Before some of us knew Dolly Parton as the Queen of Country Music, we knew her as the woman behind Whitney Houston’s song. We knew the blonde hair, the rhinestones, and that unmistakable Tennessee voice. But somewhere along the way, Black America came to understand something deeper about Dolly; when she said she loved people, she had the receipts to prove it.

The community is now left to mourn the icon who passed away at the age of 80, on Aug. 25, after dealing with an unknown medical condition. Known for her chart-topping country music hits, Dolly never felt as though she belonged only to one genre, or one kind of person. She showed up with humor, humility and a generosity that did not ask who you voted for before offering a helping hand. She made room for people, and in return, people from every corner of the culture made room for her.

The Song That Brought Dolly and Whitney Together

For Black audiences, the bridge to Dolly will always run through Whitney Houston. Parton wrote “I Will Always Love You” as she prepared to leave Porter Wagoner’s television show and released it in 1974. The original was tender and restrained, a country goodbye delivered with grace. Then Whitney got hold of it.

Houston’s 1992 rendition for “The Bodyguard” did not merely update the record. She took it to church, then carried it around the world. That opening a cappella moment, the controlled stillness and the key change that made everybody reach for a note they had no business trying to hit turned Parton’s country ballad into a global anthem. The single spent 14 consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, became the best-selling physical single by a woman and earned two Grammy Awards.

And instead of trying to deny contribution or rush to remind everyone who wrote the song, she celebrated the way Houston’s voice transformed it. In an industry with a long history of taking from Black artists while denying them proper credit, Dolly understood that acknowledging Whitney’s greatness did not diminish her own. One woman wrote an extraordinary song. Another woman revealed everything else that song could become.

“This is the house that Whitney built.”

— Dolly Parton

Parton later shared that she used some of the royalties from Houston’s recording to purchase commercial property in a predominantly Black Nashville neighborhood. She called it “the house that Whitney built.” There was something beautiful about that acknowledgment. Whitney’s voice had generated wealth, and Dolly wanted part of that wealth rooted among people she described as Whitney’s people, and her people, too.

Dolly’s relationship with Black America was not built on pretending she did not see color. She saw us. In a 2020 Billboard interview, she made her position plain: “Of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little white asses are the only ones that matter? No!”

It was blunt, funny, and completely on brand. But Dolly also understood that allyship could not stop with a quote. After learning why the word “Dixie” was offensive and painful to many people, she removed it from the name of her Civil War-themed dinner attraction. She called her previous understanding “innocent ignorance.” More important, she fixed it.

That willingness to listen mattered. Dolly did not perform perfection or become defensive when someone pointed out harm. She showed that loving people means caring enough to learn, change and do better. In a time when public figures often double down just to avoid admitting they were wrong, Dolly simply chose not to be cruel.

Dolly’s love also arrived in the mail. Inspired by her father, who could not read or write, she launched the Imagination Library in 1995. The program began in Sevier County, Tennessee, sending one free, age-appropriate book each month to enrolled children from birth to age 5. What started in the rural community that raised her grew into an international literacy movement. By the end of 2025, the program had distributed more than 300 million books and was mailing about 3.4 million books each month.

Those books found their way into homes in big cities as well as small towns. In New York City, the Imagination Library has been promoted through public schools and community organizations in the Bronx. For urban families navigating tight budgets, limited bookstore access or neighborhoods where children’s books are not always easy to find, a brand-new book addressed directly to a child can mean more than one package. It tells that child, “This belongs to you. Your imagination matters.”

That was Dolly’s kind of giving: personal, useful and rooted in dignity. She also funded scholarships, supported hospitals, invested in medical research and helped families recover from disasters. Her $1 million donation to Vanderbilt University Medical Center supported research connected to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. She turned the money she made entertaining people into opportunities to help them live, learn and rebuild.

A preschooler opening one of Dolly’s books in the Bronx did not need to know “Jolene.” A parent reading that book at bedtime did not need to be a country music fan. Her generosity crossed racial and economic lines because it met families in real life, at the mailbox, in a hospital room or after the unthinkable happened.

A Legacy That Felt Like Love

Dolly Parton leaves behind thousands of songs, beloved films, major businesses and enough rhinestones to keep heaven sparkling for a while. But her greatest legacy may be the way she made strength feel soft without ever making it weak. She knew exactly who she was, yet she never needed anyone else to become smaller so she could shine.

For Black listeners, her bond will always be part of that story. “I Will Always Love You” was never about choosing between the white woman who wrote it and the Black woman who took it somewhere new. Dolly gave the world the words. Whitney gave those words wings. Together, they created a piece of American music that refuses to stay inside one genre or belong to only one community.

That is why this loss feels personal, even to people who never met her. Dolly reminded us that tenderness can be powerful. She showed us that changing your mind can be a sign of character, that celebrating another woman’s brilliance does not steal your light and that love means very little if it never becomes action.

Country music will forever call Dolly Parton one of its queens. But Black culture recognized something in her, too: a woman who respected our greatness, spoke up for our humanity and invested in our children. She did not simply leave this world loved. In the ways that mattered most, Dolly loved us back.

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Every indicator in New York City’s housing market is pointing in the wrong direction.

Rents are at historic highs. Foreclosure notices are climbing in Black and brown neighborhoods that never fully recovered from the last crisis. Deed theft, the predatory stripping of generational wealth from families who built their equity over decades, continues to devastate communities from Brownsville to Jamaica.

On top of all these factors, there were more than 57,000 rent-stabilized apartments sitting completely empty as of April last year. That number grew by 8,000 units in a single year, with the sharpest increases hitting Brooklyn and Queens hardest.

Brooklyn and Queens. My neighborhoods. Your neighborhoods.

You would think that news of 57,000 empty affordable apartments in the middle of a housing emergency would produce outrage, emergency hearings, and demands for accountability. Instead, New Yorkers got a collective shrug from opinion leaders.

Read that again: 57,000 families could be housed in those apartments. Households currently paying market rent, doubled up, couch-surfing, or one missed paycheck away from the street could have relief. And silence from the city’s housing leadership, activists, and coalitions.

In my experience as chair of the Subcommittee on Affordable Housing in the Assembly, that is not advocacy. That is surrender.

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These are the same voices, the same institutions, the same political class that successfully lobbied to effectively ban short-term rentals in New York City through Local Law 18. At its peak, Airbnb had roughly 20,000 listings in New York City, nearly a third the number of apartments currently sitting vacant and padlocked in the rent-stabilized system. The campaign against those listings was relentless, loud, and wrapped in the language of affordability and housing justice.

Where is that energy now?

Where are the press conferences about landlords warehousing stabilized units while families sleep in shelters? Where is the legislation with teeth? Where is the outrage that was apparently plentiful when a Black homeowner in Bed Stuy wanted to rent out her spare bedroom to make ends meet?

Because that is exactly who Local Law 18 hit hardest. Not the corporate bad actors. Not the hedge funds. The struggling homeowner, disproportionately Black, disproportionately in Brooklyn and Queens, who used their home as a small economic engine to survive in a city that grows more expensive by the month.

Those families were told their activity was destabilizing the housing market. Those families were fined, delisted, and legislated out of a livelihood. And now we learn that 57,000 stabilized units are sitting empty while rents spiral and foreclosures mount, and the response from housing advocates is essentially: that’s just how big numbers work.

This is not sound policy. This is politics. And the communities paying the price know the difference.

I have spoken with homeowners across Central Brooklyn who are barely holding on. They bought their homes, sometimes one generation removed from the Great Migration, and they have watched the equity they built become both their greatest asset and their greatest vulnerability. Predatory lenders, deed theft schemes, and rising property taxes all circle that equity like wolves.

Short-term rental income was, for many of these families, not a luxury. It was the margin between keeping the house and losing it. Local Law 18 closed that door, and the people who closed it are now waving away 57,000 empty apartments as statistical noise.

Everyone in this fight knows what needs to happen but will not say it out loud: Local Law 18 needs reform. Common sense reform. The kind that distinguishes between an investor running a ghost hotel and a homeowner renting a room. The kind that actually targets bad actors instead of penalizing the most economically vulnerable property owners in the city.

I hear it in private conversations with elected officials, with housing attorneys, with planners. The consensus is there. The political will is not, because the same advocacy groups and political donors who pushed the original law are still in the room, and nobody wants to take their call.

What this moment requires is courage, not calculation.

Every month that passes with 57,000 empty stabilized apartments is a month of families in crisis, of shelter costs ballooning, of neighborhoods destabilizing. Every month that Local Law 18 remains unreformed is another month a Black homeowner in Flatbush or Hollis faces impossible choices that wealthier New Yorkers simply never have to make.

You cannot ban the small and ignore the large. You cannot mobilize armies of lobbyists against a homeowner’s spare bedroom while shrugging at tens of thousands of warehoused affordable units. You cannot claim to stand for housing justice and then tell 57,000 families worth of empty apartments that the math just works out this way.

The hypocrisy has to stop. Politics have to give way to people. And the officials and advocates who have the power to fix this, who know what needs to be done, have to decide which side they are actually on.

Because from where I stand, in the communities I have served for decades, it is very clear who is being left out in the cold.

Dr. Annette Robinson is a former member of both the State Assembly and City Council in Brooklyn.

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The National Probate Reform Coalition (NPRC) will host an Elder Justice Symposium on Friday, Sept. 25, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Oakland City Hall, bringing elders, families, advocates, policymakers and community leaders together to address elder abuse, financial exploitation and problems within probate and conservatorship systems.

The symposium is designed to inform and empower the community while developing strategies and policies to better protect Alameda County’s vulnerable elders and disabled residents.

“Two of our most vulnerable populations are elders and the disabled, and many times that combination resides in one individual,” said Tanya Dennis, lead facilitator of NPRC. “At our symposium, NPRC will bring decision makers and elders together in one space for a day to develop strategy and policy to protect and empower.”

Dennis said NPRC has drafted proposed legislation intended to make conservatorship a true last resort by adding safeguards before and after a petition is filed. Proposals include mandatory private mediation before entering probate and placement of an ombudsman in probate proceedings to advocate for the rights and interests of prospective or current conservatees.

The coalition also wants stronger protections for elders’ estates and assets, arguing that money accumulated over a lifetime should be preserved for elders, families and intended beneficiaries rather than unnecessarily depleted by court-related expenses.

NPRC meets monthly through Zoom and has expanded into a national coalition because elder abuse, financial exploitation and guardianship and conservatorship concerns extend well beyond Alameda County.

“Members share horror stories of being isolated from their parents and children, many times physically abused and overmedicated; seeing estates drained for court costs, and assets that parents spent decades saving to leave a legacy depleted instead and going to strangers,” said Venus Gist, an NPRC co-facilitator and former victim of the probate system. Gist said she spent more than $80,000 trying to protect her parents’ estate.

“Eighty thousand dollars is nothing compared to the people in our group losing millions and having to sell their businesses and homes to pay court fees,” she said.

The symposium will also examine forms of elder exploitation including telephone scams, bank fraud, identity theft, family financial abuse and exploitation by trusted individuals. Participants will learn to recognize warning signs involving caregivers, financial professionals, health and social service workers, attorneys and guardians.

NPRC is seeking a California lawmaker willing to champion legislation that strengthens elder protections and increases accountability in the conservatorship process.

The symposium follows Supervisor Nate Miley’s 23rd Annual Healthy Living Festival on Thursday, Sept. 24, at the Oakland Zoo. The free event for adults 55 and older will feature health screenings, vaccinations, nearly 100 community resource booths, lunch, entertainment and complimentary zoo admission for eligible attendees.

Dennis said the two events offer a comprehensive two-day focus on elder well-being.

“The health fair will cover the physical care of our elders, and the next day NPRC’s symposium will cover the mental and social health,” Dennis said. “Together, we are offering a comprehensive two days of care for Alameda County elders.”

Both events are free, and advance registration is recommended because space is limited. Community members, elders, families, advocates and public officials are encouraged to participate. Breakfast and lunch will be served at both events.

For registration: Sign-up is required via Supervisor Nate Miley’s Eventbrite page NPRC registration is https://www.eventbrite.com/e/elder-justice-symposium-tickets-1998385423597?aff=oddtdtcreator

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