Reggie Harris and I spoke for an hour the other day, and at some point in the middle of it I thought to myself, “Wow — I’m so lucky.” Harris released his latest album On Solid Ground in March — the most recent in a long line of folk music with roots in the Civil Rights Movement. Learning at the feet of Pete Singer, Bernice Johnson Reagon, the Freedom Singers, and many others, Harris spoke about the legacy he seeks to continue with his music, and how he sees himself as a bridge between people across social divides: racial, class, political, and gender.
This one is a doozy of a read, and I must admit I cut some really fascinating parts of our conversation out: some of Harris’s favorite memories with his mentors, the work he does now with young activists, and how he has worked alongside the descendants of the family who enslaved his — they’re cousins — to reach mutual understanding and create reparations. For the condensed version below, I focused on Reggie’s approach to activism and his music. I’m honored to share this with you.
Rachel: I do have some questions prepared, but is there anything you feel really excited to talk about today? Or anything that’s been on your mind lately?
Reggie:Well, aside from the state of the world and my place in it? Yeah. Well, the most exciting thing is last week, we finally finished editing video for “High Over the Hudson,” the last song on the CD.
And it’s rekindled in me that whole sense of paying tribute to those who paved the way, you know? Pete and Toshi Seeger were just wonderful mentors to me, but, you know, one of their passions was getting the voices of the underrepresented out. And with the Clearwater Revival coming up, I just remember how hard they both worked to make sure that it was a diverse festival, to make sure that activism was at the center of it, and how hard that’s been to keep that legacy alive. A friend of mine was saying that when Pete and Toshi died, our icons like John Lewis, and C.T. Vivian, all these icons are passing on, and and he said, “What are we going to do?” And I said, “Well, I hope you were taking notes, because we’re up.”
I got to sail on the Clearwater to shoot the video and it just really connected me again to the the astonishing legacy of that organization, but also the people who have come through it. Just thinking about the people I met: Odetta, Elizabeth Cotton and Holly Near…it’s just been a revolution of of those voices in my head. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about them recently.
Rachel: I felt really emotional listening to that song in particular, because my grandparents had a house in Woodstock. It’s just amazing to like, go to Beacon and see the abandoned factories and industrialization of Newburgh and to know that, like, it really wasn’t that long ago when the river was so trashed. That’s in living memory, and now the Hudson is a beautiful place to like, go boating and hang out along now. And to see all those condos now —
Reggie: No, that’s not what we were after!
Rachel: I mean, why would you leave Brooklyn to live in the exact same glass box to take the Metro North back into Brooklyn?
Reggie: The realities of capitalism, you know, it’s very circular. I was really struck to to remember that time and then really all of the gains that have come, but obviously we’re still working a lot of the same issues. They’re still rising with the same force, and you realize that all those people who didn’t sign on as we were working to make things more equal or more inclusive, they’ve been working this whole time trying to tear all that down.
But at the same time, we did make those gains, you know, and, and we can build on that. I find myself being that bridging person: the old guy who now is the elder as it were. But fortunately, you know, in this new date, and time, I think, unlike maybe our parents, or those who were our elders in that time,we have such an amazing ability to connect. They didn’t have the benefit of spreading wide and, and connecting with people, not only here, but all around the world. And as I talk to people in Austria, Germany, and Italy, and what have you, I just say to myself, “This is immediate. We can make some immediate impact on getting the message out, and then connecting to what their messages are.” So in some ways, it is a really mixed bag, but I try not to get too deep in the wormhole.
Rachel: Growing up in Philly, you must have been around people who were a part of the Black Power movement. What were the things that helped activate you?
Reggie: I grew up in a community that was working class, Black, my family was the first to move on to our block. Within a year and a half, all the all the white people had moved away with two exceptions. And so I knew that there were white people, and there were a couple of white teachers in my school. And you know, and of course, I saw lots of white people on TV and in all the magazines and all the images and all that stuff.
I remember when I was really I think I was about eight years old when I hurt my knee playing ball one one day outside, and my mom took me off to the hospital to get some stitches in my knee. And and as we walked in the building, I saw this big board of all the hospital administrators and you know, trustees and all that. And I just looked at it as she was whisking me off to the Emergency Room and I saw all these white faces and I said, “Who are they?” And she said, “That’s the important people.” And there were none of us up there.
I saw Reverend Leon Sullivan 15 blocks away. Unlike my church, he was leading boycotts of Tastee Cakes, gathering the Black ministers to help support Black power and Black empowerment. And then it all came to a head in my sophomore year of high school when we actually had a race riot in1968. And then I saw riots in Philadelphia and Detroit and all those places. So that’s what activated me. I wasn’t aware of all those things. And when the Black students in my high school sat in, I didn’t even know what was happening until the riot erupted. And the police came in and started beating us — oh! I didn’t get beaten that day. But I knew something wasn’t right in America.
And it was from that point on, that I started paying attention. Going to a school in an all white area, I knew that I was Other and, and then really, it was after high school, I went to Atlanta for my first year of college. And oh, my Lord, Northern Reggie landing in the the Confederacy, which was just integrating and, and having them react to not only the fact that I was Black, but I was also Black from the North.
That year I met a student who had been a Black Panther. He talked to me about all kinds of things. The power that came off of that man, and and then coming back and discovering the guitar, and that took me into the circles o the People’s Music Network. And there was a place called the Blushing Zebra that was a concert series for political music. Little by little I also traveling the country and having people just react to me walking in places and, and audiences reacting to us performing as Black performers because we weren’t doing “Black music.”
I tell people that I’m probably one of the most reluctant activist to walk the planet because I just wanted to move through life. And once I wanted to become a musician, I just wanted to do love songs like all the other James Taylors and Cat Stevens. But you know, even Cat Stevens had a revolutionary edge to him. And I started paying more attention to those people. And then of course, I met Pete Seeger. And then I met Holly Near, the Freedom Singers, and Chuck Neblett and Bernice Johnson Reagon — and then it was all out!
I got activated slowly. But I’m grateful for that. Because it also gave me a chance in the other parts of my life, where I was integrating a softball team in Northeast Philadelphia, being betrayed by people in relationships where suddenly I was just one more. I pushed too far into their world. All of those hurts began to really help me to know that I had to do some serious work on my own wounds. By the time I’d hit full force as a musician, I managed to do a lot of serious personal work. That allowed me to be what I know I was meant to be: a bridge. As someone said, “if you’re going to be a bridge, you have to be prepared to be walked on every now and then.” It’s not that I like it. But I also know who I am now.
Rachel: Something that that struck me with On Solid Ground. Your songs very directly address specific current events. The first line of the album is about the plague of both COVID and racism. But obviously, the key to a lot of what’s the greatest folk songs and protest songs we have is that they are timeless. So how do you find yourself balancing those two elements?
Reggie: Well, I’ve had some marvelous teachers. The writers that I’ve come along listening to, really point out the power of narrative and the power of universal connection. As I’m writing, I’m always trying to send her back into that legacy of finding that core that connects us all. If I’m talking about something that grossly effects Black folks or gay folks, or whatever, at the same time, how do you reach people with that message and not turn them off? And while you do that, by finding some core in the song or the lyric, that strikes a balance of what is true in their lives.
If you’re singing, “keep your eyes on the prize, hold on,” you know, as Maya Angelou says, “we’ve all been bought and sold.” So we all have some piece of us, regardless of where we are in the social location, that recognizes that there is injustice.
And that’s why I love you know, performing for kindergartens and second graders, because they get it. You can have an amazingly deep ethical conversation with a second grader and they feel it deeply. And I think over the course of years, I realized that to do what it is we want to do as human beings, we start covering that up with all of the rationalizations of why we need to be different. But so I’m always calling to that part of people that says, “No, we’re not different.”
And that’s why sometimes the songs are so hard to write because with some of the issues, it’s kind of hard in an everyday life and everyday structure to find that piece of universal connection. And that’s why I try not to watch the news every morning. Because I feel that really starts me taking on the anger in an imbalanced way.
In my Living Legacy group, we did a six-month exploration of voting rights called The Struggle Continues. We had Flonzie Brown, the first Black woman elected to office in Mississippi, a powerful voice of civil rights and somebody asked her “Do you ever feel like giving up?” and she didn’t miss a beat. She said, “Honey, I quit this job every night.” She’s in her 80s, you know? And she said, “But you know, I wake up in the morning and I realized that I took a vow to Medgar Evers and to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to Fannie Lou Hamer when I was 16 years old. So I just put on my shoes. I go back to work.” Yeah, that’s it. You know?
Rachel: Speaking of putting your shoes back on, On Solid Ground was released back in March and there’s been a lot of news since then. Do you see the album differently after the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death? And after the verdict was announced for Derek Chauvin?
Reggie: I do. I started doing some online concerts and I started connecting the people and, of course, watching the news. There was a tremendous outpouring of just devastation and panic and anxiety. I didn’t really feel any of that. And I think it’s because about four years ago, I shifted my performances, and I shifted my focus. Because I just felt that since Trump was elected, it put me in a different head- and heart-space. As a student of history, and as a song leader, I just found it necessary to start doing more songs of hope. Because I understand that much of our public in America has a very thin resilience to what’s happening to them to us to the families.
And people started coming to my concert and actually saying things like, “I wasn’t going to come tonight, but I looked on your website, and you look hopeful.” And after hearing that, you know, for about 10 or so concerts, I thought, “Huh? Pay attention.”
So for the last four years or so, I’ve been really piling into that. It’s not that I don’t bring injustice or slavery up. But some people, they’re not ready to take it all on full force. So you have to honor where people are. And I think if I look at those who are my icons have have either music or politics or the arts or justice work, they have understood that, you know, they have, they have a very adult people that I see myself, you know, patterning myself after, had a very strong ethic of compassion. And they had a very strong sense of bringing people along.
I took some training from the National Coalition Building Institute. Sherry Brown, the wonderful person who started that organization, said, “We’re not training you to change people’s minds. Because you can’t change people’s minds. All you can do is provide them with an atmosphere where they feel safe enough to hear some new information, get a chance to tell their story, or at least to feel their story being represented. And then in that moment, maybe, maybe something will change. And you have to let go of owning that change.”
And I think music is a perfect way to do that because a lot of people who hear my music are never going to come in contact with me. But they’ll hear that song. And if I write that song in a way that connects with them, and with their lives, then that atmosphere can be created. And maybe they’ll hear the next thing that either I or somebody else will say, maybe they’ll read that story in the newspaper or see that story portrayed in a different way.
Writing On Solid Ground was as healing for me as it was for putting it out there. And writing, “It’s Who We Are, and being able to say, “but we can change!” I get to sing that, because I saw the changes in people of different races, genders, sexual orientations, ages, religions, piling into the streets and saying, “No, no, this isn’t right.” That, for Americans, was a huge move. So we’re making progress. But you know, I still get up every morning go, got to put on the shoes.