From USA Today- Music superstars, including John Legend, Bruce Springsteen, Pink and Sia, sang and spoke of mourning, remembrance, resilience and healing during a Wednesday concert focused on overcoming racial prejudice and injustice. A two-hour version, Shining A Light: A Concert For Progress on Race in America, will run Friday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on six A&E networks, including A&E, History and Lifetime.
Read about the concert at USA TODAY
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Moving performances – including Springsteen, Legend and Tom Morello performing American Skin (41 Shots), Jill Scott singing Strange Fruit and Big Sean and Legend closing with One Man Can Change the World – were interspersed with appearances by other stars, including Smokey Robinson, George Lopez and Nicki Minaj, who movingly recited a Maya Angelou poem, Still I Rise.
“Throughout this nation’s history, from the brutal days of slavery to the long march to civil rights until today, music has been there to help us cross that bloody river to the other side,” said film legend Morgan Freeman, one of many stars who participated in the event at the Shrine Auditorium.
However, ”as too many tragic headlines and news stories make painfully clear, music alone cannot heal the wounds so many of us in this great nation still feel, wounds caused by racism and injustice,” he continued. “Tonight, as we mourn the loss of life in Paris, let us rededicate ourselves to helping erase hate and to creating an American where we can all move up together toward justice, community, love, brotherhood, sisterhood and freedom.”