The concert at the Lincoln Memorial brought back some memories that I hadn’t recalled for fifty years. There once was a time that was before Rock and Roll and even before the Civil Rights Movement. The South was segregated, apartied, whatever one calls such things looking back. But the music we heard on the Mall today was already here. – and it wasn’t segregated. It was called R&B, Rhythm and Blues, and it was magic. We could only hear it at night in Chattanooga, on "W-L-A-C, Nashville Tennessee." I listened into the night on a single earphone plugged into a radio with glowing tubes. And sometimes these R&B bands would actually come to Chattanooga and play in the Municipal Auditorium.
Usually, white people sat on the main floor and black people sat in the balcony at events there, but for these black R&B groups, the seating was reversed. One night at one of these shows, the enthusiastic white teenagers in the balcony went down to the main floor, and something called a "race riot" broke out. I wasn’t there, but it was the only talk of the town for months, particularly among we younger teens. It must’ve been around the time of Brown versus the Board of Education. And after that, the two things grew in tandem – Rock and Roll and the Civil Rights Movement. By the time I left for college in 1960, both were an indelible part of the American scene. It always felt like they were related – in my mind anyway.
Watching that concert today, the artists were all kinds of colors, but they were singing the same music. And there was an African American President [elect] bobbing his head just like I did with my earphone at night before he was born. And when I had that memory today, I got in touch with the feeling I’ve heard from many – I never thought I’d see this day.
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