to participate with her in an exultation of their blackness

Credit Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times

from ny times “unpublished black history” —  this entry about aretha frankin’s concert at the apollo in june 1971, and the journalist c. gerald fraser who wrote about the show (and tried to interview aretha):

…the Apollo concert he [fraser] described, and the way he described it, are both marvelous:

“Inside, the thousands of black people who saw and heard Miss Franklin were more than an audience. They were part of a black interaction — they came not only to see and hear “Lady Soul,” “Soul Sister No. 1,” “The Queen of Soul” and all those other labels she bears, but also to participate with her in an exultation of their blackness.”

The article went on to quote a fan who said Miss Franklin “has the genius of combining all forms of black culture into music,” and an Apollo employee who said her show was “the most overwhelming thing we have ever had in this theater.”