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Now more than ever tobacco is a social justice issue. TReND’s research proves this. We know where MLK would come down on the issue of tobacco’s disproportionate grip on communities of color. Big tobacco is dug into the African American community in an especially deep way and is addicted to the dollars that flow from it.

But the great irony is that MLK likely found his true calling while picking tobacco. The story from NPR after the jump is an amazing one:

Martin Luther King Jr. could hardly believe his eyes when he left the segregated South as a teenage college student to work on a tobacco farm in Connecticut.

“On our way here we saw some things I had never anticipated to see,” he wrote his father in June 1944. “After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit any where we want to.”

The slain civil rights leader, whose birthday is observed Monday as a federal holiday, spent that summer working in a tobacco field in the Hartford suburb of Simsbury. That experience would influence his decision to become a minister and heighten his resentment of segregation.

“It’s clear that this little town, it made a huge impact on his life,” said John Conard-Malley, a Simsbury High School senior who did a documentary with other students on King’s experiences in Connecticut. “It’s possibly the biggest thing, one of the most important things, people don’t know about Martin Luther King’s life.”

Until then, King was thinking of other professions such as becoming a lawyer, Conard-Malley said. But after his fellow Morehouse College students at the tobacco farm elected him their religious leader, he decided to become a minister.

In his later application to Crozer Theological Seminary King wrote that he made the decision that summer “when I felt an inescapable urge to serve society. In short, I felt a sense of responsibility which I could not escape.”

“Perhaps if he hadn’t come to Connecticut, hadn’t picked tobacco up here, hadn’t felt like a free person, hadn’t felt what life was like without segregation and been elected the religious minister, he may not have become such a leader in the civil rights movement,” Conard-Malley said.

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TReND is the Tobacco Research Network on Disparities. As the film illuminates tobacco control policy is not a one size fits all proposition. Far too frequently low-SES and minority populations in the United States aren’t being seen, heard or helped in the fight to control tobacco use. There is disproportionate suffering and death as a result.

Last year we produced a short film for the TReND program. We edited down the film into a hard hitting web release short.  Thanks to Andrea Perry for letting us use her track Fastbox on this web release. See the full length film after the jump.

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A partnership of the National Cancer Institute and Legacy, TReND became a model of team science, housing a group of interdisciplinary researchers from public and private institutions. This longer film served as a capstone piece for TReND’s final conference and a call to action for and into their dissemination tool tobaccodisparities.org

Big thanks to StaticWest for music and StuckOnOn for sound sweetening and color correction.

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Legacy exists to ensure longer healthier lives for Americans through outreach that prevents youth from becoming smokers and programs that enable and empower adults to quit smoking. Their effectiveness is legendary.

This film shares the scope of Legacy’s work and the stakes of their success. It will be used to connect with partner organizations to inspire them to help further development of Legacy’s existing activities and perhaps even innovate their own. Legacy is open for partnership.

We believe in a Smoke Free Texas. Second hand smoke is a public health hazard linked to death, cancer, heart disease and respiratory illness in non-smokers. Our work with LEGACY this year has convicted us of these truths.

Last year the team at Smoke Free Texas did not reach their goal of a statewide smoking ban in public places. We believe that their communications can be more pointed and more memorable this year. It’s time to shake up the willing. We offer this redesign of their logo as a donation to this effort. Special thanks to our partner Brett Stiles for his generous donation of time and talent.

If you are interested in helping Texas become smoke free please download a petition or become a fan on Facebook.