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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By Jennifer Brouhard, Oakland School Board President

There has been considerable speculation recently about why Measure G1 will not appear on the November ballot and what that means for the Oakland Unified School District’s current budget.

I want to provide some clarity about what happened and, importantly, what did not happen.

Measure G1 is the local tax measure that supports middle school teacher retention and the expansion of arts, music, and world language programs at both OUSD middle schools and charter middle schools. The current measure expires in 2029.

Because these funds are important to our schools and to the continuity of these programs, the district initially intended to place a renewal initiative on the November ballot to provide greater early certainty about funding beyond the expiration of the current measure.

As part of that process, the Board scheduled a special meeting for the required public hearing on the ballot initiative. There has been some suggestion that this meeting was noticed only one day in advance. That is not accurate.

Public hearings of this nature are subject to specific notice requirements, and the meeting must be noticed at least two weeks before the hearing. In practice, the notice may appear even earlier depending on publication schedules. The notice for the Measure G1 public hearing was published in the Tribune on 7/24/2026 and 7/31/2026.

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So, why wasn’t the Measure G1 paperwork ultimately filed?

After the Board approved placing the measure on the ballot, the next step required the Alameda County Superintendent of Schools to sign the necessary paperwork before it could be submitted to the Oakland City Clerk.

During that process, Alameda County Superintendent Alysse Castro raised concerns about potential litigation stemming from another court case unrelated to OUSD and about whether proceeding with the measure could expose the district or County to legal challenges. Superintendent Castro’s action is unprecedented and concerning. 

It is important to distinguish between the Board’s decision to pursue Measure G1 and the subsequent procedural and legal issues that arose. The Board did approve moving forward with the measure. The measure did not fail because the Board chose not to support it, nor was the public hearing improperly noticed.

The decision not to proceed with the November ballot was made in light of the County’s concerns about potential litigation and the County’s required approval process.

We also need to be clear about what this does, and does not, mean for OUSD’s current budget. The existing Measure G1 funds remain available through the expiration of the current measure in 2029. The immediate issue is the longer-term continuity of funding beyond that date, not the elimination of these resources from the current year’s budget.

Our responsibility as a Board is to protect the educational programs and services our students depend on while ensuring that our decisions comply with the law and protect the district from unnecessary legal and financial risk.

We will continue working to understand the County’s concerns, explore our options, and advocate for the resources our students deserve. Our middle school students, teachers, and school communities deserve stability, and continued investment in arts, music, world languages, and teacher retention—and that work remains a priority for Oakland Unified.

Jennifer Brouhard is a retired OUSD educator and is the current OUSD School Board President representing District 2.

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By Post Staff

A recent show on radio station KPFA 94.1 featured a discussion about the racialized threats to less affluent urban public school districts as state authorities pressure school leaders to take out bailout loans to resolve budget shortfalls. These loans come with draconian terms that eliminate the authority of voter-selected school boards and impose extreme austerity measures, including the closure of many schools in poorer neighborhoods.

A dozen mostly minority school districts have been forced under state control in the past 20 years, including the Oakland Unified School District. At present, Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD), an ethnically and racially diverse district of about 42,000 students, is the target, but the district’s school board and the community are fighting back.

Speaking on the July 15 show, “Education Today,” hosted by education professor Kitty Kelly Epstein, Taylor Kayatta, a certificated public accountant (CPA) who serves as the first vice president of SCUSD, spoke about the ongoing struggle of their board and community to keep SCUSD from being taken over.

“There’s been pressure on my school district for over a decade now; there’s a feeling (from the state) that we’re intrinsically broken, that we cannot manage our finances,” said Kayatta, who has two elementary students in SCUSD.

“It reached a fever pitch a couple of years ago before COVID; I really felt it as a parent in the community that they were coming for us,” he said.

“Within the past year, they’re back at it again,” he said. “The pressure right now to accept a state loan is something I am not sure I could even describe.”

He said that the outside authorities would not even allow the board to hire its own financial adviser to help find solutions; the state takeover is the only option they want.

“We have a county superintendent in Sacramento County (who) has been on the job for decades. It’s been his mission, in my opinion, that something is wrong with Sac City Unified, that we are the problem child; we need outside control, (and) we shouldn’t be running ourselves,” said Kayatta.

In a district where enrollment is slightly declining, and many students have complex educational needs, SCUSD does face financial difficulties, he continued.

“There’s going to be challenges with the budget in the long term, but I think we need to address that in a way that is community-driven, with the community understanding what it means rather than accepting some blanket (imposed) ‘best practice’ that often involves making dramatic, harsh cuts, things like closing schools without plans.

“If you need to make cuts, make them in a way that makes sense rather than just trying to save a dollar this school year,” he said.

For example, closing a school may save a little money in the short run but almost always means loss of student enrollment as families move out of the district, which ends up costing a district more than it saves and can lead to a cycle of decline and demoralization.

Closely allied with the County Superintendent is the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT), “which has been at the heels of this district as long as I’ve lived in the district,” he said.

FCMAT is a state-funded nonprofit based in Bakersfield that has been granted sweeping authority under state law to pressure school districts to adopt fiscal austerity.

In theory, something like FCMAT would be a good thing, an agency that would help districts that face some financial difficulties, he said. “But my experience and the experience of people in Sacramento is that they’re an outside agency that has its own motivations.”

“They are not about helping you save your budget and helping you get through temporary (issues). They’re more about taking control over a district that they think shouldn’t be running itself.”

A school board is democratically elected and exists as “the people’s voice,” Kayatta said. Local schools need leadership that understands the problems and issues the community faces, “not an outside appointed group of people from Bakerfield who don’t really understand what Sacramento needs,” he said.

Show host Kitty Kelly Epstein, who actively opposed the state takeover of Oakland schools two decades ago, discussed its impact, which formally lasted until OUSD’s bailout loan was repaid in June 2025.

“When a district is taken over by the state, that means the school board loses all their power, which means that the electors, that’s the residents, lose all their power because they don’t get to elect anybody. There’s somebody put in charge, and they make all the decisions.”

“In the case of Oakland, Oakland’s debt could have been solved internally. That was not allowed by the state senator at the time, Don Perata,” she said.

“The actual amount that the district needed was about $37 million, and they were not allowed to use their own money to cover the debt. The loan that was imposed without the will of the people of Oakland was a $100 million. They fired the superintendent, brought in a state receiver, and spent the $100 million on whatever they wanted because there was no participation by people in Oakland,” she said.

“I know it sounds shocking. It was shocking, and Oakland was not the only district. There were others: Inglewood, Vallejo, Compton, said Kelly Epstein.

“The people who often have the least amount of input anyway, because of inequalities and racism in our system, get the little bit of participation that they have in schools, which is to elect a school board, taken away from them.”

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