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The civil rights movement was a very pivotal time in my life.

To be 16, 17, 18 years old and to suddenly see that your actions could really make a difference in the world.

It's heady stuff, something that made a great impression

upon me and encouraged me to feel that, yes, I could make a difference, that I could have a

real impact. Popular music was very important to us. Even in the darkest times, I think in the most difficult times, it inspired

me and energized me to try to make a difference.

There has to be the soundtrack of your life in a sense too, and a change is going to come

is definitely a major part of the soundtrack of that period of my life.

I was born by the river in a little tent.

Oh, and just like the river I've been running every since it's been a long a long time coming but I know a chain's gonna come oh yes it will

it's been too hard

living but I'm afraid

to die

because I don't know what's up there beyond the sky.

It's been a long time coming.

My name is Jennifer Lawson.

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and I was born in the late

1940s, so that as a child, I experienced the segregation and racism of the American South that was

so prevalent during that time. When I was about 10 or 11 years old, the community that I lived in, which was a segregated

African-American community, was just sort of a buzz with the talk about a black man who had

been kidnapped by the clan and castrated.

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