FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Celebrated Gospel Singer, Distinguished Professor Bernice Johnson Reagon to Give Barnard College 108th Commencement Address
Contact: Petra Tuomi, Office of the Public Affairs, 212-854-7907, [email protected]
New York, N.Y., April 18, 2001-Bernice Johnson Reagon, renowned gospel singer and folklorist who has devoted her life to promoting the African-American gospel music tradition, will address Barnard College's Class of 2001 at the 108th Commencement on Tuesday, May 15, on Lehman Lawn at Barnard College, 117th Street and Broadway, (rain location: Levien Gymnasium, Columbia University).
Reagon will receive the Barnard Medal of Distinction along with: Maxine Greene '38, author and Wm. F. Russell Professor Emerita of Teachers College, who is recognized as a prolific American philosopher of education and aesthetics; Morris Dees, Chief Trial Counsel of The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights lawyer who has committed his life to putting hate crimes on trial; and Susan Hendrickson, famed diver and dinosaur hunter, who discovered the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex ever found.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon, famed composer and singer in the 19th century southern tradition, founded Sweet Honey in The Rock, a world-renowned African-American women's a cappella ensemble, in 1973. A historian and scholar, Reagon is a distinguished professor of history at American University and a Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of American History, where she served for 20 years.
Reagon has served as a music consultant, composer, and performer for several award-winning film and video projects; in 1989, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her work as an artist and scholar of African-American culture. She researched, produced and hosted the groundbreaking Smithsonian Institution and National Public Radio series, Wade in The Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions, which began broadcast in 1994 and won a Peabody Award.
Reagon specializes in the African-American oral, performance, and protest traditions. After an extraordinary three decades, Reagon remains the driving force of Sweet Honey in the Rock. The much-acclaimed group draws from the rich tradition of African-American choral music, beginning in slavery when Africans worked in the plantations, singing to the rhythm of their forced labor. These basic work songs formed the beginning of gospel music. As a solo singer, Reagon describes herself as a "song leader in the nineteenth century African-American choral tradition in search of a congregation."
In the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement, Reagon was a member of the original SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Freedom Singers. The Freedom Singers traveled the country, attending meetings and protests and were often arrested. The spirit of the Freedom Singers lives on in Sweet Honey in the Rock. Reagon's group has toured internationally throughout the years; their song 'Emergency' was nominated for a Grammy in 1988. In reviews of Sweet Honey's performances, the words "mesmerizing" and "overwhelming" appear frequently. The Sydney Morning Herald wrote of Sweet Honey's concert in Australia in 1990: "[They] radiate strength and beauty·in more than 20 years of reviewing concerts, I have never been so deeply moved and so elated by a performance."
Reagon is the author and editor of several books, including: If You Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition (2000); How I Got Over: Clara Ward and the World Famous Ward Singers (1997); We'll Understand it Better by and by: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers (1993); We Who Believe in Freedom: Sweet Honey in the Rock: Still on the Journey (1993); and Black American Culture and Scholarship (1985). Reagon also produced the landmark documentary anthology, Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1965, a three-record collection with accompanying booklet for the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Recordings.
Publisher's Weekly wrote of Reagon's anthology, We'll Understand It Better by and by: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers: "Reagon presents a superb collection of essays--by academics who are also gospel performers or record producers -- that focus on major figures in black gospel music: Charles A. Tindley, Lucie Campbell Williams, Thomas A. Dorsey, William H. Brewster Sr., Roberta Martin and Kenneth Morris."
Maxine Greene '38
Dr. Maxine Meyer Greene, prolific author and the William F. Russell Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, has achieved numerous honors and distinctions in the field of education. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard College in 1938, Greene went on to earn both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in education from New York University. Greene was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship in 1991 to study in New Zealand, and has received various honorary degrees from such institutions as Lehigh and Hofstra Universities as well as from Bank Street College. Greene was the recipient of two Educator of the Year Awards from Columbia University in 1973 and from Ohio State University in 1978. In 1988, Barnard College presented Greene with its Woman of Achievement Award. Dr. Greene was also president of the Philosophy Society of America and is a former president of the American Educational Studies Association.
Dr. Greene is well known for the landmark achievement of becoming the first tenured female faculty member at Teachers College, where she has been a professor since 1965. Greene holds a strong interest in aesthetic education, a topic she frequently covers in her lectures. In 1998, she donated over 200 art, philosophy and education-related books and publications to the Teachers College Milbank Memorial Library.
Dr. Greene's most recent published works include: A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the Unfinished Conversation (1998); Releasing the Imagination: Essays on Education, the Arts, and Social Change (1995); Retrieving the Language of Compassion: The Education Professor in Search of Community (1990); and The Dialectic of Freedom (1987).
Susan Hendrickson
Susan Hendrickson, famed diver and fossil hunter, emerged as a key player in the world of archeological exploration in 1990 with her discovery of a 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex in the badlands of South Dakota. It is the largest and most complete T. Rex of the 22 ever found; her discovery was unveiled to the public on May 17, 2000, at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.
Hendrickson describes her reaction at the time of the T. Rex discovery by saying, "It was like I was a sculptor - the feeling is that you are creating her from the rock, almost bringing her to life. You feel like she waited for you.·it's a thrill that defies description. It's chemical, physical, emotional - it's a body experience." Another significant feature of this remarkable discovery is its gender; the T. Rex uncovered by Henrickson is a female, while the majority of T. Rexes have tended to be males. The recently revealed dinosaur has been titled "Tyrannosaurus Sue," named after Hendrickson.
Hendrickson is best known for allowing scientists and museums full access to the materials she finds. She is not formally trained and does not hold a Ph.D., but she has become highly respected within her field nonetheless. Hendrickson received an honorary degree in May of 2000 from the University of Chicago at Illinois for her "expansion of knowledge and performance of exemplary service" with regard to teaching, service and research, according to Professor David Sokol. Professor Donald Marshall described Hendrickson as "a determined person with a passion for learning and a willingness to pursue her passion."
Hendrickson's intellectual passion is clearly demonstrated in her future plans for an expedition to Alexandria, Egypt. There she plans to explore its royal port, the remains of Cleopatra's palace, Marc Antony's home, the temple of Poseidon and a shipwreck. Hendrickson says that she would ideally love to find "a family of T. Rexes buried together" on her next archeological adventure.
Morris Dees
Morris Dees, a pioneering civil rights lawyer and activist, is the Cofounder and Chief Trial Counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Born in Shorter, Alabama, Dees attended the University of Alabama and graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1960. He was finance director for Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972, served as former President Carter's national finance director in 1976, and as national finance chairman for Senator Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign. He originated the idea of a Civil Rights Memorial that was dedicated in Montgomery, Alabama in 1989. In the 1990s, he concentrated on suing white supremacist groups. Dees' autobiography, A Season For Justice (1991), was made into a television special in 1992.
Dees has made his life's work bringing hatemongers and racists to justice. He has excelled in convincing juries that racist leaders should be held financially accountable for their hate crimes, and in the process bankrupted them. Now 64, Dees' life has been threatened many times, but he continues to fight for the poor and disenfranchised. Dees' office was firebombed in 1983 and gunmen have been spotted on the grounds of his home several times. He has even been challenged to a duel "to the death" by a Klansman. Dees wrote in his 1991 autobiography, A Season For Justice, "It struck me I didn't have to count sheep to fall asleep. I could count potential assassins."
His second book, Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi, was published in 1993. It chronicles the trial and $12.5 million judgment against white supremacist Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance group for their responsibility in the beating death by Skinheads of a young black student in Portland, Oregon. His latest book, Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat (1996), exposes the danger posed by today's domestic terrorist groups.
Though known as a civil rights lawyer, Dees feels he is not a spokesperson for any single group. He once said: "I'm not for blacks or whites. I'm for a fair shot."
Barnard College, founded in 1889, is a highly selective independent college for women affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. Barnard, whose mission is to support the talent, vision, and spirit of all women throughout their academic, social, and professional lives, has a long-standing tradition of graduating women who become leaders in business, medicine, government, science, education, public service and the arts
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