Bernice Reagon, Civil Rights Voice, Paved the Way for Kamala Harris

Bernice Johnson Reagon, Freedom Singer, founded Sweet Honey in the Rock

Bernice Johnson Reagon went home, over the River Jordan, on Friday. With the presidential sweepstakes taking the news attention, it might be easy to overlook the great musician who contributed to much of our soundtrack in the early 60s and to our culture today.

The veterans of the Civil Rights Movement are leaving us, one by one. While most of us recognize names that achieved widespread recognition, we may not know the names and people who were the core activists of the Movement.

Bernice Johnson Reagon was born in Georgia, one of eight children in the family of a Baptist minister and his wife. She joined the Albany Movement for Civil Rights when she was 19 and became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). According to the Washington Post’s July 19, 2024 edition, she later led the ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, safeguarding Black vocal traditions while imaginatively blending jazz, blues, work songs, and spirituals.

Dr. Reagon got her PhD from Howard University, worked at the Smithsonian Institute, and curated Black folk music.

That’s the dry version.

When I attended a Sweet Honey in the Rock concert, the audience was clapping and standing and dancing in response, the sweet harmonies filling the air with acapella music and also with a variety of traditional instruments.

She paved the way

Bernice Johnson was on the picket lines, in church meetings of SNCC, jails, and leading the Movement with her song. The National Public Radio show she curated, Wade in the Water, documents the traditions of the African-American church and how powerfully the music boosted the morale of Civil Rights Movement participants.

The lyrics of spirituals were changed to reflect the tenor of the times, of the hopes, and the concerted activism of those who led us forward. One remembers a line of linked arms, a phalanx of the Beloved Community, not a pointed spear with one person in front.

The SNCC Legacy Project was founded by veterans of SNCC to secure the history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the organizing work on the ground in the deep South that led to many of the hard-fought victories. The memorial section of the legacy project keeps increasing as the online tributes to those SNCC members who have died increase.

I was fortunate to meet and know SNCC members who have now passed the torch — and they were intentional about establishing the SNCC Legacy Project. The objective of SNCC, at the beginning, was not to become institutionalized, not to become a legacy organization, but to make change happen. The leaders of the summer conference are a new generation.

Bernice Johnson Reagon’s legacy

Kamala Harris may be the Democratic nominee for President. That she is even being seriously considered is a result of the efforts of people like Bernice Johnson Reagon, who understood the burden, viscerally at that time, of the intersection of gender and race. But she used both the heart of music and the head of musicology to create lines, songs, and rhythms that stir us.

The MacArthur Foundation recognized Bernice’s gifts with a “genius” award, and she has also received a presidential medal.

It perhaps isn’t by chance that Bernice Johnson Reagon died on Friday to pass the baton. I have known other SNCC activists and founders whose dates of birth and death aligned with important events. Sometimes, we must seek the still, small point that is turning in the chaos, the calm in the eye of the storm.

There is no better example of that than a clip of Sweet Honey in the Rock’s singing. Bernice Johnson Reagon is the woman with short-clipped gray hair in the video, of a version of “Wade in the Water” that was filmed during a sound check. “Wade in the water, children,” was itself a reminder to runaway slaves to cover their tracks from dogs who would follow scents to hunt down those seeking freedom.

I borrowed both the record album produced by the Freedom Singers and the songbook years ago before both became collector’s items. But I wanted to hear the music, that’s all, and the music will last.

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina is also a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, active in the Orangeburg, South Carolina protests. He is now 84, a senior leader in the Democratic Party, and together with the rest of the Black Caucus, has endorsed Kamala Harris as the nominee for President.

Progress is slow until it seems fast. Like honey in the rock, it is a spiritual provision of sweet succor in dry places.

I am hopeful. For the first time in a long time. I didn’t expect to find honey in the rock.