One of the songs discussed in
class that stood out to me the most was James Brown's, "Say it loud, I'm
black and I'm proud", because this particular song made the word,
"black", a positive term for African Americans to identify themselves
with.
In an interview back in 2003
Brown stated, “I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, and after
the song, we were calling ourselves black. The song showed even people to that
day that lyrics and music and a song can change society." To Brown, the
word black and colored were not one in the same. He didn’t identify himself as
colored or a Negro. According to his definitions the word Negro and colored has
negative connotations. To him, a colored was a scared person, a Negro was
someone that was making it in the system but wanted to be white but a black
man has pride in his race and wants to make it mean something.
