Wednesday, February 5, 2014

The Story Behind the "Milwaukee Segregation Speech"

The “Milwaukee Segregation Speech” was an academic endeavor. I was originally planning on taking the Celtic Studies Certificate at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, but then I decided that my first step for graduate school would be getting my MA in Teaching from Cardinal Stritch with a focus on Secondary Education in English. So my plan to take First Semester Gaelic and Celtic Crossings ended when I realized I had other courses I needed to take in preparation for my post-grad work.

In place of those courses I opted to take my English capstone class, Advanced Workshop in Fiction, and I decided to take Public Speaking since that meets the requirement for the Wisconsin Public Teaching requirements. This speech started out as a project for my Public Speaking class. It was my first speech actually. Now I had preached sermons at my childhood church, and I had introduced an inductee into the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame, but this was a different kind of speech.

I changed this speech from the original version I spoke in class. The reason for that was that I presented this speech in the preliminary round of the 2013 University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Public Speaking Showcase: Issues of Community Concern. The majority of what I did for this speech was change my narration and peroration of the speech to allow the listeners to feel the topic more.


I didn’t end up winning the showcase unfortunately but I did well. If anything, I probably read the speech too much (which makes me a good reader), causing me to lose. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the speech, and moreso I hope it makes you consider the life without segregation.

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