Bernice Johnson Reagon’s final performance with Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Scholarship and Activism
2000 First National Leeway Laurel Award
Philadelphia artist Linda Lee Alter established the Leeway Foundation in 1993 to promote female artists in the five-county Philadelphia area.
Read the full post1995 Presidential Medal and The Charles E Frankel Prize
In 1995 Dr. Reagon was awarded the Presidential Medal and The Charles E Frankel Prize For Contributions To The Public Understanding Of The Humanities.
Read the full post1989 MacArthur Fellowship
Dr. Reagon was awarded a MacArthur Fellows award in 1989. This is an unrestricted fellowship, awarded "to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction."
— from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation website
Introduction of Dr. Reagon by Reverend Rick Spalding
Williams College, Williamstown, MA, Berkshire Institute for Student Activism
November 11, 2006 closing presentation to a conference of students, faculty and Community activists exploring ways to have student led organizing linked with issues in the community hosting the campuses.
Read the full postAppreciation From Glenor Roberts
On the eve of President Barack Obama taking office in 2008, Glenor Roberts, programme advisor to Mpenzi, part of The Healing Foundation, wrote in appreciation of Dr. Reagon:
Read the full postMusic, Producing and Writing
Solo Folk Performances
I began singing as a solo unaccompanied singer in 1962. It was a great time for folk music of all kinds: traditional music of all kinds form many cultures, new topical songs, freedom songs. And so many places to sing, my first job was as an unaccompanied folk singer at Café Lena Folk Club in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Read the full postFreedom Singers
I date my work as an organizer from being a student leader in my home town of
Albany, Georgia. My work as an organizer, and singer was combined in my work as a Freedom Singer and field secretary for SNCC. We sang wherever we could find an audience, from concert halls, to living rooms to elementary schools.
Harambee Singers
In 1966, a group of parents who had started an interracial pre-school in Atlanta had a fundraiser for the school. We created the Penny Festival, the script was created by Charlie Cobb, Julius Lester, Vincent Harding and myself. After the performance, Mary Ethel Jones and Mattie Casey knocked on my door and said, we want to sing. We formed the Harambee Singers, a group of five or six Black Women a cappella singers who sang for the Black Consciousness/Black Studies/Black Power/Black Arts gatherings. It was a choral Black women collective voice calling for unity.
Read the full postSweet Honey in the Rock
Now moving well into it fourth decade, Sweet Honey In The Rock, was organized by Bernice Johnson Reagon as an African American women a cappella ensemble in 1973 in Washington, DC.
Read the full postsongtalker
I used the term songtalk for the first time in 1975 to name the genre of a theater work, A Day, A Life, A People. It was not a musical everything was sung, even the prose. I wanted a term that would be closer to the ground than opera, so I came up with songtalkto describe a music genre capable of all levels of spoken communication.
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