MLK Volunteer Fair calls on everyone to join the work for African self-determination!
In Akwaaba Hall at the Uhuru House in the heart of north St. Louis, Deputy Chair Ona Zené Yeshitela and the Black Power Blueprint (BPB) led a powerful and mobilizing program for this year’s MLK Event and Volunteer Fair.
As the first-ever BPB Volunteer Fair, it packed an anti-colonial punch. Much more than a commemorative gathering, the event reclaimed the revolutionary legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and transformed that understanding into concrete action through collective organizing for African self-determination.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela delivered a key political presentation that offered a deeper analysis of King’s leadership and issued a clear call to reject the distorted narrative imposed by the current social system. Rather than allowing King to be reduced to a benign symbol of unity and “service,” Chairman Yeshitela asserted that the African working class is taking Martin Luther King back and placed him in his true historical context as a courageous leader who mobilized African people to struggle against the life or death conditions in our communities.
The program opened with historic films featuring Dr. King, Malcolm X, and other powerful African leaders of the 1960s, grounding the day in a lineage of resistance and self-determination. In his presentation, Chairman Yeshitela exposed the ways King’s legacy has been weaponized against the African working class. He rejected the notion that King was simply an advocate of nonviolence for its own sake or a compliant figure.
Instead, the Chairman emphasized that King organized mass struggle, mobilizing thousands of African people to fight for and win material changes in our conditions. King stood in direct contradiction to the U.S. government, which the Chairman reaffirmed is capable of maintaining its relationship to African people only through extreme violence. As quoted from the Chairman’s presentation, “Martin Luther King did not just say ‘be non-violent;’ he said be non-violent when you are struggling to overturn the oppression we experience!”
Chairman Yeshitela also highlighted the often-erased political alignment between King and Malcolm X, noting that King was far more in communication with Malcolm than is commonly portrayed. Several people in the room including the Chairman himself had personal connections to King’s inner circle, reinforcing the presentation with lived knowledge of this suppressed history.
King’s internationalism was explored as well. He understood the problem was colonialism and traveled to Ghana for their celebration of independence from British rule. He saw African people standing up and asserting themselves as a free and self-determining people, and it was because of this stand in unity with African people’s struggle to be free that King was targeted.
As the Chairman said, “They killed King because he was dangerous… because of what he was doing. King was in the middle of building a poor people’s campaign… that would help to feed, clothe and house our people. They killed King and gave us a holiday… But you don’t have no King, and you don’t have no poor people’s rights that King was fighting for. In fact, it’s worse… today because then at least you had a movement that was fighting for it. They killed King to destroy our movement.
“That was bad enough. Now you have people who hijacked his memory and then say in memory of MLK we’re going to have a day of service. Huh? That’s what they say we’re going to have.
“But King was not about the day of service in the way they meant it. He was about resistance! Building a new world, new life. Just like Malcolm X was, just like the Black Panther Party. A new world, a new life, that’s what he was about! That’s what this is about today. They hijacked it, we’re taking it back!”
An interactive and mobilizing experience, the event continued by creating pathways for community members to actively move King’s legacy forward through the many institutions of the Uhuru Movement. Following the Chairman’s presentation, representatives presented on the work of numerous Uhuru Movement programs and institutions in St. Louis. These included the One Africa! One Nation! Farmers Market led by the African National Women’s Organization, the Black Power Blueprint Promotions Team, the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, the Office of the Chairman, Uhuru Bakery & Café, Shamba la Uhuru Freedom Farm, the Uhuru Solidarity Movement and Reparations Investment Company, and the African Independence Workforce Program.
After the organizational presentations, the program paused to allow attendees to visit tables, speak directly with local organizers, and sign up to volunteer. The day concluded with a lively open mic and Q&A that reflected the audience’s engagement and readiness to move into action.
Despite 20 degree weather, the turnout was strong. Friends, whole families and volunteers—both young and old—filled the hall, including members of the Universal African People’s Organization and People’s Alderman Jesse Todd. Participants left mobilized, inspired and prepared to jump into the work of building African self-determination, demonstrating that reclaiming Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s revolutionary legacy is not about remembrance alone, but about organizing for our own power today.
