ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 1996 TAG: 9606120040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
A NEW ORGANIZATION inspired by the Million Man March has been busy since last fall. On Saturday, it will inaugurate a Northwest Roanoke community center.
There's a state parole officer. A former school administrator. A computer analyst. A podiatrist.
A truck driver. A hair salon owner. A young artist. Three police officers.
These black Roanokers barely knew each other before October's Million Man March in Washington. Some didn't even go, but a chord was struck when they listened on television as Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan and others exhorted them to join together and help black families in their towns.
"Go back and be damned good American citizens," as Roanoker George Franklin paraphrased it. He didn't go to the march, but he was affected by reports of it.
"The feeling, the unity, the love that was there among those black men - it was just unbelievable," Jim Brown says. The former New Jerseyite, who has lived in Roanoke six years, drove alone to the march because he didn't know busloads of Roanokers were going.
He's not alone anymore. He's one of 50 men and women who, weeks after the march, formed an organization called Rebuilding Black Communities. It aims to do just what the name says.
Instead of being overwhelmed and depressed by all the things black communities need these days - the "we need" syndrome, as Brown describes it - ``What we're doing now is saying, `We're doing.'''
Anthony Reed, a senior parole officer with the state Department of Youth and Family Services, is president and a founder of the RBC, as it's becoming known. He's one of the men - soon joined by women - who began holding regular post-march meetings at the Hair Is beauty salon on Melrose Avenue.
The organization was the brainchild of Martin Jeffrey, community outreach director at Total Action Against Poverty. He talked salon owner Lisa Preston into opening her shop for the meetings. She had helped organize for two buses that took Roanokers to the march. Her teen-age son, Eugene, one of the RBC's youngest members, came up with the group's name, and Lisa Preston is the RBC's corresponding secretary.
Members describe the RBC as a new kind of black organization in Roanoke - an independent one without links to any political party or religion.
Anthony Reed has been an HIV and AIDS educator for the American Red Cross and organizer of alcohol and drug treatment programs at local jails. He sees first-hand the needs of Roanokers for steady jobs, consistent health care, strong families.
"We can't depend on government or government leaders to make our situation better," he says. "We have to do it ourselves."
First, the RBC asked the city school administration to enclose bathrooms for modular classrooms at Lincoln Terrace Elementary School. Members have been told the money is budgeted to enclose the restrooms so children won't have to go outside to reach them.
The RBC quickly began conducting voter registration drives, which continue. It staged a teen dance on New Year's Eve at the Henry Street Music Center when members learned young people had nowhere to go that night.
It set long-term goals as well: to raise standardized test scores at Northwest Roanoke schools, to help residents in that part of town find better housing, to register 2,000 new voters by the end of this year.
As meetings and projects continued, the RBC decided to establish something more permanent - a Northwest Roanoke family resource and community education center to make use of the skills of its growing membership, especially its retired teachers and counselors. Along came Roanoke Tribune publisher Claudia Whitworth with a rent-free offer of a building next door to her newspaper office on Melrose Avenue.
Members have been cleaning and painting there for weeks. They're still searching for floor tiles to match the old-fashioned red and gray ones missing in the big room.
That space, they hope, eventually will become a place where children and adults from all over Northwest Roanoke can come to get help in everything from personal budgeting to job interviewing skills to elementary school homework to eyeglasses and shoes for children. If the RBC, with only a few dollars in its treasury so far, can't fill the needs itself, it can put families in touch with other organizations that can.
The RBC plans a grand opening for the center at 2310 Melrose Ave. on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The group said it hopes the event will become an annual "Family Fun Day." There will be music, food and mural-painting. Local nonprofit and government agencies have agreed to help. They are Blue Ridge Community Services and the city libraries, Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Office of Public Works and Department of Parks and Recreation.
Jeff Artis, former Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates and Roanoke City Council, has joined the RBC. So has George Franklin, former director of Roanoke's Alternative Education Center.
Franklin said it has been reassuring to find dozens of other Roanoke men and women who want to get out into black neighborhoods, talk to people, and see what they need. This summer, he and others in the RBC plan to go into city parks, hang out with young people, and meet their parents.
Anita Reed, the RBC's recording secretary and a computer analyst for Allstate Insurance Co., said it has been good to see so many adults getting to be friends and willing to tackle problems. "I think that's the thing our youth do not see enough of," she said.
Rebuilding Black Communities meets every third Thursday at 7 p.m. at 2310 Melrose Ave. N.W. The organization will be soliciting area organizations for educational materials, furniture and equipment needed for the new center. For information, call the Roanoke Tribune at 343-0326.
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN\Staff. Outside the Rebuilding the Blackby CNBCommunity Learning Center, RBC officers (from left) Lisa Preston,
James Bumbry and George Franklin look over photographs of the group.
The members are renovating the center in their free time. color.