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BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON, A FOUNDER OF THE FREEDOM SINGERS AND SWEET
HONEY IN THE ROCK, HAS DIED  
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Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong
July 17, 2024
National Public Radio
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_ It is impossible to separate liberation struggles from song. And in
the 1960s — at marches, and in jailhouses — the voice leading
those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. She died Tuesday at the
age of 81. _

Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942-2024), founder of The Freedom Singers
and Sweet Honey In The Rock, directed the Program in Black American
Culture for the Division of Performing Arts at the Smithsonian., Photo
credit: Dana Penland. Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 371
Box 4 Folder January 1982, (No restrictions)

 

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The
Freedom Singers and later started the African American vocal
ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock
[[link removed]], died
Tuesday at the age of 81.

Her daughter, the acclaimed musician Toshi Reagon, shared the news of
her mother's passing Wednesday night in a public Facebook post
[[link removed]].  
 

I was here before I came and when I die, I am not leaving…

- Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon

Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, a multi-award-winning force and cultural
voice for freedom, transitioned on July 16, 2024. As a scholar,
singer, composer, organizer and activist, Dr. Reagon spent over half a
century speaking out against racism and systemic inequities in the
U.S. and globally. Born in Dougherty County outside of Albany, Georgia
on the 4th of October 1942, she was field secretary of SNCC (Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and a founding member of the
original SNCC Freedom Singers, formed in 1962. In 1966, she was a
founding member of the Atlanta-based Harambee Singers. In 1973, while
a graduate student of history at Howard University and vocal director
of the D.C. Black Repertory Company, Dr. Reagon founded the
internationally renowned African American women’s a cappella
ensemble, Sweet Honey In The Rock, leading the group until her
retirement in 2003. In 1974, Dr. Reagon began her leadership role at
the Smithsonian Institution, which included curating the African
Diaspora Program, creating the Program in Black American Culture, and
producing and performing on numerous Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
For a decade, beginning in 1993, she served as Distinguished Professor
in History at American University (AU) in Washington D.C. Dr. Reagon
was named Professor Emerita of History at AU and Curator Emeritus at
the Smithsonian. She is the author of numerous publications,
compositions and recordings.

Dr. Reagon has received countless awards and honors for her pioneering
work as a scholar and artist, including, the Heinz Award for the Arts
and Humanities, the Leeway National Award for Women in the Arts, the
Presidential Medal for contribution to public understanding of the
Humanities, the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award and the Peabody
award for the groundbreaking Wade in the Water series (NPR/Smithsonian
Folkways).

Born to Reverend Jesse Johnson and Beatrice Wise Johnson, Dr. Bernice
Johnson Reagon’s family members include her life partner Adisa
Douglas, children Toshi Reagon and Kwan Reagon, grandchild, Tashawn
Nicole Reagon, numerous family members including siblings, Jordan
Warren Johnson, Deloris Johnson Spears, Adetokunbo Tosu Tosasolim,
Mamie Johnson Rush, several nieces and nephews, and extended family,
J. Bob Alotta, Amy Horowitz, James and Miriam Early and a community of
beloved collaborators and fellow artists.

Details regarding a public celebration of life forthcoming.
  
Dr Reagon solo- Dana Penland

    Toshi and Dr. Reagon- Bernie DeChant
    
    

It is impossible to separate liberation struggles from song. And in
the 1960s — at marches, and in jailhouses — the voice leading
those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. Her work as a scholar
and activist continued throughout her life, in universities and
concert halls, at protests and in houses of worship.

The future songleader was born in southwest Georgia, the daughter of a
Baptist minister. She was admitted to a historically Black public
college, Albany State, at the age of 16 and studied music. Albany,
Ga., would become an important center of the civil rights movement
when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested there in 1962,
causing the media to descend on the town.
 

[[link removed]]

Dr Bernice Johnson Reagon Will The Circle Be Unbroken YouTube
Watch here [[link removed]]  

Reagon, however, wasn't there to see it. "I was already in jail, so I
missed most of that," she wryly remembered
[[link removed]] on
WHYY's _Fresh Air_ in 1988. "But what they began to write about ...
no matter what the article said, they talked about singing."

The singing that so fascinated the media were freedom songs — often
revamped versions of spirituals familiar to anyone who'd grown up in
African American churches. Reagon would later say that, in many cases,
she simply replaced the word "Jesus" with "freedom," as in the rousing
"Woke Up This Morning."

After Albany State kicked her out due to her arrest, the rising civil
rights organizer co-founded The Freedom Singers, an a cappella group
that was part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or
SNCC. Through music, the Freedom Singers chronicled SNCC's activities,
including a movement leader's funeral ("They Laid Medgar Evers In His
Grave [[link removed]]") and a visit from
a Kenyan dignitary brought in by the State Department to demonstrate
America's strides toward racial integration ("Oginga Odinga
[[link removed]]").

Such intertwining of songs and resistance helped define the era and
those who fought for equality, says civil rights professor Kevin
Gaines [[link removed]].

"When they were being arrested and loaded into the paddy wagons, when
they were in jail, when they were having mass meetings in African
American churches to organize the next protest, civil rights activists
sang in all of those settings," says Gaines.

Reagon remembered, on _Fresh Air_, that being the good kind of
troublemaker was not necessarily encouraged.

"If you grow up in a Black family, the best badge you can have is that
you never got into trouble with the law," she said. But she drew a
parallel between the struggle for civil rights and biblical stories
like those of Paul and Silas, who were jailed for their ministry.

"When you're in the civil rights movement, that's the first time you
establish yourself in a relationship that's pretty close to the same
relationship that used to get the Christians thrown in the lion's
den," she said. "And so, for the first time, those old songs you
understand in a way that nobody could ever teach you."

In 1963, Bernice Johnson married Freedom Singers co-founder Cordell
Reagon. They had two children, Kwan Tauna and Toshi, who would go on
to become a musical star in her own right. After her 1967 divorce,
Reagon returned to school, received a Ford Foundation Fellowship, and
founded the women's a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock.
 

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BBC2 - Sweet Honey in the Rock - Music In Camera - 1987 YouTube
Watch here [[link removed]]

Her activism grew to encompass the anti-apartheid movement. She became
a leading scholar of Black musical life. In 1974, she received a music
history appointment at the Smithsonian
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a year later, she added the title of Dr. after receiving a Ph.D. from
Howard University; in 1989, she won a "genius grant" from the
MacArthur Foundation. In 1994, she created a 26-part NPR documentary
[[link removed]] called _Wade
in the Water _that won a Peabody award. And in 1995, she was awarded
the Presidential Medal and the Charles Frankel Prize.

_Wade in the Water
[[link removed]] _was a
listener's guide to African American sacred music — one that
celebrated the ways in which both worship and liberation are sacred.

* Bernice Johnson Reagon
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* Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon
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* Freedom Singers
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* Sweet Honey in the Rock
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* Wade in the Water
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* Toshi Reagon
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* civil rights movement
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* SNCC
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* South
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* student nonviolent coordinating committee
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* African Americans
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* right to vote
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* freedom songs
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* civil rights songs
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* African American music
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* Black American culture
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* folk music
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