"The American black person knows something which nobody else in the world knows. To have been where we were, to have paid the price we have paid, to have survived, and to have shaken up the world the way we have is a rare journey. No one else has made it but us. There is a reason that people are listening to James Brown, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin all over the world, and not to somebody from Moscow, Turkey, or England. And the reason is not in our crotch but in our heart, our soul. It's something the world denied and lied about, energy they labeled savage, inferior, and insignificant. But it has been proven that no matter what they labeled it, they cannot do without it."
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Activists from the United StatesCivil rights activistsComposers from the United StatesMusic producers from the United StatesDancers from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
1970 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Brown
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