Lionel Richie says his parents stopped him from marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Lionel Richie gets candid about his memoir—“Truly”—growing up during the Civil Rights era, and politics today. 

Lionel Richie once passed up on an opportunity to march alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other Freedom Fighters. 

During a recent interview with The Guardian about his new memoir, “Truly,” the 76-year-old music legend shared what it was like to grow up in Tuskegee, Ala., during the civil rights movement in the ’50s and ’60s and how he was set to join the marches for Black voting rights from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 alongside King before his parents intervened. 

“I was longing to be part of it,” Richie, who was15 at the time, told the outlet. “And my parents kept telling me it was dangerous.”

“I was angry, because I thought they had left me out of some of the most significant history,” he added. “My anger came when I realized what my grandmother and grandfather had gone through, what my mom and dad had gone through.”

He went on to explain that when he asked them why they had shielded the Civil Rights movement away from him, they gave a relatable explanation. 

“Their answer was, ‘We didn’t want anything to limit you in your thinking of what the possibilities for your future could be. And if we had attached you to our anger then you would be stuck in our anger,’” he said, adding that he was more than aware of their “anger.” 

“You couldn’t miss it,” he noted. “Every day I was aware of the anger, because there was a Tuskegee anger.”

“Truly,” released on September 30, chronicles Richie’s journey from a small-town Alabama kid to an international superstar, set against the backdrop of a changing America. While writing it, Richie said he came to understand just how intertwined his story is with the Civil Rights era he grew up in — from the quiet resistance he witnessed in Tuskegee to the cultural awakening that paralleled his rise in music, mirroring movements from the marches in Selma to the rise of the Black Panthers and beyond.

Elsewhere in the interview, Richie gets candid about his dismay at society moving “backwards” politically, but he makes it abundantly clear that he has no intention of directly involving himself. 

“If you’re waiting for Martin Luther Richie, he ain’t coming,” he quipped. “But if you’re waiting for Lionel Richie, the bearer of love, you got me.”

He recalled watching figures like Martin and Malcolm X rise before being assassinated. 

“They didn’t survive it. It’s not survivable,” he continued. “Politics is ugly, it’s nasty.”