Say It Loud! by Don Rhodes

Author:Don Rhodes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2014-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

“I want to say to you,” Adrienne continued, “that none of us would be here tonight if two people—I’ll take that back, number one, God who brought me and my husband together—resulted in an effort saying, “Well, now, here is a woman who can help me and knows about show business. Maybe we can do it this time.

“I always felt he was cheated—cheated because of his color. The man had fought to become the first black man in history, before many of you were born, to get his picture on an album cover. We’ve come a long way. We have Eddie Murphys. We have Arsenio Halls. We have a mixed room here tonight [white and black guests] with love, and none of this could have taken place without somebody who wouldn’t give in or who believed in him. I believed in him. I believe he can make it with or without me now.

“We didn’t have money [starting out]. We had to take money with us to pay the band off. We didn’t have an entourage. We didn’t have dancers. We didn’t have a whole lot of things. In fact, a lot of times we couldn’t pay for our own plane tickets. But we started this thing back up. Because you know why? Because this man had too much gift to give. I thought to myself, ‘If there is a God in Heaven, I want to give him a push.’ I hope I didn’t push him too hard.

“But I want to say to you, I remember when I was doing everything from packing bags, lugging bags, checking bags, doing hair ten to twelve times a day, ironing clothes, doing everything and the woman remains in the background as her husband goes out, neat as a pin, and ready to take his bows.

“Men, gentlemen, please, I’m just giving you the other side of the story here tonight, and I want to say to you that I want to thank you for being here and seeing how far our family has grown thanks to the effort, every time someone comes aboard, one more believes in us, one sticks by us.

“But throughout all of this, as I had the ladies stand, [and] as the song goes, it’s a man’s world. You can buck all you want. You can buck all you want, but they’re going to do what they want to do. Am I right? Thank you, I’m not preaching, but in order for this story to be told tonight, there is only one thing I have to say. There must always be, from the beginning of time, be a nucleus. The nucleus grows off and separates, separates, separates, and tries to multiply.

“We have tried to multiply, and you know, tried to bring on as many good people that are willing to work as possible as we can handle. I hope with God’s help and my husband’s success and all of you should be commemorated for sticking in there. Some of you packed your bags when times were hard [saying], ‘Oh my God.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.