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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

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

Peace People Ubuntu
If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition.
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Broad Coalition Enough
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!
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Facts Justice Lines
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

People Song Thinking Understand
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.
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

May Together Work
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

Community Country Jobs Researcher
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 what that means for me at this point in my life
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Mean Twenties Years
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, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Actually Country Festival Something
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

Proof Song Thinking
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

Focus People Rights
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

Rights School Thinking
Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Business Motivational Stay Strong
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

Movement Rights Singing
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 the Civil Rights Movement.
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Commercial Music Rights Song
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

Discipline People Perspective
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

Finding Lasts Moving Yourself