Lionel Richie says parents stopped him from marching with Martin Luther King Jr.: 'Why did you no...

&34;I was longing to be part of it,&34; the singer recalls, &34;and my parents kept telling me it was dangerous.&34; Lionel Richie says parents stopped him from

"I was longing to be part of it," the singer recalls, "and my parents kept telling me it was dangerous."

Lionel Richie says parents stopped him from marching with Martin Luther King Jr.: 'Why did you not tell me?'

"I was longing to be part of it," the singer recalls, "and my parents kept telling me it was dangerous."

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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October 4, 2025 4:58 p.m. ET

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Lionel Richie on 'American Idol'; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967. Credit:

Scott Kirkland/Disney via Getty; Martin Mills/Getty

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

- The singer recalled longing to be part of the civil rights movement in his youth.

- Richie's parents forbade him from participating in the movement because they didn't want him to become "stuck in our anger."

Lionel Richie grew up in the middle of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s — but when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to town, his parents forbade him from joining the reverend's march.

The "Hello" singer recently reflected on his desire to join the movement while promoting his new memoir, *Truly*. Richie grew up in Tuskegee, less than 40 miles outside Montgomery, Ala., and said that while writing the book he realized the profound connection he felt to the activism King was spearheading during that period.

"What I didn't realize was that it made up the core of who I was," he told *The Guardian* in a new interview, noting that he and his sister, Deborah, were shielded from the activism. "At the time I didn't realize because our parents made a point of keeping a lot of that edge away from us. We were in the bubble."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala., during the march from Selma on March 25, 1965.

Morton Broffman/Getty

The "All Night Long" singer desperately wanted to join his peers in their quest for political progress — especially when King led marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 — but his mother and father dissuaded him. "I was longing to be part of it," he remembered. "And my parents kept telling me it was dangerous."

Their decision caused tension. "I was angry, because I thought they had left me out of some of the most significant history," Richie recalled. "My anger came when I realized what my grandmother and grandfather had gone through, what my mom and dad had gone through."

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The musician eventually asked his parents, "Why did you not tell me? Why did you not involve us in this?"

They responded with their rationale. "Their answer was, 'We didn't want anything to limit you in your thinking of what the possibilities for your future could be,'" he told *The Guardian*. "'And if we had attached you to our anger then you would be stuck in our anger.'"

Richie noted that his parents' frustration and resentment were unmistakable. "You couldn't miss it," he said. "Every day I was aware of the anger, because there was a Tuskegee anger."

Lionel Richie performing with the Commodores in 1975.

Ellen Poppinga - K & K/Redferns

The musician later reflected on what he thought his parents' generation would make of the Trump administration. "You know what? I'm glad my dad and that group is not here," Richie said. "It would be tough. I can't even imagine."

The "Easy" singer added that he's experiencing some of his "worst moments" amid the contemporary political landscape due to what he considers an erosion of progress. "I made a statement in 1983 when we were talking about civil rights, and I said, 'We still talk about that?,' as if to say that's behind us, we're interested in the future," he recalled. "Now, here we are 42 years later and we're still talking about the same thing. But it's even worse. What I'm watching now is not only going backwards, but it is the erasing of history."

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Lionel Richie performing in Munich on July 9, 2025.

Marco Kost/Redferns

However, Richie doesn't think joining the forefront of some kind of political or social leadership would improve the country's circumstances.

"If you're waiting for Martin Luther Richie, he ain't coming," he said. "But if you're waiting for Lionel Richie, the bearer of love, you got me."

He continued, "Back in the day I was thinking politics is a great place. But I saw Malcolm [X], I saw Martin, I saw all the civil rights guys, and guess what? They didn't survive it. It's not survivable. Politics is ugly, it's nasty, and it's got even worse now because they character-assassinate you before you even get in. And I found an avenue that works well for me."

That avenue, Richie asserts, is music. He flashed back to one of his concerts in the 1960s as an example. "Right in the middle of all this craziness, on the third row there's the guy from the Klan," he recalled. "Big fan. I can have a conversation with anybody and get the message out better than I can by standing on a podium, pounding my fist down and saying, 'Follow me!'"

Richie's new memoir, *Truly,* is available now.

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