Bij mijn weten de eerste keer dat de over het algemeen nogal a-politieke James Brown zich uitliet over de Amerikaanse burgerrechtenbeweging. De sfeer binnen de burgerrechtenbeweging was in 1968 echt heel anders dan enkele jaren eerder en deze song met zijn in-your-face boodschap weerspiegelt dat.
James Brown zou later wat afstand nemen van de song, maar als tijdsdocument bleef het volgens hem van waarde: “The song is obsolete now… But it was necessary to teach pride then, and I think the song did a lot of good for a lot of people… People called “Black and Proud” militant and angry – maybe because of the line about dying on your feet instead of living on your knees. But really, if you listen to it, it sounds like a children’s song. That’s why I had children in it, so children who heard it could grow up feeling pride… The song cost me a lot of my crossover audience. The racial makeup at my concerts was mostly black after that. I don’t regret it, though, even if it was misunderstood”. Tekst in de video.
Uitgelichte afbeelding: By Revolutionary Suicide: Controlling the Myth of Huey Newton, University of Virginia, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28701635
