Ann Richards's Speech Summary

“We are one nation. We are the United States of America,” Ann Richards said during the Democratic convention of 1988. In the American society we constantly feel the need to become one, Richards uses this value that America holds so dearly as one way to create social cohesion with her audience. According to Johannesen, speakers should not seek to adopt new values or dismiss old values but simply revive existing values and in using these values you create “unity of the spirit”. As a society, after major disaster or event you hear the phase constantly being thrown around that “We are the United States of the America.” You hear the chant of patriotism and by Richards saying that we are one nation in her speech she is telling the public regardless

if you are a Republican or a Democrat we are together in creating a society, government and world in which we all benefit because we are one. “America is still a country of fair play,” is another value that Richards uses in her speech to bring us together. In the same way that she states that we are in this society together she also says that no matter where you come from or what you race you are, we all have equal opportunity to become something in this world that we all share together. We all have the opportunity to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. By saying that we are a country of fair play she creates social cohesion by making it relatable to people of all economic or social backgrounds because regardless of where they might fall that have every opportunity to make something of themselves and make our society better. She also believes that generations after will never completely understand that struggle of social inequality that she experience in her time saying things such as “I wonder if [her granddaughter] will ever grasp the changes I’ve seen in my life”. We, as the younger generation of American society, hear our parents and grandparents talk about how lucky we are to be able to sit in the same classrooms, reading the same books with students of all color. Richards brings her generation and the generations before her together though the experience of racial separation, she brings the value that if we as a society can overcome that, we can overcome anything.
In the previous two paragraphs we speak on the ceremonial purpose and values.

One missing piece of this puzzle is what it all means. Ann Richards begins her speech talking about her childhood and background. She uses this as a method to show the people that she is also an American that came through obstacles like everyone else. “I was born during the Depression in a little community just outside Waco, and I grew up listening to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio. Well, it was back then that I came to understand the small truths and the hardships that bind neighbors together”. As you can see in the first minutes of her speech she wants to establish that she knows the struggle of the common man. She shifts her approach of the speech in elusive way implying the ones that run the government now are not making America strive. She reads a letter she received from a mother from Texas saying. “We're the people you see every day in the grocery stores, and we obey the laws. We pay our taxes.” Richards by using this catches the audience attention, getting them to realize that regardless of how much work someone might put in it make not always be enough and the government is doing absolutely nothing to fix

it.
Soon after Richards takes a more direct approach.

She soon begins the real purpose of her speech to state that the Democratic Party is the way to go. “This Republican Administration treats us as if we were pieces of a puzzle that can’t fit together.” Richards use her keynote address as a way to persuade them to vote Democratic because the Republican Party does not see that everyone should be seen as equals who have the same opportunities. She wants the crowd to get fired up about the same issues that she is passionate about that constantly get ignored. “And we believe that America must have leaders who show us that our struggles amount to something and contribute to something larger -- leaders who want us to be all that we can be.” She wants to have a deep connection with her supporters. She is trying to show the candidates in the Democratic Party will create a better America and they are the ones that we should vote for. That the leaders of the opposing side are the ones that are making America decline. “Now, in contrast, the greatest nation of the free world has had a leader for eight straight years that has pretended that he cannot hear our questions over the noise of the helicopters. And we know he doesn’t wanna answer. But we have a lot of questions. And when we get our questions asked, or there is a leak, or an investigation the only answer we get is, "I don’t know," or "I forgot.” She is saying very cleverly who wants to be led by a president who is not truthful to

its citizens, we need a common man to make our country better. “Claytie and the Lady: Ann Richards, Gender, and Politics in Texas” talks about how the quick witted Ann Richards keynote address was and how it can be summed up in one word, equality. She used the podium as a way to tell the world that all she wanted was for everyone to be treated the same. In the book it is stated that her comment about George W. Bush having a silver foot in his mouth is the most memorable remark. She speaks on how the current president does not know what true struggle is. He has always lived a life with few true hardships. Richards had many purposes in her speech but the one that is emphasized most often is about equality. Americans want to have the same chance as everyone else does. It should not matter gender, race, or economic background we should have an equal opportunity in our country.