Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 29

Born October 4, 1942, in Albany, Georgia, Bernice Johnson Reagon is the daughter of a Baptist minister. She grew up within the church community, and the church and the black community helped shape young Bernice. Fundamental to this life was the music that accompanied services. Having no piano, performers in her father’s church sang a cappella, using their hands and feet to power the music with physical rhythms. She joined the local Youth Chapter of the NAACP, and by the time she was a senior in high school she was the organization’s secretary. Around the same time, she auditioned for the head of the music department at Albany State College (now University), enrolling to study music in 1959.

Reagon continued her work with the NAACP and served as secretary while in school. When the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to Albany, she expanded her political activism by marching, singing, organizing, and whatever else was required. Because of her activities, she was arrested and expelled from Albany State in 1962. She then entered Spelman College in Atlanta, but soon withdrew and returned to work with the SNCC. Cordell Reagon, her future husband, organized the Freedom Singers for the SNCC and she became a member of the group, too. They sang together and traveled for a year while raising funds for the Civil Rights Movement and detailing the actions and issues for rallies and meetings.

Reagon married in 1963 and took time off for motherhood, but she still managed to be involved in the movement. In 1966 she founded the Harambee Singers, a woman’s a capella group that was a part of the Black Consciousness Movement, and in 1973 she founded Sweet Honey in the Rock, a female a capella quintet. The name comes from the first song they practiced, which was based on a parable and spoke to the strength and sound of its message. The group has recorded albums and participated in various media events, earning international recognition and acclaim for its socially conscious renditions and the artistry of its sound.

Reagon retired from the group in 2004. She completed her degree at Spelman and earned her doctorate in history at Howard University. She has also served in a creative capacity in film, television, and recordings. Reagon received a MacArthur Genius Award in 1989. She then spent time studying African American sacred song and tradition, produced a 26-hour radio series called Wade in the Water, and worked on two documentaries. Now a curator emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution and professor emeritus at American University, she argues that it is impossible to know a community or a people without understanding its songs because music represents a people’s way of thinking and their collective recorded history.

Helen R. Houston