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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

Bernice Johnson Reagon

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Bernice Johnson Reagon
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: October 4
Composer
Historian
Singer
Dougherty County
Georgia
Bernice J. Reagon
People
Whether
Religion
Didn
Wells
Firsts
Well
Ran
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Asking
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More quotes by Bernice Johnson Reagon

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Personally I discovered that you could go through the academy as a young scholar, come out, and almost immediately have an impact on the academic environment.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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I organized Sweet Honey In The Rock in 1973. The music was sanity and balance.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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I just don't think one person has that much to contribute to any subject
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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 don't think I have been as successful
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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What would you be like if you had white hair and had not given up your principles? It might be wise as you deal with coalition efforts to think about the possibilities of going for fifty years.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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It makes sense that whatever the topic is, it's more compelling if you can provide the audience with a range of perspectives, and you can cross disciplines. And you don't have to control what people take out of it.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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 in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
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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.
Bernice Johnson Reagon