ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 15, 1996 TAG: 9602150093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
LOUIS Farrakhan, he's not.
``I knew I wouldn't get a million,'' Harold Cannaday II says of Saturday's march in Roanoke, ``so I thought I'd ask for a thou- sand men." News of the soft-spoken schoolteacher's Thousand Man March is catching on. He's hoping he'll break 1,000 - or at least come close.
He didn't attend last fall's Million Man March in Washington. "I had to go to work that day," he says, "but I was inspired by it."
He's spreading word of the march at churches and schools, hoping that boys, their dads and granddads will meet at the Washington Park swimming pool at 10 a.m. Saturday. At 10:45, they'll walk the short distance to Addison Aerospace Magnet Middle School for a program on Roanoke Valley black pioneers.
It's not a march for a partisan political cause; it's a march for unity among black men in the valley. Cannaday hopes men of different ages and economic backgrounds - ``from the highest professional to the unemployed'' - can stand together, embrace their potential, swap business cards, and help each other.
Cannaday, a special-education teacher at William Ruffner Middle School and part-time basketball coach, wants the march to be all-male. But he's inviting women to gather in the lower end of the park and greet the men as they come down Burrell Street and march west on Orange Avenue to the school.
Women are invited to the 11:30 a.m. ceremonies in the school auditorium. The program is in honor of a woman, pioneering black teacher Lucy Addison, for whom the school is named.
Addison began teaching at another Roanoke school in 1886, and in 1917 became principal of Harrison School, the city's first black high school. She died in 1937 at the age of 75. Cannaday, who has written a children's book about Lucy Addison, thinks her message of harmony can still inspire Roanokers.
Other people will be honored Saturday, too, but Cannaday is keeping their names a secret.
Cannaday, 36, nephew of longtime high school basketball coach Irvin Cannaday, has organized a black history event each winter for the past three years, but Saturday's is his most ambitious.
"The cost of this has been zero," Cannaday says. Roanoke mounted police have agreed to march, he says, as has William Fleming High School's popular step team, the Black Knights.
For more information, call 362-4869.
Roanoke's Thousand Man March
When events begin: 10 a.m. Saturday.
Where: Parking lot behind Washington Park swimming pool on Burrell Street Northwest.
When march begins: 10:45 a.m.
March route: Down Burrell Street from the Washington Park pool and west on Orange Avenue to Addison Middle School, Fifth Street and Orange Avenue.
After march: 11:30 a.m. program in the Addison auditorium on black pioneers of the Roanoke Valley.
For information: Call 262-4869.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. Harold Cannaday II hopes at leastby CNB1,000 black men gather at Washington Park's pool at 10 a.m. Saturday
to begin a day of togetherness and inspiration. color. Graphci:
Chart. color.