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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

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

Church Loud Saved
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
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 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
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
If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it’s probably not broad enough a coalition.
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Community Democracy Enough
I just don’t think one person has that much to contribute to any subject
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Persons Subject Thinking
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

Asking Firsts People
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

Festivals Graduates School
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
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.
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON

Breathing Crazy Humility
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 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
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
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