RICHARD J. JENSEN AND JOHN C. HAMMERBACK

In Dreams Die Hard David Harris described a speech that Robert Moses delivered on April 24, 1964, at Stanford University:

Every seat in the auditorium was taken. From the balcony, Bob Moses looked frail, generating an immense, almost Zen presence as he talked. He made no attempt to work anyone up. Each word had clearly been considered and was said with the rhythms of a man crossing a stream, hopping from rock to rock. The audience grew increasingly intent as Moses proceeded. . . . When Moses was finished, the hall was absolutely quiet for almost a minute as more than 400 continued to listen. Then a five-minute standing ovation began.

Harris presented an intriguing portrait of a rhetor who differed sharply in method and manner from most activist orators of the 1960s. Moses had less confidence in the power of public discourse than in the deeds that frequently spoke far louder than did one's words. By deemphasizing the role of public persuasion in his campaign to reform the established order, he separated himself from the dominant rhetorical tradition of American protest and seemed out of place amidst the outspoken advocacy of the 1960s. Thus it may seem unsurprising that he has not been the subject of study by scholars of rhetorical discourse. Yet a close examination of his public address reveals him to be a skillful, if somewhat unconventional, rhetor who combined a complementary mix of rhetorical elements into a powerful message that helped him achieve his militant goals. His was a quiet but important voice in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Robert Parris Moses was born in Harlem in 1935 and grew up in a housing project. A sensitive and intellectually gifted child, he passed a citywide competitive exam as a teenager and was admitted to Stuyvesant High School, a

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