Bernice Johnson Reagon Quotes

I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975.

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.

When the culture is strong, you've got this consistency where black people can grow up in these places with this voice just resonating about our special-ness in the universe. And I always say you're in trouble if you get too far away from that core that grounds you.

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 were doing, and start from there.

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 public.

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 as their primary training experience.

Today whenever women gather together it is not necessarily nurturing. It is coalition building. And if you feel the strain, you may be doing some good work.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

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 that you will have an advantage if you know more of them!

I organized Sweet Honey In The Rock in 1973. The music was sanity and balance.

If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition.

I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved.

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.

Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You're scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.

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 people didn't have religion.

I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.

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.

There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.

My God calls to me in the morning dew
The power of the universe knows my name
Gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way
I raise my voice for justice I believe
-I Remember, I Believe

The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail ... and I'd never heard it before in my life.

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 white teachers.

One of the biggest things I understood in a program like that was that it allowed more young African American scholars to do field research in the Caribbean and in Africa than had ever happened before in the history of the country and since.

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, then you are in a state of constant thankfulness, worship and humility.