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"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."
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"America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there."
"America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased."
"Well, the way things are going, aside from wheat and auto parts, America's biggest export is now the Oscar."
"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America."
"I've broken my nose, I've broken ribs. You name it. In fact, we just got back from South America, and I fell over a monitor speaker on the stage and almost ended up in the front row of the audience. I managed to sprain my wrist on that one but luckily nothing was broken."
"The whole global warming thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."
Explore more quotes by Bernice Johnson Reagon
"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."
"I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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