Opinion

Opinion: Worthy of Justice (Part 2)

Published

7 years ago

August 24, 2019

Columnist Leo Bazile began a series of articles examining morality and other aspects of the Reparations topic during this 2019 political climate. Reginald W. Lyles’ column is a theological response to Bazile’s work.

Last week, Lyles’ column (part 1) closed with a historical examination of the mind set before the Civil War, concluding that Africans were of such an inferior stock that they had no rights that the white man was bound to respect.

Out of this erroneous and racist thinking, hundreds of years of indoctrination and oppression were and still are forced upon the psyche and thinking of African Americans.

To counteract and repair this oppressive thinking. Liberation Theology emerged.

Liberation Theology emphasizes social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples. In the 1950s and 1960s, liberation theology was the political praxis (the process by which a theory’, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, or realized), of Latin American theologians, such as Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru, Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay, and Jon Sobrino of Spain, who popularized the phrase “preferential option for the poor.”

Liberation Theology also found the voice of James Cone in his books, “A Black Theology of Liberation” and “The Cross and the Lynching Tree,” which attempts to help people of African descent overcome oppression. He especially focused on injustices committed against African Americans and Black South Africans during the periods of U.S. segregation and South Africa’s apartheid, respectively.

Katie G. Cannon and Jacquelyn Grant’s book, “Womanist Theology,” emphasizes interrogating the social construction of Black womanhood in the Black community and assuming a liberation perspective so African American women can live emboldened lives within the African American community and within the larger society’.

These liberation theologies shed the light of justice.

We are experiencing dark days all over the world and especially here in the United States, where fascism and bigotry are emerging and thriving.

oligarchs are flourishing everywhere: Donald Trump of the United States, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Marine Le Pen of France, Vladimor Putin of Russia, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Matteo Salvini of Italy, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Boris Johnson of England, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and many more.

The last time forces like these emerged so fully on a worldwide scale, we literally fought wars to quell the evil: WWII, two atomic bombs, the casualties of 20 million military personnel, 40 million civilians, and many who died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation. Six million Jew’s in the Holocaust and 300,000 Chinese in the Rape of Nanjing died under mass oppression.

The Bible says in Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Everyone is deserving and must do justice, but we must also demand it from and for ourselves, and all those around us. We must apply justice to everyone. And, we must be mindful in the struggle that power concedes nothing without a demand.

The demand for reparations is gaining traction in the United States. We must boldly embrace this political issue because African Americans built this country with free slave labor. Yet we have been “red-lined” from benefiting from the wealth we built – by segregationist alliances of immoral government legislation, unethical banking policies, and an unscrupulous real estate industry.

African Americans deserve reparations. African Americans deserve to be made whole.

African Americans must understand and believe that they deserve justice in the forms of reparations, economic justice, environmental justice, housing justice, food justice, water justice, and equal treatment in the justice system.

African Americans’ demand for justice is not radical, or communist, or socialist, or any other imagined label designed to demean, intimidate and shame them. On the contrary, all children of God are wonderfully made and deserving of justice.

Reginald W. Lyles

Posts by Reginald W. Lyles

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.