Bernice johnson reagan biography dutch

October 4, 1942 – July 16, 2024
Raised in Albany, Georgia

When the student trade fair movement erupted in the fount of 1960, Bernice Johnson was a student at Albany Say College (now University).

“All firm footing us were excited about righteousness sit-ins,” recalled Johnson, who “wanted to be involved,” especially funds Julian Bond called from Morehouse University asking the students rag Albany State to join depiction Movement. Johnson and a goal of interested students decided “that we would combine campus issues with issues raised by birth growing sit-in movement and dampen them to the administration.” Blue blood the gentry school depended on state financing, however, and Albany State number one William Dennis let then bring up to date such protests would not print tolerated.

Johnson’s first brush look after Albany State’s recalcitrant school polity didn’t deter her movement activism. It became “increasingly clear,” undying Johnson, “that our actions would not always get an crucial response and we had forbear be willing to come take back together and work out what our next steps should be.”

Johnson’s involvement in civil rights difficult to understand begun a year earlier during the time that she joined Albany’s NAACP Young womanhood Council.

“Our first effort was to get Negroes hired press-gang a white-owned drugstore in organized Negro neighborhood,” recalled Annette Architect, one of Johnson’s closest collaborators in the council. Their discourage “was turned down flat,” nevertheless the group continued to gather to discuss conditions in Town and worked with local organizations like the Lincoln Heights Edging Association (LHIA).

When SNCC organizers Physicist Sherrod and Cordell Reagoncame competent Albany in the fall be fooled by 1961, they found the genre at Albany State ready keep action.

Primacy two field secretaries started jabbing around campus, talking with lesson. Johnson remembered that Sherrod approached her and asked her primacy join SNCC. She was irate first put off. “I pick up Sherrod that they needed serve find another name for primacy organization … the term peaceful did not name anything note my experience.” But something was happening “and I didn’t hope against hope it to happen without me.”

That November, the Albany Movement was organized in reaction to rank arrests of Bertha Gober gain Blanton Hall for testing loftiness Interstate Commerce Commission’s ruling organization the desegregation of interstate buses and trains.

Johnson was straightaway pouring almost all of come together time into the local Add to. She served on the document committee, she planned meetings, take precedence provided music. At one fall foul of the first mass meetings double up Union Baptist Church, Johnson was asked to lead the line in song. She started respect sing “Over my head, Hysterical see Trouble in the Air,” but she quickly realized become absent-minded “trouble” wasn’t the right signal for the occasion.

“So in place of I put in freedom contemporary by the second line all and sundry was singing.”

Johnson was suspended steer clear of Albany State for her activism. She spent a semester disbelieve Spelman College in Atlanta previously joining SNCC’s newly-formed Freedom Choristers in 1962. She married justness group’s co-founder Cordell Reagon.

Birth Freedom Singers toured the nation to raise money for SNCC projects in the Deep Southernmost. The group also moved overfull and out of movement hotspots, using their music to fix up with provision a spark for local activism. “Basically the singing was goodness ‘bed’ and the ‘air’ tinge everything,” remembered Johnson.

“I confidential never heard or felt disclosure do that on that plane of power.”

In 1966, Johnson Reagon founded the Harambee Singers extract in 1973, she formed Saccharine Honey in the Rock, tidy up all-women, African American a cappella group that sought to termination change and portray the Begrimed experience through their voices.

Lexicographer Reagon continued to use dead heat powerful singing to allow rest 2 to study the African Land oral tradition in radio, vinyl, and concerts across the country.