Opinion

OP-ED: Mr. President, Come to Ferguson

Published

12 years ago

December 2, 2014

Ferguson is too important to be treated on the margins. It is too important to lead the news one day, and disappear the next.

The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police response to the demonstrations that followed, the horror of a clearly biased prosecutor driving a grand jury to fail to make an indictment — all this isn’t simply about Ferguson.

There is a Ferguson in every metropolitan area of America.

At times, a single incident throws a powerful light on a reality. Ferguson is one of those times.

And to ensure that this reality is not simply discussed in passing, but dealt with, elevated to the top of the national agenda, President Obama should come to Ferguson.

In 1965, one week after the police riot that greeted peaceful demonstrators trying to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling on them to pass the Voting Rights Act, and making the electric promise that “we shall overcome.”

Johnson knew that the Selma horrors exposed a reality that could no longer be ignored. It was time to act.

In 1967, after riots broke out in cities across the country, Johnson convened a commission headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner with a mandate to probe the causes of the riots and recommend actions so that these tragedies would not be repeated.

The Kerner Commission’s conclusion — that we were moving toward “ two societies, one white and one black, separate and unequal” — captured the nation’s attention. The commission concluded that African Americans saw the police as an occupying force, dispatched to protect the privileges of whites, and insensitive to the protection of the minority community’s lives or rights.

It found that disparate underlying conditions providing the kindling that could be sparked by incidents at any time, and that these conditions were present across the country, including racially segregated communities, scarred by inferior schools, high unemployment, inadequate public services from public transport to parks to hospitals.

The Commission called for action, and demanded that it be accompanied by a budget sufficient to make the necessary changes. The growing war in Vietnam squelched those hopes.

Twenty-four years later, after Los Angeles riots that followed acquittal of the four white policemen in the beating of Rodney King ended in 60 deaths and a billion dollars of damages the Christopher Commission was created to probe the causes, finding that not much had changed.

The country cannot afford neglect for another quarter century. It is time to act. President Obama should come to Ferguson.

He should lay out the structural realities that lie exposed in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown — and that are common to cities across the country. He should demand action on an agenda for reviving these communities, and rebuilding trust and hope.

A high level commission, chaired by distinguished bipartisan leadership, could probe the conditions that produce that shooting and others like it across the country.

Its focus should be less on the behavior of police and more on the conditions of the community. It should assess the system of criminal injustice, but go beyond to the structural realities that create Fergusons.

Its report should be clear and pointed; its reform agenda comprehensive, with a budget attached. The president should include that in his next budget, and call on Congress and the country to act.

Ferguson, like Selma, exposes injustice that has been building for years.

The president’s engagement can make Ferguson, like Selma, a spur for long overdue reform. The risks of failure are great. The first African American president has understandable reluctance to challenge the country on civil rights or on the rights of Black communities.

His cautious speech after the prosecutor’s announcement of the grand jury decision reflected that.

But the risks were great when Eisenhower dispatched the troops to Little Rock to enforce school desegregation.

They were great when Johnson promised to overcome in his speech on Voting Rights after Selma. Leadership involves taking risks.

And the costs of acting, even if the Congress refuses to act, are far less than the costs of moving on from Ferguson until the next child is shot, and the next impoverished and isolated community erupts.

Oakland Post

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 weeks ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.