Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later began the African-American vocal ensemble Candy Honey within the Rock, died Tuesday on the age of 81.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Music chief and civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon has died. She was 81 years previous. Her daughter Toshi Reagon shared the information final evening in a Fb submit. Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong has this remembrance.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “AIN’T GONNA LET NOBODY TURN ME”)
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) Ain’t going to let no one, Lordy, flip me round…
ADWOA GYIMAH-BREMPONG, BYLINE: Music is inseparable from political wrestle. And within the Sixties, the voice main these songs was usually Bernice Johnson Reagon. She was born in southwest Georgia, the daughter of a Baptist minister. At 16, she went to a small, public, traditionally Black school, however was kicked out two years later for her civil rights activism. In 1962, Martin Luther King was arrested there as nicely, although she was not there to see it.
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BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON: I used to be already in jail, so I missed most of that.
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: That is Bernice Johnson Reagon, talking with WHYY’s Recent Air in 1988. After being expelled, she co-founded the Freedom Singers, an acapella group that was a part of the Scholar Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.
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REAGON: Whenever you’re within the civil rights motion, that is the primary time you determine your self in a relationship that is fairly near the identical relationship that used to get to Christians thrown within the lions’ den.
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: Bernice Johnson Reagon on Recent Air.
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REAGON: And so for the primary time, these previous songs you perceive in a manner that no one may ever train you.
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: In 1963, Bernice Johnson married her Freedom Singers co-founder Cordell Reagon. That they had two youngsters, Kwan Tauna and Toshi, who turned a star in her personal proper. After her 1967 divorce, Reagon based the ladies’s acapella group, Candy Honey in The Rock.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WE ARE”)
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) For every baby that is born, a morning star rises…
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: Reagon’s activism expanded to incorporate the anti-apartheid motion. In 1974, she started many years of curatorial work and analysis with the Smithsonian Establishments, and later received a MacArthur Genius Award.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WADE IN THE WATER”)
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) Wade within the water…
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: In 1994, she created and hosted a 26-part NPR documentary. “Wade In The Water” was a listener’s information to African American sacred music. The documentary allowed Reagon to rejoice the sanctity of each worship and liberation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WADE IN THE WATER”)
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) Come on and wade within the water…
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: Bernice Johnson Reagon noticed music as a supply of religion and hope that would deliver us by means of the darkness to freedom. For NPR information, I am Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “DO WHAT THE SPIRIT SAY DO”)
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) Oh, Lord, it say converse. When the spirit say, converse. Expensive Lord, converse. When the spirit say, converse…
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