Bernice Johnson Reagon (born October 4, 1942) is a singer, composer, scholar, and social activist, who founded the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973. Read full biography of Bernice Johnson Reagon →
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
If every moment is sacred, and If you are amazed and in awe most of the time when you find yourself breathing and not crazy, then you are in a state... →
I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in... →
When the culture is strong, you've got this consistency where black people can grow up in these places with this voice just resonating about our... →
There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.
I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can... →
The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail... and I'd never heard it before in my life.
When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.
It makes sense that whatever the topic is, it's more compelling if you can provide the audience with a range of perspectives, and you can cross... →
And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.
The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk... →
At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the... →
I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I... →
Bernice Johnson Reagon (born October 4, 1942) is a singer, composer, scholar, and social activist, who founded the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973.