Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942–2024), singer and song leader, civil rights activist, scholar, and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings artist, had a profound influence upon the Smithsonian and its work.

Bernice’s Smithsonian career began in 1969 when she curated a program for the 1970 Festival of American Folklife, Black Music through the Languages of the New World. Shortly afterward, she laid the foundation for the Festival’s innovative African Diaspora program (1973–1976), which she described “as a part of a world family of culture based in Africa and extending to the Caribbean and Latin America to the United States.”

Bernice’s work followed her to the National Museum of American History, where she founded the Program in Black American Culture, presenting performances, exhibitions, workshops, and symposia. As a curator with the museum’s Division of Community Life, she advocated for the need for collections and exhibitions representing the African American experience and conducted pioneering scholarly research. Throughout her career, she lent her expertise to scores of community groups, museums, scholars, and educators.

Join James Counts Early, former Smithsonian assistant secretary for education and public service and director of cultural heritage policy at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage; Niani Kilkenny, former director of the Program in African American Culture at the National Museum of American History; and Krystal Klingenberg, curator of music at the National Museum of American History, for a discussion of Bernice Johnson Reagon’s groundbreaking contributions to scholarship, publication, folklore and folklife festivals, and public presentations across the Smithsonian.