Opinion

Opinion: We Have a Plan. The Time to Act on Reparations is Now

Published

7 years ago

August 2, 2019

Finally. It only took 150 years, but at last a substantive, realistic, and responsible national plan for slavery reparations has been put forward.

Question is, will the purportedly liberal and benevolent San Francisco be a leader in this effort, or will it continue to enact policies that have forced an exodus of African American families, culture, and heritage from this city?

It is no longer time to seize the moment. The moment has been seized.

Last week, I attended the NAACP convention in Detroit, where we passed a viable measure that provides reparations to African Americans in the form of resources in the areas of housing, economic empowerment, funding for historically black colleges, and health care, including mental health. Rather than provide money to individuals, we felt the need for solutions that will ultimately end regressive systems created by a damaging history of enslavement and oppression.

It is a detrimental system that can be seen in plain view in San Francisco, a city that proclaims to fight for its vulnerable, but has instead pushed policies prompting black flight.

In droves, we moved here from the South during the 1940s to help build ships and other industrial-related goods for the WWII effort. After the war ended, we were passed over for what jobs remained from the massive industrial effort. Our neighborhoods were left in aimless economic desolation, with run-down housing and schools.

Rather than address the problems, city leaders worked to push them out of sight and mind. So-called “urban renewal” projects aiming to improve our neighborhoods encouraged gentrification and the closing of black businesses and cultural centers. While the African American population in San Francisco peaked at about 13.4 percent in 1970, by 2010 it was cut in half, even though the city grew. And our population continues to dwindle.

With a renewed national movement – and, most importantly, a substantive plan – in place to right the wrongs of a sordid historical injustice, San Francisco has an opportunity to be a leader in reversing its African American exodus.

In keeping with the NAACP resolution achieved in Detroit, here are some steps San Francisco can take to achieve successful reparations:

On education: A coalition of political, spiritual, and social betterment agencies must unite to identify and carry out collaborative, comprehensive remedial programs to help families catch up and move beyond abysmal low achievement.
On economic empowerment: A coalition of the city’s economic powers, including its high tech communities, must unite to identify and carry out solutions that ensure equal opportunity for African American workers and small businesses. That includes engaging with the San Francisco African American Chamber of Commerce to provide pathways for black contractors, entrepreneurs and technology gurus to receive a fair share of contracts and participation in our booming economy and tourism industry.
On housing: The city and county must strengthen its human rights commission to become a true watchdog ensuring African Americans can regain much-needed access to fair and affordable housing, particularly for those who have been, and are currently being, pushed out.
On heritage: The NAACP, faith community and allies are calling the city to do for the African American community what it did for the Asian community when it provided a space in the Civic Center for the Asian Art Museum. The city should also do the same for the Fillmore Heritage Center, ensuring the center becomes a watering hold for African American community members, a place to come together and celebrate their culture and history and to maintain the presence of the black community’s dwindling heritage in San Francisco.
On mental and physical health: We need to focus on providing comparative health systems to the African American community, in part through the San Francisco Department of Public Health and West Side Community Mental Health. Resources need to address black community members who are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome from violence, and from many other residual mental and physical effects that have resulted from a dark history of slavery and generations of discrimination. This has led to a long list of detrimental conditions, such as depression, asthma, diabetes and hypertension. The city’s highly funded and capable public and private health sectors must collaborate on programs promoting mental and physical treatment, wellness and nutrition, in order to cease the cycles that have negatively impacted multiple generations of African Americans.

The national conversation has begun. After the Detroit convention, it is apparent that it is not going away.

San Francisco is a city that prides itself on liberal ideologies that aim to empower and uplift the underserved. As aforementioned, we must put our money and political resources where our mouths are. The time to talk is over. The time to act is now.

Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown

Posts by Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown

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

1 day 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.