Creativity Quote by Della Reese

“They started to try and keep us off the air in the beginning” lands with the bluntness of lived history: not a dramatic metaphor, not a mystery, just the quiet admission that the gate was locked on purpose. Della Reese doesn’t dress it up because she doesn’t have to. The verb choice - “started to try” - carries both the persistence of the obstruction and the persistence of the people pushing back. It suggests an early, coordinated resistance that wasn’t a one-off insult but a system warming up, testing its leverage.

As a musician coming up in an era when radio and television were kingmakers, “off the air” isn’t just about soundwaves; it’s about legitimacy, income, and the right to be publicly heard. For Black performers, that fight often meant navigating segregated programming, nervous sponsors, hostile station managers, and the coded language of “marketability.” Reese’s phrasing hints at those polite euphemisms while refusing to repeat them. She names the action, not the excuse.

The line also carries a strategic “us.” It’s communal, not individual - a reminder that careers were rarely blocked one at a time. Entire styles, audiences, and futures were treated as threats to the mainstream. There’s an implied second sentence she doesn’t need to say: they tried, and we still got on. That restraint is part of the power. It’s a memory spoken from the far side of the struggle, where survival itself becomes the rebuttal.