There is a need to understand that we are a culture created by a slave culture and that we still operate out of lessons learned and taught during a t… - Bernice Johnson Reagon

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There is a need to understand that we are a culture created by a slave culture and that we still operate out of lessons learned and taught during a time when that system was intact. And so, many of the things that we learn, we learn there, the kind of women we learn how to be, the kind of men we learn how to be. If you can think of the batterers, the leading men of society beating people all the time and integrating it into their lives and into their personality across a 300-year period, you can’t tell me that’s not related to the violence we have to deal with. If you can — if I can tell you about the child abuse that a young child experiences who’s Black on a slave plantation, the battering that Black people experience, where you are whipped for anything, the sexual violence and sexual harassment, we’re talking about 300 years, formative culture in this country.

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About Bernice Johnson Reagon

Bernice Johnson Reagon (born Bernice Johnson; October 4, 1942 – July 16, 2024) was a song leader, composer, scholar, and social activist, who in the early 1960s was a founding member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) Freedom Singers in the Albany Movement in Georgia. She earned her Ph.D. from Howard University becoming a cultural historian, centered on the role of music, and was an emeritus faculty member in the History Department at The American University. She wa been a scholar-in-residence at Stanford and received an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music.

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Alternative Names: Bernice J. Reagon Bernice Johnson
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Additional quotes by Bernice Johnson Reagon

It is very difficult to be born female in this country and not be — not be fearful. One of the first lessons you get is that it’s a culture that preys on girls and teenagers and women. And so you go through your life with this little trail of fear as a girl and as a woman in this culture. And so, the Joan Little case was important to me because I thought, “Aha, they die!” — rapists, you know. I thought it was an interesting idea to add to this culture of fear I was living with. I owe Joan Little a lot.

Slavery was a very violent system. And slavery did not just happen in the South; it happened to the nation. So, as a birthing nation, we are a very violent culture. And I think we are reaping some terrible, terrible fruits from what is integral to being American.

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It’s a class notion that women should be in the home with children. It is a very narrow strata of females who have been able to be married, have children and be home. Most women in the world are forced to work outside of the home, especially if they have children, because there isn’t any other chance for survival.

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