During the past year, many have struggled to hold on to the sense of hope that flourished on the Mall (following story). Paul Hill, executive director of the East End Neighborhood House in Cleveland, says that more black men than ever have volunteered for the mentorship program he runs for poor, inner-city youths. Previously the vast majority of volunteers were women, but of the more than 50 who have signed up in the past year, roughly half are men, and most say they came because of the Washington rally. Darryl Lenard, head of Teamwork Inc. in St. Louis, a group that organizes sports activities for the underprivileged, likewise reports a leap in interest from black men eager to help out. ““I think deep down inside we want to make a change,’’ he says.
Across America, blacks continue to speak in reverential terms of the impact of the so-called Million Man March. ““For some people it really was a spiritual turning point,’’ says Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. New Orleans city Councilman Oliver Thomas, founder of a mentoring program called Boys to Men, sees pockets of new activity across the city. One group launched a neighborhood clean-up project, and another gathers young men around the Martin Luther King Jr. monument once a week to chat and keep the spirit of the march alive. Michael Cottman, author of ““The Million Man March’’ and ““The Family of Black America,’’ both written in commemoration of the march, thinks the event had a profound impact. He felt it himself one Monday in Detroit when he encountered men standing in line in the municipal building to pay child support. They were responding to sermons (prompted by the Washington march) by four black preachers to take responsibility for their actions.
Yet, for all the energy unleashed by the demonstration–including campaigns in Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles to increase deposits in black-owned banks and assorted local efforts to register voters and to encourage volunteerism and black entrepreneurship–there is widespread unhappiness that not more has happened. ““Locally we’ve made a lot of gains,’’ says Paul Hill, ““but nationally there have been some disappointments.’’ Much of the disappointment centers on the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, the charismatic head of the Nation of Islam who called for the rally, and the Rev. Benjamin Chavis, the former director of the NAACP who ran it. Instead of trying to capitalize on the good will generated by the march to focus on problems at home, they generated public-relations fiascos.
Farrakhan embarked on a tour, meeting with African and Middle Eastern despots, and ended up with a supposed commitment of $1 billion (uncollectable under current U.S. policy) from Libyan leader Muammar Kaddafi. Chavis, who left the NAACP in disgrace and amid allegations of financial mismanagement, provoked new questions about his stewardship when an audit revealed that the march had put organizers $66,000 in the red. Washington writer Jonetta Rose Barras bitterly summed up the case against the two leaders in an article in The Washington Post: ““One takes the success of the Million Man March and pimps it across the globe. … The other continues his unique talent of casting shadows of fiscal impropriety over nearly everything he touches.''
Last weekend Farrakhan and Chavis reasserted their claim to leadership with a political-organizing convention at Transworld Dome in St. Louis; but unlike the Washington event, which was notable for its broad participation, the St. Louis gathering generated little excitement in mainstream political circles. And while the upcoming Day of Atonement, Reconciliation and Responsibility marking the first anniversary of the march (with activities at the United Nations and elsewhere) will probably attract more attention than the convention, it will not likely have the impact of last year’s event.
Indeed, it was perhaps too much to expect that the march would spawn a glorious new national movement. It obviously focused attention on the issue of black male responsibility, but as Councilman Thomas points out, the march ““was more of a symbol. Symbols don’t solve problems.’’ In his upcoming movie, ““Get on the Bus,’’ Spike Lee subtly makes that point as he follows the odyssey of a group of men who start out in California bound together solely by their desire to participate in the grand event. The roles are a bit too obviously demographically correct: one gay couple, one homophobe, one father and estranged son, one former thug, one cop, one old man, one young student, all ripe for redemption and reconciliation. But Lee nonetheless manages to get the message across that the rally’s significance hinged not on the coronation of a black messiah, but on its success in encouraging at least some black men to look inward and discover a better vision of themselves. The result may not add up to a national movement or to a cure-all for the ills of black America, but for a community that has seen more than its share of pain, it certainly represents progress.
