Jovelyn Richards and Margo Okazawa-Rey pay tribute to Dr Bernice Johnson Reagon and listen to clips of her music and talks .
Bernice Johnson Reagon (October 4, 1942 – July 16, 2024) was an American song leader, professor of American history, composer, historian, musician, scholar, curator at the Smithsonian, and social activist who, in the early 1960s, was a founding member of the Freedom Singers, organized by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Albany Movement for civil rights in Georgia.[1][2] In 1973, she founded the all-black female a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, based in Washington, D.C. Reagon, along with other members of the SNCC Freedom Singers, realized the power of collective singing to unify the disparate groups who began to work together in the 1964 Freedom Summer protests in the South.[4]