3 different recordings in 1 : about Winston Churchill, Rosa Parks and Emmeline Pankurst.
Enough slow for low intermediate students.
Thanks a lot !! :)
Recording 1 :
I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Winston Churchill (May 13rd 1940)
Recording 2 :
Rosa Parks is an extraordinary person because she stood up against racism and stood up for herself. It was even harder for her because she was a woman, and in those days, things were much harder for women.
One day, Rosa Parks had so much courage and strength that when her bus arrived to pick her up, she got on the bus, put her money in the slot, and sat in the front of the bus. Black people were supposed to sit in the back. The bus driver told her to move to the back, but she just sat there and refused to move. The driver called the police and they arrested Rosa Parks.
On Dec. 5, 1955, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and JoAnn Robinson looked out their windows, stood on street corners around the city and watched the yellow buses pass by. There were hardly any black riders since Rosa Park’s arrest. It was a miracle. People stopped riding the buses all because of Rosa Parks.
Soon, the police were informed of the people standing on the street corners watching the buses drive by. The police patrolled the streets to make sure that the black people were not bothering the other bus riders. The black people continued their boycott, and it was a success.
Finally the rules for riding the buses were changed. The new rules said:
1. Black and white people could sit wherever they wanted to sit.
2. Bus drivers were to respect all riders.
3. Black people were now allowed to apply for driver positions.
In 1980, at the 25th anniversary celebration of the bus boycott, Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Non-violent Peace Prize. In 1984, she was given the Eleanor Roosevelt Woman of Courage Award.
Rosa Parks is known as a national hero and as a shy girl who stood up against racism and fought for freedom.
Recording 3 :
“We are here not because we are lawbreakers. We are here in our efforts to become lawmakers.”
The words of Emmeline Pankhurst seem to make her case. Shami Chakrabarti.
“There can surely be no doubt about who’s done the most to put women on the UK’s political map. Emmeline Pankhurst, wife, mother and political activist lit the touch paper of a stalling women’s suffrage movement and ultimately led the campaign to success. Now great philosophers and politicians are of course vital to political progress, but without the physical and moral courage of Emmeline and her fellow suffragettes, ideas of political equality for women would have remained just that, completely theoretical, and no women would have been able to vote, let alone achieve some of the highest political offices in our country. She created a movement of women for women and was utterly unwavering, repeatedly risking her health, respectability, financial security and even her life for the cause of votes for women. Now many are quick to condemn the less peaceful and more revolutionary methods of the suffragettes, but we should remember that as with many freedom movements against tyranny the world over throughout history, democracy was simply not available to those women… She kicked down doors for women in more ways than delivering the right to vote. By transgressing the traditional role of wife and mother she paved the way for future feminists to question and contravene the limits of conventional gender roles. She gave the women of Britain the first political voice of their own and changed our understanding of a woman’s place forever.”
