “engaged in hierarchic valuing of conflicts among communities of interests” (47). Particularly, Wilson highlights Harper’s valuing of racial equality over gender equality (though Harper did speak on both). (Harper defined race as “a group of people who were the produce of certain social conditions” (52).)
In Chapter 4, Wilson discusses Ida Well’s speeches against lynching. She highlights Wells’ “use of statistics, the suppression of emotion, the marshaling of example after example, the admonitions about a course of action, the clear statement of the true motivation for lynching,” which “all converge to produce a text that was direct and confrontational, yet factually irrefutable” (96). A good chunk of the chapter emphasizes “Wells’s persuasive effectiveness [in] her use of descriptive detail. She engaged description as a primary means of support in every antilynching piece she wrote or delivered. Wells’s reliance on description came out of this same determination to appear objective” (71). Furthermore, Wells quoted directly from Southern newspapers that covered lynches, adding further to her ethos. Wilson also states that “by quoting such revealing passages from the Southern press and waving in her own commentary, Wells aw also giving lessons in rhetorical criticism…The presence created in Wells’s speeches, then, was intensified in her pamphlets, where she was able to direct the readers’ ability to perceive how reality can be constructed though language” (92).
In Chapter 5, Wilson discusses the speeches of Fannie Baker Williams and Anna Julia Cooper. These women "focused on black women perhaps more consistently than any other women discussed in this volume" (98). Because they were both highly educated, "they both faced the challenge of praising the accomplishments and rehearsing the needs of black women with whom, in many respects, they were no longer identified. They occupied a precarious position between many of the audiences they addressed and the women they represented. In order to gain the support they felt was needed from white women, they had to represent themselves as the models of 'true womanhood' they claimed all black women had the potential to become" (99). Wilson focuses on Williams’ use of identification. Specifically, Wilson shows her white female audience that black and white women are primarily the same - with "common interests, common needs, common consequences" - and, because they are the same, they should be treated the same (108). More, she said that "all forms of discrimination would hurt all women" (108). Wilson points out, however, that Williams did not employ this strategy when talking with black audiences because "they were all part of the same community. The identification here is invoked, as through language Williams sustains and transforms their collective experiences" (109). Meanwhile, Wilson focuses on Cooper's strategic arrangement. Cooper was careful to place in discussion of black women strategically as to build suspense and to keep from turning off her audience.
In Chapter 6, Wilson claims that Victoria Earle Matthews was “a prototype of the emerging black woman public intellectual” (127). She defines public intellectual as “one who participates in public discourse that has as its purpose the application of ideas to the understanding and possible modification of social and political phenomena” (127). She analyzes Matthew’s speech through the lens of Bitzer’s rhetorical situation, explaining the exigence, response, audience and constraints. Ultimately, Wilson believes that Matthew’s praise of contemporary examples of race literature and her encouragement to blacks to create more of this literature was a fitting response to her rhetorical exigence; she does, however, explain that this responses is possibly even more fitting today: “Matthew’s exhortations to produce a race literature are just as urgent today; it is still the case that those who hold the pen tell the story and shape the consciousness of a nation” (144).
In Chapter 7, Wilson discusses speeches about racial uplift and women’s work and education within the idea of racial uplift. Wilson argues that “black public intellectuals turned inward, partially in the belief that middle-class respectability would eventually make the masses more acceptable to whites. But racial uplift’s inward gaze also developed out of the belief that through education, economic independence, and sanitary living conditions, black people could thrive” (153). “Black women activist in the last two decades of the nineteenth century articulated the position that racial uplift for women would result from improved homes and improved working conditions outside the home. They placed black women among the chief agents in achieving these improvements. They argued, then, for the uplift of women’s work and the work of racial uplift” (177).
Some other claims:
- Miller’s adaptation to Bitzer: “Exigence is a form of social knowledge - a mutual construing of objects, events, and purposes that not only links them but also makes them what they are: an objectified social need…The exigence provides the rhetor with a socially recognizable way to make his or her intentions known. It provides an occasion, and thus a form, for making public our private version of things” (130).
- “The black church provided a number of rhetorical opportunities for black preaching women and black women advocates of such secular causes as woman’s rights and abolitionism” (12).
- “The idea that woman’s power resided chiefly in her ability to influence decision makers was a common topos of nineteenth-century women’s discourse” (39).