Bernice Johnson Reagon, Sweet Honey in the Rock Singer and Civil Rights Activist Dies at 81

One of the most powerful voices of the civil rights movement, Sweet Honey in the Rock co-founder Bernice Johnson Reagon, has died at 81. Daughter and musician Toshi Reagon announced the news in a Facebook post on Wednesday (July 17) in which she announced that the “multi-award-winning force and cultural voice for freedom” passed on Tuesday; no cause of death was given.

“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,” her daughter wrote of the singer who co-founded the civil rights vocal ensemble The Freedom Singers as well as the Grammy-nominated all-female vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Reagon was a key part of the civil rights fight in the 1960s, lending her voice to anthems illustrating the struggle by African-Americans via her founding of the Freedom Singers, who came together at Albany State College in Albany, GA in 1962. The group’s powerful combination of Baptist church-influenced singing and protest anthems, anchored by Reagon’s soulful, expressive vocals, led to a collaboration with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group of Black college students who led peaceful direct action protests across the country, including Freedom Rides and voter registration campaigns that often elicited violent reactions from police and racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Johnson, the daughter of Baptist minster J.J. Johnson, was born in Dougherty County, GA on Oct. 4, 1942 and enrolled in the historically black public college Albany State College (now known as Albany State University) in 1959 at age 16. She was active in civil rights activities and protests on campus, though she was in jail when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in December 1961 in Albany along with hundreds of others on charges of obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.

“I was already in jail, so I missed most of that,” she told WHYY’s Fresh Air in 1988. “But what they began to write about… no matter what the article said, they talked about singing.” Those revamped church songs, which Reagon would say often swapped “freedom” in for “Jesus,” as well as her activism got the singer expelled from Albany state after her arrest for protesting. That led to Reagon founding the a cappella Freedom Singers in 1962, whose songs often served as a record of the civil rights struggle, from tributes to fallen leaders (“They Laid Medgar Evers in His Grave”), to a revamp of the movement’s anthem, “We Shall Overcome” and “Free At Last,” which took its name from a quote in Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. She also co-founded the Atlanta-based group the Harambee Singers in 1966, whose work was tied to the growing Black Consciousness Movement at the time.

Following her divorce from Freedom Singer’s co-founder Cordell Reagon in 1967, Reagon went back to school at Spelman College in 1970 to complete her undergraduate degree. A Ford Foundation fellowship to study at another HBCU, Howard University, led to Reagon receiving a Ph.D. from the school, one of a number academic honors she would collect over the the course of her life.

Among her many academic titles, Reagon was a Professor Emeritus of History at American University, Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Cosby Chair of Fine Arts at Spelman College. She was also the principal scholar and host of the 26-part Peabody Award-winning 1994 NPR series/Smithsonian series Wade in the Water and the score composer for the Peabody-winning 1998 film series Africans in America. She was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 1989 in honor of her work in music performance and composition, musicology and ethnomusicology as an upholder of the Black oral, performance, protest and worship traditions.

Reagon co-founded the six-member all-female a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973, a vocal ensemble that toured the world with a rotating group of singers who combined Gospel music, jazz, blues and African traditions, with hymns and song stories that touched on topics ranging from love and spirituality to racism and domestic violence. Among their signature tracks are “Ella’s Song” in honor of civil rights leader Ella Baker and “Biko,” a tribute to South African freedom fighter Steve Biko.

The group, which Reagon directed for three decades before retiring from in 2003, has released more than two dozen albums since their eponymous 1976 debut LP. Reagon wrote the group’s memoir, We Who Believe in Freedom: Sweet Honey in the Rock, Still on the Journey in 1993 and also compiled the booklet for the 2-CD collection Voices of the Civil Rights: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1965 from Smithsonian Folkways Records. In addition to her work singing in and producing Sweet Honey in the Rock, Reagon released solo efforts, including 1975’s Give Your Hands to Struggle and 1986’s River of Life.

Check out some of Sweet Honey in the Rock’s songs below.