Bernice Johnson Reagon Quotes

42 quotes in 526 categories

• If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it's probably not broad enough a coalition.
• The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.
• If, in moving through your life, you find yourself lost, go back to the last place where you knew who you were, and what you…
• I organized Sweet Honey In The Rock in 1973. The music was sanity and balance.
• At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by…
• And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.
• I just don't think one person has that much to contribute to any subject
• If I had been at a University I don't think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work.…
• I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out…
• But I'm a historian. I wasn't interested in just being a producer, I was interested in doing research and presenting that research to a general…
• Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some…
• The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America,…
• I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved
• I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation…
• I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background…
• So one of the things that happened with integration in the South is they found that the black teachers were much more educated than the…
• If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.
• If every moment is sacred, and If you are amazed and in awe most of the time, when you find yourself breathing and not crazy,…
• Welcome to prekindergarten! You will not die if you discover that there are more lines out there than just your own. In fact, you'll discover…
• The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival.

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