In memory of Bernice Johnson Reagon, who died Tuesday at the age of 81, World Cafe is revisiting a conversation from 1996 with Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Reagon, who co-founded the a cappella ensemble and, earlier, The Freedom Singers, was also a fierce civil rights activist. She was often the voice leading songs at marches and demonstrations in the 1960s, as NPR’s Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong writes.
In this session, which originally aired in 1996, former host David Dye talks to Sweet Honey in the Rock about how every member of the group contributes to their arrangements; why Shirley Childress Saxton’s role as the group’s sign language interpreter was paramount to their mission; and Reagon explains why being in Sweet Honey in the Rock was “the most aggressive growing experience” she’d had in her life.