Harambee Singers

Harambee Singers

1966 Atlanta, GA Black Consciousness Movement (l-r) Gail Jordan, Mattie Casey, Jamila Jones, Jackie Howard, Bernice Johnson Reagon

In 1966, a group of parents who had started an interracial pre-school in Atlanta had a fundraiser for the school. We created the Penny Festival, the script was created by Charlie Cobb, Julius Lester, Vincent Harding and myself. After the performance, Mary Ethel Jones and Mattie Casey knocked on my door and said, we want to sing. We formed the Harambee Singers, a group of five or six Black Women a cappella singers who sang for the Black Consciousness/Black Studies/Black Power/Black Arts gatherings. It was a choral Black women collective voice calling for unity.