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I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader.

You go through the Civil Rights struggle, everybody knew the songs - 'We shall overcome.' Everybody would sing it. Music helped us. James Brown, 'Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud.' They helped black people figure out how to navigate what was a very treacherous place in America for them.

I'm a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

When you live in the South, you're constantly part of the civil rights movement.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

Early in my career, people wanted to hear music about protest, about trying to change things.

It wasn't my natural inclination to get into writing protest songs.

I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, Fly Blackbird, and we met Martin Luther King.

I'd be happy if people said that I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.

I set out to create a means whereby music could be a way of vindicating the rights of the masses.