MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Song leader and civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon has died. She was 81 years old. Her daughter Toshi Reagon shared the news last night in a Facebook post. 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 nobody, Lordy, turn me around...
ADWOA GYIMAH-BREMPONG, BYLINE: Song is inseparable from political struggle. And in the 1960s, the voice leading those songs was often Bernice Johnson Reagon. She was born in southwest Georgia, the daughter of a Baptist minister. At 16, she went to a small, public, historically Black college, but was kicked out two years later for her civil rights activism. In 1962, Martin Luther King was arrested there as well, though she was not there to see it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
BERNICE JOHNSON REAGON: I was already in jail, so I missed most of that.
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: That's Bernice Johnson Reagon, speaking with WHYY's Fresh Air in 1988. After being expelled, she co-founded the Freedom Singers, an acapella group that was part of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
REAGON: When you're in the civil rights movement, that's the first time you establish yourself in a relationship that's pretty close to the same relationship that used to get to Christians thrown in the lions' den.
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: Bernice Johnson Reagon on Fresh Air.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
REAGON: And so for the first time, those old songs you understand in a way that nobody could ever teach you.
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: In 1963, Bernice Johnson married her Freedom Singers co-founder Cordell Reagon. They had two children, Kwan Tauna and Toshi, who became a star in her own right. After her 1967 divorce, Reagon founded the women's acapella group, Sweet Honey in The Rock.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE ARE")
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) For each child that's born, a morning star rises...
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: Reagon's activism expanded to include the anti-apartheid movement. In 1974, she began decades of curatorial work and research with the Smithsonian Institutions, and later won a MacArthur Genius Award.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WADE IN THE WATER")
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) Wade in the water...
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: In 1994, she created and hosted a 26-part NPR documentary. "Wade In The Water" was a listener's guide to African American sacred music. The documentary allowed Reagon to celebrate the sanctity of both worship and liberation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WADE IN THE WATER")
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) Come on and wade in the water...
GYIMAH-BREMPONG: Bernice Johnson Reagon saw music as a source of faith and hope that could bring us through the darkness to freedom. For NPR news, I'm Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DO WHAT THE SPIRIT SAY DO")
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: (Singing) Oh, Lord, it say speak. When the spirit say, speak. Dear Lord, speak. When the spirit say, speak... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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