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‘Wake Up Everybody!’ This Song Still Resonates in Black Music Month 2026 By Hazel Trice Edney

June 13, 2026

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Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - 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 better. We 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 latest 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 aid 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, Teddy Pendergrass led the song that reverberated across America and still holds deep meaning.

It concludes:

Wake up all the teachers, time to teach a new way. Maybe then they'll listen to what you have to say 'cause they're the ones who's comin' up and the world is in their hands. When you teach the children, teach 'em the very best you can.

Wake up, all the doctors, make the old people well. They're the ones who suffer and who catch all the hell. But they don't have so very long before their Judgement Day. So won't you make them happy before they pass away.

Wake up, all the builders, time to build a new land. I know we can do it

if we all lend a hand. The only thing we have to do is put it in our minds.

Surely things will work out, they do it every time.

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.

This article is the first in a four-part series powered by AARP in commemoration of Black Music Month, June 2026.

New Consumer Protection Rule Turns its Back on Fair Housing By Charlene Crowell

June 04, 2026

Photo Credit: National Fair Housing Alliance

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - For more than 50 years, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) has been an effective federal safeguard to ensure that Black, Latino, Native Americans and other economically marginalized people have fair access to safe and affordable credit. Enacted with bipartisan support in Congress and signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1974, ECOA has been a legal backbone in the fight against financial discrimination for literally millions of qualified borrowers.

But this April, the agency created to be the nation’s consumer financial cop on the beat issued a new rule to roll back enforcement of anti-discrimination efforts. The bureau’s proposal will end disparate impact standard for enforcement actions, allow lenders to discourage applicants by race, and limit the use of special purpose credit programs to expand access to credit for women, Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native-Americans, older Americans, and other economically vulnerable families.

“The amendments represent one of the most consequential shifts in federal fair-lending policy in decades and are likely to prompt litigation challenging key aspects of the rule,” predicted a recent legal blog.

That prediction proved correct.

On May 27, a federal lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the National Fair Housing Alliance and four other housing organizations that are suing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its Acting Director Russell Vought.

“The statute did not change. The legal decisions did not change. Washington’s commitment did,” said Lisa Rice, NFHA President and CEO. “This reversal by the CFPB is a continuation of this Administration’s efforts to gut fair housing and lending protections.”

“To start, the CFPB failed to identify any concrete problem with the current regulatory regime,” states the lawsuit. “The CFPB relied on conclusory assertions and speculation, not evidence, to justify its dramatic departure from decades of settled ECOA implementation. The CFPB’s approach is at odds with the available evidence: As commenters to the proposed rule made clear, public data and research—much of it from the CFPB itself—show that the Final Rule is ill-conceived and likely to harm covered entities and consumers alike.”

The lawsuit also raises the question of Vought’s authority as an Acting CFPB Director. The law that created CFPB explicitly awarded rulemaking authority to Senate-confirmed CFPB Directors, which Vought is not.

According to the advocates, during an abbreviated public comment period, an estimated 64,500 industry participants, including a coalition of 78 civil rights organizations, other consumer advocates, state attorneys general, and Members of Congress, registered their opposition to the reversal.

“The CFPB set an unusually short thirty-day public comment period over the Thanksgiving holiday, failed to employ a small business advocacy review panel, and made not a single material change to the rule in response to tens of thousands of comments, the overwhelming majority of which opposed the rule,” said Janell Byrd-Chichester, National Fair Housing Alliance General Counsel.

Recapping registered opposition comments, the housing plaintiffs found that more than 90 percent opposed dropping disparate impact liability, changes to discouragement protections, and the elimination of Special Purpose Credit Programs that expand credit access for communities that historically face persistent barriers.

“The CFPB needs to follow the law and return to its core mission of protecting consumers and small businesses,” said Paulina Gonzalez-Brito, CEO of Rise Economy, whose organization is also a plaintiff.

If allowed to stand, CFPB’s new rule will shift the burden of proof in cases of discrimination from the powerful to the vulnerable. It is also a misguided effort to make consumers prove intent instead of analyzing available, fact-based patterns of economic exclusion.

Equity in our nation’s housing finance system cannot be achieved until or unless families of color are afforded equal opportunities to build wealth through homeownership. Disparate impact rightly places the burden in proving marketplace discrimination on lenders and should be preserved.

“When the agency built to enforce civil rights and protect consumers walks away from the job, the rule of law remains” added NFHA’s Rice. “That is why we are in court.”

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Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it." data-linkindex="5">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Black Astronauts and Aerospace Pioneers Reflect on the Past and Future of Space Travel

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Top Row: Leland Melvin, Victor Glover Sr., Herbert Jefferson Jr. Willie Daniels II, Edward Dwight 2nd Row: Joan Higginbotham, Livingston Holder, Fred Gregory, Jim Reilly Bottom Row: Reginald Bullock, Robert Curbeam, Charlie Bolden, Winston Scott

May 12, 2026 (DENVER, CO.) - In the wake of Artemis II’s historic return from its mission around the moon, some of the nation’s most accomplished Black astronauts, engineers, and aerospace pioneers came together for an intergenerational conversation about perseverance, representation, and the future of space exploration. The discussion became a meditation on history, possibility, and the cultural significance of who now gets to shape humanity’s future beyond Earth.

The April 10 landing marked the first crewed journey into deep space since Apollo 8 in 1968. The mission also made history as the first to carry a woman, Christina Koch, a person of color, Victor Glover, and a non-U.S. citizen, Canadian Jeremy Hansen, around the moon, setting a new human deep-space distance record. Mission commander Reid Wiseman led the groundbreaking crew, whose achievement signaled not only technological progress but a profound cultural shift.

The online gathering was convened by Captain Willie Daniels (ret.), who has 48 years of association with United Airlines and founded SHADES OF BLUE, a nonprofit dedicated to introducing young people of color to aviation and aerospace careers. The moment carried special meaning for Daniels because Artemis II pilot Victor Glover, Jr. was among SHADES OF BLUE’S earliest graduates.

Moderated by Reginald Bullock, the conversation featured a cohort of aerospace trailblazers, including pioneering astronaut Ed Dwight; astronauts Winston Scott, Robert Curbeam, Joan Higginbotham, Jim Reilly, Leland Melvin, Charles Bolden, Frederick Gregory, Livingston Holder and Herbert Jefferson Jr., best known for his role as Lieutenant Boomer on the original Battlestar Galactica television series. Together, they represented decades of progress, struggle, and excellence in American aerospace.

Victor Glover Sr. started the conversation by recounting his son’s early years. He recalled encouraging the younger Victor to pursue becoming a Navy pilot instead of a Navy SEAL—a pivotal decision that ultimately placed him on the path to NASA. Even now, Glover said, the magnitude of his son’s journey remains surreal, filled with pride, excitement, and the nervous awe of watching history unfold through family.

“It's exciting, it's nerve-wracking and it makes me quite anxious. But I'm enjoying every minute of it,” Glover said.

A generational perspective was shared by Ed Dwight, who in 1961 was selected by President John F. Kennedy to become America’s first Black astronaut. Though denied the chance to fly during NASA’s early years, Dwight ultimately fulfilled that dream decades later aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard, becoming America’s oldest astronaut at age 90. Reflecting on Artemis II, he noted how dramatically both science and opportunity have evolved since the 1960s.

“They got the right guy to do what I could have and would have done had I had the chance,” Dwight said. “There’s so much science that has transpired since I was involved, and there's so much more to observe now in the science of space.”

Former NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, nomination by President Barack Obama and the first African American to lead the agency, reflected on his own path through the segregated South. He described how entry into the Naval Academy and later test pilot school once felt nearly impossible. His message to young people was clear: follow your passion, and when given leadership, take care of your people.

That theme of internal belief was reiterated in the reflections of astronaut Joan Higginbotham. As one of the few African American women to travel into space, she spoke candidly about repeatedly finding herself as “the only one” in classrooms, labs, and professional spaces. The greatest challenge, she said, was learning to know she belonged. Once she overcame that barrier, her journey became larger than personal success—it became a visible pathway for others.

“As one of the few African American women to travel to space, I'm deeply aware that my journey carries meaning beyond my own experience,” Higginbotham said. “It speaks to visibility, to access, and to the importance of expanding what people believe is possible for themselves.”

Leland Melvin’s story added another layer of resilience. After losing his hearing in a training accident and being told he would never fly in space, he leaned on childhood lessons of persistence and the support of trusted advocates who refused to let him quit. That belief carried him through two missions and remains central to how he now thinks about legacy: ensuring young people can see themselves in the story of space.

What makes Artemis II feel different, several panelists agreed, is that the mission transcends science alone. Winston Scott described it as a cultural breakthrough—one in which audiences are no longer primarily focused on race, gender, or nationality, but on the crew’s shared excellence and precision. In that sense, the mission represents not only a triumph of engineering but the visible erosion of long-standing social barriers.

Still, the group emphasized that symbolic breakthroughs must be followed by sustained action. Frederick Gregory, NASA’s first Black acting administrator, stressed the importance of moving quickly into Artemis III and Artemis IV so public imagination and momentum are not lost. Continuous progress toward lunar rendezvous, docking operations, surface research, and eventual missions to Mars will determine whether Artemis II becomes a lasting legacy or a singular exception.

“I hope that we’re able to follow this with a quick Artemis III to work on the rendezvous and dockings with Blue Origin and SpaceX,” Gregory said. “And then Artemis IV to get us back on the moon again as the beginning of the first adventure in the journey to get to Mars and beyond.”

Bolden expanded that responsibility is beyond NASA, it’s calling on scientists, astronauts, and citizens alike to become advocates for space exploration. Sustained public enthusiasm must translate into congressional support and long-term funding if the promise of lunar permanence and Martian exploration is to be realized.

The cohort agreed that inspiration is the ultimate mission. Children need to see people who look like them talking about flying jets, designing rockets, and building future colonies beyond Earth. The most enduring legacy of Artemis II may not be the distance traveled, but the horizons expanded in the minds of the next generation. CLICK HERE to view this historic conversation in its entirety. The conversation can also be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0aWtvAbt7E.

Denying Food Has Caused Misery by Recklessness By David W. Marshall

July 21, 2025

david w. marshall

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the change in administration provided our nation with a four-year reprieve from much of the misery we are currently experiencing during the early months of Trump’s second term in office.

Multiple times during Trump’s first administration (2017–2021), the United States objected to U.N. resolutions that asserted the right to food as a legal and enforceable human right. Israel frequently joined the U.S. in casting opposing votes. The two allies were sometimes the only nations voting against the resolutions.

Officials under the Trump administration made it clear: while recognizing the importance of fighting hunger, they were unwilling to endorse the concept of a “right to food” as an obligation under international law. The votes reflect a consistent strategy of opposing the recognition of food as a binding human right. This pattern of inhumanity has continued into the second Trump term while producing needless suffering that has a direct impact on our nation’s foreign and domestic policies.

With 319 million people on the brink of starvation in places such as Gaza, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, and Haiti, the State Department was recently forced to destroy 500 metric tons of warehoused food, which eventually expired and was no longer considered safe to send to potential recipients. The high-energy biscuits that were destroyed are typically used to meet the immediate nutritional needs of children in crisis situations.

Was this a situation that could have been avoided? If the Trump administration had not been reckless in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) while suspending most foreign assistance, what are the chances that the destroyed emergency food could have been properly distributed?

Can humanitarian needs of any scale be handled with a sense of urgency and compassion when there is a political mindset that does not view the “right to food” as a binding human right? Is the “right to food” also ignored when the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is suffering deep cuts from the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act.”

For many, this program is truly a legitimate lifeline, saving individuals from hunger. It is not just impacting the urban poor. The repercussions will be felt hard in rural communities and food deserts—areas where people overwhelmingly voted for Trump. SNAP benefits are not just a humanitarian effort; they play a critical part in small-town grocery stores and rural economies that rely on the steady and reliable income that SNAP benefits provide. It’s the ripple effect. When a local store loses a critical number of SNAP shoppers to government cuts, many stores will have no choice but to shut their doors for good. These rural stores immediately lose a major source of stable income, far greater than supermarkets in more affluent areas. When the only grocer in a town shuts down, it can automatically create a food desert.

St. Johns, Ariz. is a community that overwhelmingly supported Trump in the 2024 election. It sits halfway between Phoenix and Albuquerque with its one grocery store and one local food bank serving over 3,500 people. If the one grocery store closes due to the food aid cuts, the next closest option for groceries is approximately 30 miles away.

“I lean pretty heavily right most of the time, but one of the things that I do lean to the left on is we’re a pretty wealthy country, we can help people out,” said St. Johns Mayor Spence Udall. According to a study from the Commonwealth Fund, the Republicans’ cuts to the nation’s anti-hunger program will lead to thousands of job losses and a drop in revenue across the agriculture, retail grocery, and food processing industries.

Hunger relief organizations are also bracing for the ripple effect. Food banks are likely to bear the brunt of the cuts because they are often the last resort in the fight against hunger. Cuts to food assistance programs and other benefits could force millions of people to seek help from charitable organizations that currently lack the infrastructure to handle the potential surge of vulnerable individuals seeking assistance.

“A misperception of the public is that when needs go up, we do more. We can only do more when resources go up. We can’t magically produce more food,” said Brian Greene, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank.

All the pending human misery comes from shortsighted lawmakers who are afraid and intimidated by President Donald Trump. They gave the dictator his megabill, even though it means people are going to encounter more stress of not knowing where their next meal is coming from, forcing people to rely on overwhelmed charities that will be faced with more people seeking help and less food to meet the need, and the continued destruction of the social safety net. In six months, America has found different ways to deny people the basic right to food. It’s reckless and cruel.

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body and author of the book “God Bless Our Divided America.”

Jimmy Carter the Peacemaker By David W. Marshall

Jan. 6, 2025

david w. marshall

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Two hours after making his historic remarks on same-sex unions, then-President Barack Obama held a critical conference call with Black pastors to explain his support for gay marriage, according to the New York Times. The pastors who participated on the call told the paper that Obama explained how he struggled with the decision, and that several of them voiced their disapproval. The conference call was a quiet effort by the president to control the potential political damage which could possibly occur from his controversial announcement.

As a result, Black churches were conflicted in their reactions. Some were silent on the issue. At other churches, pastors spoke against the president’s decision – but spoke kindly of the man himself. While some were outraged at the president and his decision, there was a minority of pastors who spoke favorably of the decision while expressing understanding of the president’s change of heart. African-Americans were a key voting bloc for the president. During the previous 2008 presidential election, exit polls showed Obama lost to John McCain among white voters, but won more than 95% of the African-American vote. While African Americans overwhelmingly supported President Obama, traditionally most are socially conservative when it comes to gay marriage. Overall, many Black pastors said they will still support the president in the upcoming 2012 election even though they may not agree with him on this particular issue.

The gay marriage announcement by Obama highlighted a number of things. One, there exists a particular segment within the Black church that is progressive on issues regarding racial and economic equality, justice and fairness while remaining conservative on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. This particular stripe of Christian faith never aligned itself 100% politically with conservative or progressive evangelicals. It is a group that is motivated and passionate about racial and economic equality because it directly impacts their personal well-being and safety. It also directly impacts the well-being and safety of their families and communities. Secondly, it showed that the majority of Black Christians who previously supported Obama continued to do so despite their deep disagreement with the president over a major social issue. Despite their conservative beliefs, if a candidate fights for overall equality, justice and fairness which is critical to the day-to-day lives of people of color, it was proven that the candidate’s stance on gay marriage was not the type of deal breaker for them as it would be for the Religious Right voters.

As we reflect on the life of former President Jimmy Carter, we are reminded how he was clearly one of the most religious presidents in modern U.S. history who openly embraced the label “born-again Christian”. As a progressive evangelical, Carter was outspoken about Jesus and justice. His rise to power occurred during a major transformative period in American Christianity. Like the Religious Right, Carter personally opposed abortion and same sex-marriage. Where Carter and the Religious Right differed was on legislation. Conservatives were in favor of specific legislation Carter believed infringed on the separation of church and state, such as a proposed constitutional amendment banning abortion and a legislative attempt to restore prayer in public schools.

He did not campaign to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and he was feminist who appointed more women to his administration than any other president before him. Carter supported the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed change to the Constitution that would have guaranteed legal equality to women. Many white evangelicals did not believe in women’s equality. As a product of the Deep South, he was a theologically conservative evangelical with a progressive political platform. Carter’s public stance on culture war issues cost him politically when his fellow white evangelicals along with the political advocacy of the Moral Majority abandoned him for reelection. They eventually threw their support behind his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan who received an estimated 56% of the evangelical vote in the 1980 presidential election. These voters did not just turn away from Carter – they turned away from part of their own tradition, historians say.

Carter represented a religious tradition where a white evangelical could credibly claim to be a Bible-believing, “I’ve been saved by the blood of Jesus” Christian –and still be politically progressive, says Randall Balmer author of “Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter.” As a white evangelical, Carter didn’t fit in with the likes of Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority. “He had no problem being identified as a progressive evangelical,” says Balmer, who in his book recounts the story about Carter’s defense of a Black Naval Academy classmate and his refusal to join a white supremacist group. Carter represented what one commentator calls the “road not taken” by many contemporary white evangelicals. He was a peacemaker.

He was a global peacemaker both as president and during his post-presidency. Carter won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts and advancing democracy and human rights. During his post-presidency, he was a peacemaker by promoting racial reconciliation and collective healing within the Baptist church. In 2006, Carter joined with Mercer University President Bill Underwood in bringing together Baptists of different races and ethnicities, regions, backgrounds and theological perspectives to form an informal alliance. A year later, the New Baptist Covenant was formed. According to the Rev. Mitch Randall, CEO of Good Faith Media, “It was President Carter’s life-long dream to put Baptist together who had been divided.” With his passing, it is our hope his dream is fulfilled.

David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization, TRB: The Reconciled Body, and author of the book God Bless Our Divided America.