Composer, singer, scholar, and activist Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942–2024) was born on this day in Albany, Georgia, one of eight children and the daughter of a preacher. Her voice became a compass for courage.

“If you’re in a coalition and you’re comfortable, you know it’s not a broad enough coalition,” she said.

A founding member of the SNCC Freedom Singers, she helped carry the civil rights movement’s music from church pews to marches, jails, and the 1963 March on Washington. “The voice I have now,” she recalled, “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.”

In 1973, Reagon founded the Grammy-honored a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, named from Psalm 81:16. Their passionate, beautiful harmonies carried stories of freedom in the 19th-century choral tradition, lifting communities across the world.

“I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song,” she said. “To this day, I don’t understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.”

With a life devoted to history, justice, and creativity, Reagon served as curator emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and professor at American University—while continuing to write, teach, and produce for television.

Bernice Johnson Reagon's voice and vision endure. Her songs still teach us to stand together and sing toward freedom. That we can build justice, community, and hope one voice at a time.