The Wellesley graduate was selected by her classmates to give the college’s first-ever student speech at the graduation ceremony in the spring of 1969. Rodham delivered a speech full of resolute optimism, recordings of which were released by Wellesley for the first time today.

“For too long our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible,” she said. “And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.”