“It’s all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism, but ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. [Applause] It’s all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here and His children who can’t eat three square meals a day. [Applause] It’s all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day God’s preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. [Applause] This is what we have to do.” Martin Luther King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”

The value of black labor and consumer power was a constant theme in the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King; so in honor of today’s principle, UJAMMA (cooperative economics), I leave a few quotes from his book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, and his last speech, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”

“Black Power is also a call for the pooling of Black financial resources to achieve economic security. Through the pooling of such resources and the development of habits of thrift and techniques of wise investments, the Negro will be doing his share to grapple with his problem of economic deprivation. If Black Power means the development of this kind of strength within the Negro community, then it is a quest for basic, necessary, legitimate power.”

“And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from [big corporations]. And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy, what is the other bread? Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart’s bread.”

“As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven’t been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right. But not only that, we’ve got to strengthen Black institutions.”

“I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank. We want a ‘bank-in’ movement in Memphis. So go by the savings and loan association. I’m not asking you something we don’t do ourselves at SCLC. Judge Hooks and others will tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We’re just telling you to follow what we’re doing. Put your money there.”

“You have six or seven Black insurance companies in Memphis. Take out your insurance there. We want to have an ‘insurance-in.’ Now these are some practical things we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we are putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here.”

Looking forward to sharing the fruit of my collective work with Kevin Everson and Kahlil Pedizisai in 2015. This past November, Kevin, Kahlil, and I wrapped up shooting for a new film set in the spring of 1970 and based on student protest at UVA in the wake of President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the murder of four Kent State students. The film tells the story of antiwar protest from the perspective of James Roebuck, the first African American to hold the position of Student Council president. Over a ten-day period of unprecedented student upheaval, Roebuck confronts a series of political challenges and existential dilemmas that engender a variety of human emotions. Roebuck is the quintessential “militant insider” whose cool temperament and ideological flexibility proves quite useful as his campus appears on the verge of imploding from within.

As was the case with Sugarcoated Arsenic, we hope that this film not only captures an important phase in the history of UVA but also provides a roadmap for young activists committed to creating a better world.