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Whitney Houston’s Daughter ‘Fighting for Her Life’ 

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In this Feb. 12, 2011, file photo, singer Whitney Houston, left, and daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown arrive at an event in Beverly Hills, Calif. Messages of support were being offered Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, as people awaited word on Brown, who authorities say was found face down and unresponsive in a bathtub over the weekend in a suburban Atlanta home. (AP Photo/Dan Steinberg, File)

In this Feb. 12, 2011, file photo, singer Whitney Houston, left, and daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown arrive at an event in Beverly Hills, Calif. Messages of support were being offered Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, as people awaited word on Brown, who authorities say was found face down and unresponsive in a bathtub over the weekend in a suburban Atlanta home. (AP Photo/Dan Steinberg, File)

KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press
TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press

ROSWELL, Ga. (AP) — Bobbi Kristina Houston wanted to sing, act and dance like her megastar parents, Whitney Houston and R&B artist Bobby Brown. Instead, she has mostly made tabloid headlines for drug use and family disputes — the same perils that derailed their careers.

Just like her mother three years ago, Bobbi Kristina was found face-down and unresponsive in a bathtub as the music industry prepared for the Grammy Awards.

As the pop star’s 21-year-old daughter lay hospitalized Monday, police in Roswell, Georgia, issued a very brief incident report, saying officers were called Saturday in response to her “drowning” at her home in suburban Atlanta. Her husband, Nick Gordon, was at the scene and tried to revive her while a friend called 911.

“Bobbi Kristina is fighting for her life and is surrounded by immediate family,” a Houston family statement said Monday. “We are asking you to honor our request for privacy during this difficult time. Thank you for your prayers, well wishes, and we greatly appreciate your continued support.”

With no details forthcoming from police or family about her condition or what may have caused the tragedy, many people looked to see what she’s been posting online. Her last tweet, from Thursday, reflected obvious frustration over her failure to break out as an entertainer: “Let’s start this career up&&moving OUT to TO YOU ALLLL quick shall we !?!???!”

The circumstances were eerily similar to those of Feb. 11, 2012, when Houston’s assistant found the singer’s lifeless body face-down in a foot of water in her bathtub at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Authorities found prescription drugs and listed heart disease and cocaine use as contributors, but concluded that she accidentally drowned.

Bobbi Kristina, then 18, became so distraught that she needed to be hospitalized.

“She wasn’t only a mother, she was a best friend,” she told Oprah shortly thereafter.

Bobbi Kristina identified herself on Twitter as “Daughter of Queen WH,” ”Entertainer/Actress” with William Morris & Co., and “LAST of a dying breed.”

But her mother was an impossible act to follow.

Houston had her first No. 1 hit at 22, and then a flurry of No. 1 songs, selling more than 50 million records in the United States alone. Her voice, an ideal blend of power, grace and beauty, made classics out of “Saving All My Love For You,” ”I Will Always Love You,” ”The Greatest Love of All” and “I’m Every Woman.” Her six Grammys joined many other awards.

Bobbi Kristina inherited her mother’s entire estate, but not her voice. Aside from her family’s short-lived reality TV show “The Houstons: On Our Own,” she has mostly appeared in online “selfies” and paparazzi images.

Houston met R&B star Bobby Brown at the Soul Train Music Awards in 1989. The gifted singer and her bad boy partner married in 1992, much to the dismay of Houston’s family. It was a toxic relationship, characterized by domestic violence and drugs.

Bobbi Kristina was born a year later, and was just a toddler when Houston described herself as a “functioning junkie” to S2SMagazine. Her husband also struggled with addiction, so by 2002, the family moved to suburban Atlanta to attend the healing services of a singer-turned evangelical preacher.

The girl made a few appearances on “Being Bobby Brown,” the reality show that infamously captured her parents fighting, swearing and appearing in court. The Hollywood Reporter said “not only does it reveal Brown to be even more vulgar than the tabloids suggest, but it manages at the same time to rob Houston of any last shreds of dignity.”

Soon, Gordon joined the family. Houston never formally adopted him, but he became like a brother to Bobbi Kristina. And when Houston sought rehab in California in 2004 and divorced Brown in 2007, she kept the kids with her.

The pair called each other big brother and little sister back then. A month after Houston’s death, however, they went public with their relationship. Houston’s mother, Cissy, and sister-in-law Patricia, expressing concern that others would prey on the young woman’s fortune, petitioned a judge to delay part of her inheritance, and Bobbi Kristina agreed.

The young couple’s announcement of their marriage in January 2014 troubled Patricia Houston, who soon obtained a restraining order against Gordon, effective through April 2015.

“Damn, lol, it’s incredible how the world will judge you 4ANY&EVERYthing,” Bobbi Kristina tweeted last March.

But by September, Patricia Houston was praising her niece.

“I’m very proud of Krissy. You know, young people today are up against so much with social media and everything else that presents itself to them, and they have to use everything within their power to stay abreast and to keep a foundation, and that’s what the family does,” Patricia Houston told The Associated Press. “We try to be there for her, just to try to guide and direct her.”

Throughout, Bobbi Kristina expressed love for her husband. Just last week, she tweeted again: “Littlelady&yourgrowing young man @nickdgordon miss you mommy ..:’) SOmuch.. loving you more every sec. #Anniversary!”

___

Lush reported from St. Petersburg, Florida. Kathleen Foody and Mesfin Fekdu contributed to this report.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of July 1 – 7, 2026

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Arts and Culture

Prescott Circus Theatre Presents Free Summer Performance Series

Now in its 41st year, the Prescott Circus Theatre is a nationally recognized performing arts education program for Oakland youth. The circus offers safe environments that challenge Oakland youth, through circus arts training, to develop the skills and confidence to thrive on stage, in school, and in life.

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Prescott Circus showcase pathways pyramid. Photo courtesy of Prescott Circus.
Prescott Circus showcase pathways pyramid. Photo courtesy of Prescott Circus.

By Post Staff

The Prescott Circus, Oakland’s longest-running youth circus, is returning this summer with its free shows. Join the Prescott Circus’s young stars as they share their joys and talents through stilt-dancing, tumbling, juggling, and more.

At the heart of this one-hour show, which demonstrates teamwork, pride, and joy, are Oakland Unified School District students ages 8 – 17 from more than 10 different schools

Now in its 41st year, the Prescott Circus Theatre is a nationally recognized performing arts education program for Oakland youth. The circus offers safe environments that challenge Oakland youth, through circus arts training, to develop the skills and confidence to thrive on stage, in school, and in life.

This is accomplished through no-cost school and community programs for more than 300 Oakland youth each year. Performing company members from Prescott, where the program began, perform and make appearances at as many as 40 Bay Area events each year.

The summer program is funded in part by Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, California Arts Council, Port of Oakland, and the West Davis & Bergard Foundation.

Performances will be held Tuesday, July 14, 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. (ASL interpreted) and Wednesday, July 15, 11 a.m., at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. For free reservations go to

https://PrescottCircusSummerShows.eventbrite.com

For group reservations for camps, childcare centers, senior centers, go to www.prescottcircus.org

A community show will be held Saturday, July 18, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., at DeFremery Park,1651 Adeline St., Oakland.

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50 Years Later, ‘Wake Up Everybody!’ Still Resonates During Black Music

The words of the song, “Wake Up Everybody,” debuted by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes in 1975, still resonate today as those words are just as relevant more than a half century later.

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iStockphoto.

By Hazel Trice Edney, Special to The Post

Hazel Trice Edney

Hazel Trice Edney

“Wake up, everybody, No more sleepin’ in bed

No more backward thinkin’. Time for thinkin’ ahead

The world has changed so very much from what it used to be.

There is so much hatred, war, and poverty. 

The world won’t get no better If we just let it be. 

Naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw.

The world won’t get no betterWe gotta change it, yeah– just you and me.”

The words of the song, “Wake Up Everybody,” debuted by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes in 1975, still resonate today as those words are just as relevant more than a half century later.

In a rare, nearly somber moment, the group’s celebrated lead singer, Teddy Pendergrass, introduced the song on Soul Train, the weekly dance and live performance TV show that aired roughly between 1971 and 2006. Pendergrass told the attentive live audience and thousands watching by television that Wake Up Everybody, the title tune of their most recent album, was intended to inspire people to take action with a goal to change America for the better.

“I’m sure that you will all agree that there are things that need to be done in this country today,” he said. “So, what I’d like for you to do is listen very carefully to see what you can do to lend a hand.”

The song’s appeal worked.

“I played that song over and over and over again because it was a constant warning to keep ourselves prepared for the society that we were living in,” says A. Peter Bailey, then a 37-year-old former aide to Malcolm X.

When “Wake Up Everybody” hit the airwaves, Bailey was working as an associate editor of Ebony Magazine. “It was a call to be aware of what we were dealing with in the country that we lived in, the world we lived in, the neighborhood we lived in, the cities that we lived in,” Bailey said in an interview with the Trice Edney News Wire.

He concluded that during Black Music Month 2026, such songs should be recalled and celebrated as a key to changes for the good across America; especially because such songs successfully encouraged people to deal with the issues that might otherwise denigrate the promises of America, including the promise that “All men are created equal,”as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

“The rhythms and blues expressed our joys, our sorrows and our fears,” Bailey recalls. “It was those songs and the singing of those songs by our people that attracted us to the campaigns for justice.”

With his life inspired by that song and others, Bailey, now 88, went on to establish and teach a Black Press class at Virginia Commonwealth University. Also, he has since written three books, including a memoir, “Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher,” in which he expounded upon successful principles of social justice, some of which are reflected in “Wake Up Everybody.”

Long before the term “woke” became associated with campaigns for justice, Pendergrass led the song that reverberated across America and still holds deep meaning.

The ‘wake up’ call exhorts teachers to ‘teach a new way,’ doctors to heal elders, and builders to ‘build a new land… we can do it if we all lend a hand.”

The song concludes:

“The world won’t get no better if we just let it be. Naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw, naw. The world won’t get no better. We gotta change it, yeah – just you and me.”

Hazel Trice Edney wrote this story as part of a four-part series powered by AARP in commemoration of Black Music Month, June 2026.

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