News

Ron Dellums, “Political Lion of the Bay Area,” Dies at 82

Published

8 years ago

August 3, 2018

Ron Dellums, a progressive political giant who was born in West Oakland and represented the East Bay in Congress for 27 years and later served as Mayor of Oakland, died early Monday morning in his home in Washington, D.C. He was 82.

According to Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb, quoted on ABC7, Dellums was “the political lion of the Bay Area. He was unafraid to challenge authority from a principled position. He stood strong and solid.”

Cobb, a close personal friend of the former Congressman, was among those who urged a reluctant Dellums to run for Oakland mayor, who served from 2007 to 2011.

A former social worker, Dellums began his political career as a member of the Berkeley City Council before being elected to Congress 1971 as an anti-war in Vietnam candidate who then spent decades in the House of Representatives fighting for equal rights and social justice.

When he first arrived in Washington, he demanded a Congressional investigation into U.S. war crimes in Vietnam. Ignored by his pro-war colleagues, he held “his own informal hearings, which drew national attention,” according to the New York Times.

“As antiwar protests raged outside the Capitol, a former Army sergeant told in unsworn testimony how he and his platoon had massacred 30 men, women and children in a Vietnamese village. It was a shocking beginning,” the Times said in its obituary of Dellums.

As a member of Congress, winning a dozen election campaigns, he helped found the Congressional Black Caucus and served as chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee.

Dellums led a 14-year campaign against apartheid in South Africa. He eventually wrote the legislation in 1986 that mandated trade embargoes and divestment by American companies and citizens with assets in South Africa.

Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the bill, a first in 20th-century foreign policy. Sanctions ended in 1991 when South Africa repealed its apartheid laws.

In 1993, while serving as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he was the sole sponsor of a bill to integrate gays and lesbians into the military.

After retiring from Congress, he was recruited by Oakland residents to run for mayor. An informal group, a committee called “Draft Dellums,” collected 8,000 signatures and presented them to the former Congressman at a public meeting at Laney College.

As hundreds of Oaklanders chanted “Run, Ron, Run,” he famously replied, ““If Ron Dellums running for mayor gives you hope, then let’s get on with it.”
As part of his transition plan, Mayor Dellums brought the enthusiasm and energy of Oakland residents directly into the local governing process at City Hall, organizing 41 task forces that enlisted over 800 residents to make recommendations for new city policies, including public safety, jobs, anti-gentrification, support for small businesses, local hiring and education.

In 2009, Dellums reported that the city had implemented two-thirds of the task force recommendations.

He was the only mayor in the last several decades to dramatically decrease the cost of police overtime expenditures. Since Dellums left office, overtime pay for police officers has been growing rapidly again—with little discernable effort to keep these expenses within the city budget.

While in office, he cut the city’s homicide rate by more than a third and pushed for the indictment of the BART officer who killed Oscar Grant.

The Dellums administration joined with the Oakland school district to create a program to diversify the teaching force, bringing more Black and Latino educators into the district. His office helped the new program, Teach Tomorrow in Oakland, to obtain $2.7 million in federal funding.

He led citywide efforts to bring millions in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act federal and state stimulus funding to Oakland, totaling over $300 million. The new resources were prioritized for the needs of low-income residents in severe needs, resulting in the generation of over 14,000 short-terms jobs and other community benefits.

He pushed for the state to return local control of the school district to the city’s residents, ending the state takeover that had been engineered in part by State Senator Don Perata and previous Mayor Jerry Brown.

Dellums hired a reentry specialist to work in his office and brought the formerly incarcerated into City Hall.

Born in Oakland on Nov. 24, 1935, Ronald Vernie Dellums was one of two children of Vernie and Willa (Terry) Dellums. His father was a longshoreman. His uncle, C. L. Dellums, was a leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

Attending McClymonds High School in West Oakland, he played baseball with future Major League legends Frank Robinson and Curt Flood.

Ron Dellums (left) and Post News Group publisher Paul Cobb celebrate mayoral victory in 2007.

After graduating from Oakland Technical High School in 1953, he joined the Marine Corps. Discharged in 1956, he attended Laney College in Oakland. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1960 from San Francisco State College and a master’s degree in social work in 1962 from UC Berkeley.

He was memorialized by his daughter Piper Dellums, who wrote:

“He was the first Democratic Socialist in Congress who also called himself a feminist. He was a hero to the invisible, to the oppressed, to the lost and shattered, the marginalized, the despised and abused, the faceless, from the evicted to the incarcerated, from the healed to the disabled, from the activists to the veterans. He was a peace-monger…

“He was focused on human trafficking and the AIDS pandemic and the human condition and the Cuban Missile Crisis and human dignities in every race, gender, and sexual orientation including in the military.”

As word of Dellums’ passing spread, an outpouring of messages of love and admiration have continued to be posted on social media. He is remembered by his family: his wife Cynthia, his children Pamela Holmes (deceased), Rachel Chapman, R. Brandon Dellums, Erik Todd Dellums, Piper Monique Dellums, stepson Kai Lewis, six grandchildren, and two great grandchildren.

Services will be held in Washington, D.C. and Oakland. Information will be provided at a later date.

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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 days 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.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of June 3 – 9, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 3 – 9, 2026

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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#NNPA BlackPress

Study: Waiting Lists for Child Care Assistance Nearly Doubled

BLACKPRESS USA NEWSWIRE — “Since the expiration of tens of billions of dollars in federal child care funding in 2023 and 2024, an already fragile child care system has been pushed even closer to the brink.”
The post Study: Waiting Lists for Child Care Assistance Nearly Doubled appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

3 days ago

June 8, 2026

Oakland Post

By National Women’s Law Center

The National Women’s Law Center released its annual State Child Care Assistance Policies report, finding that the number of children placed on waiting lists for federally funded child care assistance nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025 — and that number has only continued to grow.

The report serves as a key resource for state lawmakers, advocates, and policymakers by tracking state child care assistance policies and identifying where states are strengthening support for families and early educators — or falling behind.

“This deeply troubling increase in the number of children on child care waiting lists is the result of a failure to invest in this crucial sector,” said Karen Schulman, senior director of state child care policy and author of the report. “Since the expiration of tens of billions of dollars in federal child care funding in 2023 and 2024, an already fragile child care system has been pushed even closer to the brink.”

Key findings in the report related to waiting lists for child care assistance include:

• 17 states had waiting lists or a freeze on intake for child care assistance in February 2025, up from 13 states in February 2024.

• Approximately 106,700 children nationwide were added to waiting lists between February 2024 and February 2025, bringing the total to 225,500 children in February 2025 — a 90 percent increase compared to February 2024.

• The numbers climbed even further between February 2025 and summer/fall 2025, with more than 175,000 additional children added to state waiting lists in just a few months — a 78 percent increase.

• At least seven states newly began placing families on waiting lists or freezing intake, while at least 10 additional states saw their waiting lists grow, after February 2025.

The report also includes state-by-state data on key child care assistance policies, including income eligibility limits, parent copayments, provider payment rates, and eligibility policies for parents searching for work.

Click the link to learn more: Warning Signs: State Child Care Assistance Policies 2025.

The post Study: Waiting Lists for Child Care Assistance Nearly Doubled appeared first on BlackPressUSA.