Obama's Knox Speech Selected for Anthology

The commencement address at Knox College by U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has been included in the book, "Great Speeches by African Americans." Published by Dover Publications, the anthology features 20 speeches spanning more than 150 years, including orations by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Obama delivered the commencement address and was awarded an honorary degree at Knox in 2005.

"This volume attempts to show, using the voices of our country's greatest and most influential African Americans, how the goal of democracy has been fought for, dreamed of, and brought within our reach," wrote the editor, James Daley.

The book, which concludes with Sen. Obama's address at Knox on June 4, 2005, begins with an 1843 speech, "Address to the Slaves of the United States of America," by an escaped slave, Henry Highland Garnet.

Knox College was founded by activists in the antislavery and Underground Railroad movements. The first black U.S. Senator, Hiram Revels, attended Knox in the 1850s, and one of the first black college graduates in Illinois, Barnabus Root, earned a bachelor's degree at Knox in 1870. Sen. Obama received his honorary doctorate outside Knox's Old Main, the only building remaining from the series of debates between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in 1858. Knox awarded Lincoln an honorary degree in 1860.

This year, Knox awarded honorary degrees to Janet McKinley, board chair of Oxfam America; Douglas Wilson, noted Lincoln scholar; and former United States President Bill Clinton, who gave the commencement address on Saturday, June 2.

Discussing Sen. Obama's address at Knox in 2005, Daley wrote, "After speaking of how Abraham Lincoln upheld the great principles of equality and freedom, [Sen. Obama] presents his own views on the attainment of democracy."

Sen. Obama reminded Knox graduates that when Lincoln spoke at Old Main in 1858, he "told the nation that if anyone did not believe the American principles of freedom and equality were timeless and all-inclusive, they should go rip that page out of the Declaration of Independence." Sen. Obama urged Knox graduates to "take up the challenges that we face as a nation and make them your own."

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 45 states and 44 nations. Knox's 'Old Main' is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.