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Bettie Mae Fikes was born in Selma, Alabama, and began singing at age four alongside her mother, her greatest inspiration. Bettie is a descendant from a long line of country gospel singers and preachers. Following her mother's death when Bettie was ten, she moved to Los Angeles where she continued her involvement with gospel music.
At age 13, Bettie moved back to Selma; and at age 16 she became a student leader for the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Civil Rights Movement, emerging as a music leader. Jailed for several weeks in 1963 for protesting during the voting rights struggle in Selma, Bettie began singing with the SNCC Freedom Singers. "Are you willing to fight for it, are you willing to die for it?" she asks. "That's the way we had to get pumped up to go out to protest, to go out for sit-ins and to lift our voices in song."
Bettie has sung at Carnegie Hall, performed with folk singers Peter, Paul, and Mary, and has appeared on various civil rights music albums and film documentaries. She is the recipient of the Long Walk To Freedom Award. She frequently performs for various political leaders, including Congressman John Lewis, D. Georgia. In her native Selma, for her contribution in the Civil Rights Movement, her name is engraved in granite on a monument in front of the famous Brown Chapel A. M. E. Zion Church, from which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead the great march from Selma to Montgomery. Speaking of her roots: "I travel around the country trying to deliver the message that my grandmother passed to me," she says. "I am too strong to be broken down.... All I can say is we know where we've been but we don't know where we're going."
Today, Bettie is still wrenching hearts with her signature song of the Civil Rights Movement “I've been in the storm so long”. She still sings with the SNCC Freedom Singers, touring the country giving talks about the Civil Rights Movement, and conducts children's workshops. Betties says: "When I travel across the country today, I make my theme the Sixties, speaking to the new millennium through songs. Our words were, “We'll never turn around.” More so than, “We shall overcome.” “We'll never turn back.” “We've been 'buked and we've been scorned, we've been talked about, as sure as you're born, but we'll never turn back.''
Currently, she lives in Los Angeles, California, performing as the Resident Singer at the Konocti Blues Café on beautiful Clearlake, California, just north of San Francisco; and also frequently appearing in clubs in Sausalito, CA. in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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