THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 18, 1995 TAG: 9510180008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
More than 400,000 black men stood together Monday in harmony and concern. Strangers hugged strangers. Commitments were made to help others back home.
Surely no speech electrified the men as Martin Luther King Jr. electrified a quarter-million listeners in 1963 when he spoke of his dream of whites and blacks living together, unmindful of skin color.
Still, Monday's rally was too huge for a country to ignore, and black communities' needs are too great for black men to walk away from.
Ironies abounded. The Million Man March was a civil-rights rally boycotted by many civil-rights leaders, white and black. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People opposed it. Females - half the African-American population - were uninvited to a demonstration of solidarity. President Clinton managed to be out of town, as did Colin Powell, a black man whom polls show would handily defeat Clinton if the presidential election were held today, with Powell the Republican candidate.
Louis Farrakhan, who called the rally and spoke for 2 1/2 hours, is notorious for anti-Semitic, homophobic and racially devisive declarations. On Monday, he attacked, among others, former presidents Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. He ridiculed Clinton, who earlier that day, by implication, had spoken ill of him. Reconciliation did not appear to be on his front burner.
Surely he was right when he said, ``White supremacy is the enemy of both white people and black people, because the idea of white supremacy means you should rule because you're white. . . . The doctrine of white supremacy disallows whites to grow to their full potential. It forces white people to see themselves as the law or above the law. . . .''
His call for black men to take responsibility for themselves and their communities was welcome. He said:
``Every time we drive-by shoot, every time we car-jack, every time we use foul, filthy language, every time we produce culturally degenerate films and tapes, putting a string in our women's backside and parading them before the world, every time we do things like this we are feeding the degenerate mind of white supremacy.''
He called on the men to join churches and civic organizations back home, to help imprisoned blacks, to register more African Americans to vote.
The many speakers called for the men to be men, to lighten the crushing burdens too many black women bear alone, to repair their communities and support their children. Appeals for personal responsibility were cheered.
Now a nation waits to see what changes. May the men carry home the harmony and concern they felt and spread it wide. by CNB