Bernice Johnson Reagon

Biography

Bernice Johnson Reagon (October 4, 1942 – July 16, 2024) was an American song leader, composer, professor of American history, curator at the Smithsonian, and social activist. In the early 1960s, she was a founding member of the Freedom Singers, organized by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Albany Movement for civil rights in Georgia. In 1973, she founded the all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, based in Washington, D.C. She was the founder/the 1st member of Sweet Honey in the Rock from 1973 to 2006. Reagon, along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, realized the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South.

"After a song", Reagon recalled, "the differences between us were not so great. Somehow, making a song required an expression of that which was common to us all.... This music was like an instrument, like holding a tool in your hand."

The Albany Singing Movement became a vital catalyst for change through music in the early 1960s protests of the Civil Rights era. Reagon devoted her life to social justice through music via recordings, activism, community singing, and scholarship.

She earned her Ph.D. from Howard University, becoming a cultural historian, centered on the role of music. She was professor emerita in the Department of History at the American University. She had also been a scholar-in-residence at Stanford and received an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee College of Music.

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