Bernice Johnson Reagon’s “Freedom in the Air”

1997

Bernice Reagon changed the words of old spirituals to uplift civil rights activists.

Music has been a powerful tool to promote the cause of freedom and encourage those pursuing freedom. Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942–2024) was a singer, scholar, curator, and activist who was also a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Freedom Singers. The quartet raised funds for SNCC and encouraged their fellow freedom fighters.

“Freedom in the Air” is an adaptation of the spiritual “Oh Freedom.” Reagon changed the original lyrics from “over my head, I see trouble in the air” to “I see freedom in the air” during a civil rights protest in Albany, Georgia. Reagon recorded the song in 1975; it was reissued by Smithsonian Folkways two decades later.