Make it Plain: Standing Up and Speaking Out

Black Americans have always relied on the oral tradition -- storytelling, preaching, and speechmaking -- to assert their rights and preserve and pass on their history and culture. In the pulpit, courtroom, or cotton field, they have understood the power of words, distinctively delivered, to educate and inspire.

Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., one of the nation's finest speakers, imbibed this tradition as a young man and has given it his own unique inflection from his work on the civil rights front l...