Everyday Black Man opens with an atmospheric montage of Oakland, instantly setting the mood the film seeks to evoke, one of urban despair that chokes out the efforts of individuals to make a difference in the face of institutional racism and parasitic criminals. It’s an effective sequence.
Unfortunately, it’s all downhill from there.
Moses Stanton (Henry Brown of Lethal Weapon), operates a small, unprofitable grocery store in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood that has, despite its problems, been free of drug dealers since Moses opened for business. How has Moses managed to chase the pushers from their corners? We’re never told, and it seems particularly puzzling given his ineffective handling of them later on. We are told how he pays his lone employee: room and board. He can’t swing an actual paycheck.
Anyway, Moses means well, frequently giving away groceries to impoverished customers and wanting to expand his business to better serve his community, but with no profit and no collateral, he just can’t secure a loan. His bank’s loan officer seems to have once been employed by the Bailey Savings and Loan, wishing he could just give Moses the money he needs and dispensing business advice in a gee-I’d-like-to-do-more kind of way. He’s the sort of loan officer one meets in movies and only in movies.
One piece of advice he gives Moses: seek a partner in the community, like the new principal at the local school. He has heard so much about her. Gloria something.
Hey, do you suppose we’ll later meet a principal by the name of Gloria? Do you sense you’ve been clubbed upside the head with the exposition stick? Well wait; there’s more.
Upon leaving the bank, Moses stares forlornly at an old photograph of a woman and a little girl and promises to “make you proud.”
So Moses is a soft-hearted pushover who has no patience for criminals, has lost a wife and daughter under mysterious circumstances, and is haunted by remorse. There’s a nice new principal in town by the name of Gloria, and Moses has a single employee to whom he gives room and board. And that’s all covered in the first few minutes of the picture.
It’s not exactly subtle, but it shifts the melodrama into high gear when we’re introduced to the supporting cast. Claire (Tessa Thompson, of Veronica Mars) toils at the local grade school as a teacher’s assistant, but plugs away at college and hopes one day to work for her new principal, Gloria Johnson (hey, remember her?). Claire’s grandmother is in the hospital with heart problems, which Moses is alarmed to hear. He always gives the woman free groceries, and he continues that tradition with Claire.
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