I never sang for a Grammy, for money, for fame. That's my whole purpose for singing: for people, for the fans.
Mavis StaplesRead
We've had a great change. Dr King saw to that. I was so grateful to see the 'colored only' signs come off the water fountains and bathrooms in the south. But the struggle lives on.
Interpretation
The quote reflects gratitude for social progress while acknowledging that the fight for equality continues.
Mavis Staples expresses appreciation for the significant changes initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. regarding racial segregation, particularly the removal of discriminatory signs. However, she also emphasizes that even with these advancements, the struggle for justice and equality persists, indicating that the journey toward true equality is ongoing.
In practice
During a speech about social justice, one might reference this quote to illustrate the ongoing nature of the civil rights movement.
Take the adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of your old life and into the new!
These false barriers that we've erected of space and race, all these illusions that we've allowed to infect us like toxins, we've got to rid ourselves of that. We are a better nation when we are ultimately united in a common purpose and a common cause.
The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.
There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.
If any person wants to see clearly just how much she has changed - whether for better or worse - let her revisit after some lapse of time any place where she has ones lived. She will meet her former self at every turn, with every familiar face, in every old recollection ... She will see how much she has gained in some respects, how much she has lost - irretrievably lost - in others.
There is - and always will be - the legacy of chattel slavery in this nation, an obsession with racial and gender differences, but I think that, at its best, this nation is capable of creating standards for itself and reaching towards those standards.
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