Virgil Alexander Wood’s (April 6, 1931 – Dec. 28, 2024) life mission was all about modeling Jesus, delivering justice for all, and bringing the Biblical Jubilee to bear on the lives of modern-day Black people.
And he did so within the programmatic framework of his friend and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) brother, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with whom he worked for a decade.
SCLC years
With degrees from Virginia Union University (undergraduate), Andover Newton Theological Seminary (Masters of Divinity), and Harvard University (Ph.D.), Wood was not content with ceremonial diplomas. He put his hard-earned knowledge to work.
While a member of the SCLC national executive board, Wood, a native of Charlottesville, Virginia, coordinated his home state’s participation in the historic 1963 March on Washington. As a community leader, he dedicated years within Boston’s urban communities as an advocate for the people.
In 1965, Wood organized the March on Boston Common with MLK as the featured speaker. The event brought national exposure to the racial inequality in Boston’s schools and housing.
Post-MLK work
After MLK’s death, Wood continued to stay on beat with the message and mission of MLK, the “Drum Major for Justice.”
Many in Civil Rights Movement circles credit Wood with being instrumental in helping the movement reset, strategize, and continue pushing for MLK’s “Beloved Community” – a reality where people of all races enjoy equal rights and economic justice.
Wood’s fiery passion for justice inspired his Phi Beta Sigma frat brothers to give him the nickname “Brother Blu-Fire.”
Ministry theme: Jubilee
If there’s one word that best describes Wood’s ministry focus, it’s “Jubilee,” the biblical concept of divinely sanctioned freedom, whether from injustice, economic apartheid, or manufactured racial divisions.
“Historian Lerone Bennett has spoken of the emancipated slaves’ reaction to being set free, as ‘the Great Jubilee,’” said Wood, who believed the Jubilee message offered a word for people of all economic situations.
“Jubilee is for ‘people who live with their backs against the wall,’ the late Howard Thurman
would constantly remind us; the spiritual guidelines embraced by Jesus in the wilderness experience just before beginning his ministry, as the only viable way out and up for an oppressed people.
In the spirit of Jubilee, Wood fought for freedom from religious divisions.
“Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and “All Other People Groups,” congregating as believers, have equal opportunity at divinity, and equal opportunity at the demonic. Inter-faith rivalry is as demonic as inter-denominational rivalry. Both are equally pernicious. Both equally dysfunctional, for self and society. Both, equally evil. But both curable through a faithful Jubilee Justice Journey,” wrote Wood in one of his many writings.
“I was privileged to work with Dr. Wood as his mentee on many grassroots civil rights initiatives for well over 10 years,” said Dr. Karl Hearne, executive assistant to the Vice President for Neighborhood and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Houston. “It was an honor to assist him with technology, arranging meetings and whatever he needed relating to the Beloved Community.”
Initiatives
Wood’s initiatives reflected the three-part essence of his definition of “Jubilee”: 1) seeking spiritual empowerment to develop ourselves; 2) growing economic capacity to take care of ourselves; and 3) potentiating human settlements to fulfill ourselves.
Wood described his Jubilee National Collaborative as “a beehive of consortia establishing beloved economies wherever the sun runs.”
His Jubilee Brotherhood efforts attempted to get Black men locally and nationally to restore Black families, and to recognize, in Wood’s words, that “We have no time to waste. Let’s go, before fools force God’s hand.”
Wood believed Rosa Parks was an under-appreciated lived example of Jubilee work, describing her life as “love amplifying, power attenuating and justice regulating.” Wood fought tirelessly to establish a national Rosa Parks’ Work Day celebrating her commitment to working for justice rather than simply talking about the need for justice.
From Wood’s perspective, Jubilee was non-existent without economic empowerment, which required safe and secure living realities. To that end, Wood initiated the John Jewis Co-op Family Villages effort, a movement to set up community-style living (villages) nationwide to ease the economic burdens of individual households.
And Wood wouldn’t be Wood without including a focus on raising the knowledge base of Black people and others. One of his many such efforts was Wood’s MLK Critical Studies: GED to Ph.D initiative.
Wood described these ongoing sessions as “empowerment conversations taking place at kitchen tables, in church, synagogues, Muslim classrooms, barbershops beauty shops, on college campuses, in board rooms, in prison cells, on street corners, and in every heart and soul.”
Wood, author of In Love We Trust: Lessons I Learned from Martin Luther King and publication lead of the African American Jubilee Edition Bible, leaves to cherish his memory his wife Lillian of 71 years, daughter Deborah, son David, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
He married his college sweetheart Lillian, a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated, and they remained happily in love for 71 years.
