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    We Who Believe In Freedom Shall Not Rest

    The a cappella ensemble's music and performances are rooted in the belief that singing can help us understand how to transcend injustice.
    by Kim Ruehl Jan 16, 2018 5 minutes
    The music of Sweet Honey In The Rock — shown here performing in 2013 — demonstrates how the pursuit of freedom requires both bodies and voices.

    Five years ago, in a crowded room at the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee — a now-85-year-old education and organizing center for activists, occasionally called the epicenter of the civil rights movement — Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon talked about how she and the SNCC Freedom Singers used music to help change the world. I looked around the room and saw activists and organizers of all ages on chairs and couches, many standing, some on laps, all eager to hear whatever she had to say. She told us how she learned quickly that gospel hymns were going to be a strong foundation for the civil rights movement's many freedom songs, because most of the black activists already knew them and it was quick and easy to replace the word "Jesus" with "freedom."

    To demonstrate her point, she sang out in her warm, enveloping alto: "Woke up this morning with my mind

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