As remembered by
Toshi Reagon (daughter)
July 17, 2024
I Am Not Leaving, (posted to Radical Discipleship)
As remembered by Paul T.
Murray, Siena College
July 31, 2024
We Mourn the Passing of Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon
The board members of Siena College's Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King Lecture Series join the nation in mourning the passing of Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, freedom fighter, singer and composer, musicologist and folklorist, and founder of the renowned a capella singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Dr. Reagon delivered Siena's annual Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King lecture in 2008. She joined the roster of other distinguished MLK speakers including Harry Belafonte, John Lewis, Martin Luther King III, Marian Wright Edelman, Julian Bond, Jonathan Kozol, and Elie Wiesel.
In addition to speaking to a capacity audience, Dr. Reagon visited classes where she discussed the important role of Freedom Songs in the Civil Rights Movement and led students in song. Dr. Paul Murray, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, remembers Dr. Reagon leading his students in singing her stirring composition, "We Who Believe In Freedom."
Murray recalled, "Dr. Reagon explained how she used the words her mentor, Ella Baker, delivered sixty years ago in the summer of 1964 when the bodies of Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were discovered in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Baker proclaimed, We who believe in freedom cannot rest until the killing of Black men, Black mothers' sons, is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers' sons.' These words remain as relevant today as they were in 1964."
Rest in Peace Bernice Johnson Reagon.
We will fight on remembering your inspirational words and example.
As remembered by Penny
Patch
August 28, 2024
I first met Bernice Johnson Reagon when I went to work for SNCC in Albany, GA the summer of 1962. Bernice was a leader of the Albany State College student movement — she was 19 years old (I was 18). She then became SNCC staff.
And along with everything else she did, she led us all in singing our way to unity and strength in those scary times. I was a northern white girl who had a lot to learn and I don't think she was wildly enthusiastic about my presence.
It was a few decades later that we ended up at conferences and on panels together. And I have a wonderful memory about a conversation we had about midwifery. Bernice's grandmother had been a midwife and I had become a midwife too.
Penny Patch, SNCC 1962-1965
As remembered by Abdul Alkalimat / Gerald Mcworter
July 17, 2024
Documentary: The Songs are Free: Bernice Johnson Reagon and African American Music
Smithsonian
Bernice Johnson Reagon: Honoree
Bernice Johnson Reagon: Civil Rights song leader
Guide to the Bernice Johnson Reagon Collection ...
Interview: Interview with Bernice Johnson Reagon (Video).
Talks
Bernice Reagon Johnson Part One (YouTube)
Bernice Johnson Reagon Commencement Address, UNCA 2010. (YouTube)
Essay: In Our Hands: Thoughts on Black Music, Sing Out! 1976. (PDF)
Freedom Singers
Freedom Singers, SDG.
The Freedom Singers perform We Shall Not Be Moved at the March on Washington, 1963. (YouTube)
The Freedom Singers - They Laid Medgar Evers In His Grave, 1964. (YouTube)
The Freedom Singers at Newport Folk Festival, 1963. (YouTube)
The Freedom Singers - Woke Up This Morning, 1964. (YouTube)
Harambee Singers: Harambee Singers
Sweet Honey in the Rock
Sweet Honey in the Rock - Music In Camera, BBC2 1987. (YouTube)
Biko / If You Had Lived (YouTube)
Sweet Honey In The Rock, 1992. (YouTube)
"Give Your Hands to Struggle (YouTube)
Sweet Honey In The Rock - Joanne Little. (YouTube)
Solo Performances
Cotton Need A Pickin'. (YouTube)
Zinn Room Dedication: Bernice Johnson Reagon -- Pt. I, 2011. (YouTube)
With daughter Toshi Reagon
Terrify Me, Toshi Reagon & Big Lovely w/Bernice Johnson Reagon. Joe's Pub. (YouTube)
There and Back again, Toshi Reagon & Big Lovely w/Bernice Johnson Reagon. Joe's Pub. (YouTube)
Apocalypse Nowish: Singing the Prophetic Warnings of Octavia Butler, Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon.
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