Bernice Johnson Reagon, the civil rights activist and singer behind vocal groups like the Freedom Singers and Sweet Honey in the Rock, has died. She was 81.
Reagon’s daughter, the musician Toshi Reagon, announced the death in a public Facebook post.
The Georgia-born Reagon was born into a tradition of faith-driven activism. The daughter of a Baptist minister, at 16 she studied music at the Georgia HBCU Albany State, in the city where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be arrested in 1962, prompting national outcry. Many observers noted that the civil rights movement was intertwined with the song traditions of Black churches in the South.
The Freedom Singers — Charles Neblett, Rutha Mae Harris, Cordell Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon — perform circa 1963.
(Archive Photos / Getty Images)
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“When you’re in the civil rights movement, that’s the first time you establish yourself in a relationship that’s pretty close to the same relationship that used to get the Christians thrown in the lion’s den,” Reagon told Terry Gross in an interview. “And so, for the first time, those old songs you understand in a way that nobody could ever teach you.”
Reagon co-founded the Freedom Singers, an a cappella group affiliated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which practiced direct-action protests like the Freedom Rides and sit-ins at segregated restaurants. The Freedom Singers would document the group’s ambitions and struggles in song, like on the stirring track “They Laid Medgar Evers in His Grave.”
Bernice Johnson married Freedom Singers co-founder Cordell Reagon in 1963. They had two children, Kwan and Toshi, before divorcing in 1967. In the early ‘70s, she founded Sweet Honey in the Rock, a women’s a cappella group that would go on to receive three Grammy nominations and create a wide catalog of spiritual and issue-driven songs. The group’s membership was designed to evolve over time, and Reagon retired in 2004.
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Reagon was also an institutional voice for the study of Black music traditions, serving for many years as a professor in history at American University in Washington, D.C. Through the Smithsonian, she curated a 1970 festival “Black Music Through the Languages of the New World,” and in 1972, joined other scholars to build the African Diaspora program. She also founded and directed the Program in Black American Culture at the National Museum of American History.
In 1994, she oversaw the Peabody Award-winning, 26-part NPR documentary “Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions.”
Some of her many honors in music and scholarship included a Ph.D. from Howard University, a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation and the Charles E. Frankel Prize, Presidential Medal, from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Reagon is survived by her life partner, Adisa Douglas, children Toshi Reagon and Kwan Reagon, a grandchild, Tashawn Nicole Reagon and numerous family members.
Forget the “video game movie” curse;The Mortuary Assistantis a bone-chilling triumph that stands entirely on its own two feet. Starring Willa Holland (Arrow) as Rebecca Owens, the film follows a newly certified mortician whose “overtime shift” quickly devolves into a grueling battle for her soul.
What Makes It Work
The film expertly balances the stomach-churning procedural work of embalming with a spiraling demonic nightmare. Alongside a mysterious mentor played by Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire), Rebecca is forced to confront both ancient evils and her own buried traumas. And boy, does she have a lot of them.
Thanks to a full-scale, practical River Fields Mortuary set, the film drips with realism, like you can almost smell the rot and bloat of the bodies through the screen.
The skin effects are hauntingly accurate. The way the flesh moves during surgical scenes is so visceral. I’ve seen a lot of flesh wounds in horror films and in real life, and the bodies, skin, and organs. The Mortuary Assistant (especially in the opening scene) looks so real that I skipped supper after watching it. And that’s saying something. Your girl likes to eat.
Co-written by the game’s creator, Brian Clarke, the movie dives deeper into the demonic mythology. Whether you’ve seen every ending or don’t know a scalpel from a trocar, the story is perfectly self-contained. If you’ve never played the game, or played it a hundred times, the film works equally well, which is hard to do when it comes to game adaptations.
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Nailed It
This film does a lot of things right, but the isolation of the night shift is suffocating. Between the darkness of the hallways and the “residents” that refuse to stay still, the film delivers a relentlessly immersive experience. And thankfully, although this movie is filled with dark rooms and shadows, it’s easy to see every little thing. Don’t you hate it when a movie is so dark that you can’t see what’s happening? It’s one of my pet peeves.
The oh-so-awesome Jeremiah Kipp directs the film and has made something absolutely nightmare-inducing. Kipp recently joined us for an interview, took us inside the film, discussed its details and the game’s lore, and so much more. I urge you to check out our interview. He’s awesome!
The Verdict
This isn’t just a cash-grab; it’s a high-effort adaptation that respects the source material while elevating the horror genre. With incredible special effects and a powerhouse cast, it’s the kind of movie that will make you rethink working late ever again. Dropping on Friday the 13th, this is a must-watch for horror fans. It’s grisly, intelligent, and genuinely terrifying.
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
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He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
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Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
