I WAS VISITING my sister and niece in Maine with my middle daughter when we learned that Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon died. Our aunt in Oakland sent the obituary to our mom in Ohio, then Mom texted us: “Thought immediately of you both and all that she and her music meant to us. Long, lovely memories.”
Even in the news of her passing, Reagon, the founder of the celebrated music ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, was connecting women across generations, geography, religious, and racial categories. The music of Sweet Honey helped my mom, a white Quaker woman and Methodist pastor from rural Ohio, find her voice. It also shaped my sister and me as biracial Black women growing up in Washington, D.C. in the ’80s and ’90s. I took a course from Dr. Reagon during my senior year in high school. I never saw her again. Waves of grief and gratitude washed over me.
The day we got the news, we woke in a tent after camping near where the sun rises first over North America. As we drove past towering pine trees, taking in the news of one more passing — each death stirs up the sadness of all the other losses and more to come — my sister and I played our favorite Sweet Honey songs. We sang along to Reagon’s “I Remember, I Believe” from the 1995 Sacred Ground album: “My God calls to me in the morning dew / The power of the universe knows my name / Gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way / I raise my voice for justice, I believe.”
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