Wake Up Everybody” was a song by R&B group Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes in 1975. It could be the theme song for today’s African- Americans.

The lyrics, written by Gene McFadden and John Whitehead, who also pinned and performed

“Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” are so poignant that I won’t fully repeat them here. Like my grandson says, “Google them, Papa.” YouTube has several renditions.

My point is that some 40 years later, the song remains relevant. The song’s refrain,

“The world won’t get no better if we just let it be,” causes me to think of Ferguson, Mo., Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, and how we have allowed the justice system to run amok, with Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream festering for more than 50 years and black males becoming targets of racial repression.

This is happening on our watch, and it appears as if things won’t change anytime soon. The song sends messages to everyone in the community — from politicians to drug users — on what they need to do to change the community. Yet we still struggle with poor performing schools, dying communities, black-on-black crime and others controlling our economies. We haven’t gotten the message.

The change that President

Obama pledged, in many ways, has not happened. I wonder who will pick up the mantle and lead us to Dr. King’s “Promised Land.”

Are we satisfied to wait another 50 years? Do we think that one day our oppressors will just realize the errors of their ways?

I don’t think so.

Wake up, everybody. “You got to change the world — you and me.”

PREDDY RAY

Richmond