The 7 Greatest Speeches In Modern History

Published May 3, 2012
Updated March 13, 2017

“Freedom Or Death,” Emmeline Pankhurst

Pankhurst Seated

Wikimedia Commons

One of the leaders of Britain’s suffragette movement, Emmeline Pankhurst visited Connecticut in November 1913. There she delivered her famous “Freedom Or Death” speech, given only five months after her friend and fellow suffragette, Emily Davison, had been killed by King George V’s horse while protesting.

Pankhurst had been arrested many times for her activism and was certain she would be locked up again upon her return to England. But, she said that she had crossed the Atlantic in between “prison appearances” to convince Americans that the fight for equality was a universal one.

Highlight:

“We wear no mark; we belong to every class; we permeate every class of the community from the highest to the lowest; and so you see in the woman’s civil war the dear men of my country are discovering it is absolutely impossible to deal with it: you cannot locate it, and you cannot stop it.”

author
Mamta Bhatt
author
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.