ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 2, 1997 TAG: 9702030066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
If you counted closely, Roanoke's Thousand Man March was closer to a hundred-man march.
But what counted the most, participants said, was the depth of sincerity and commitment reflected by the men, women and children who turned out Saturday to march down Orange Avenue Northwest in a show of black unity.
``If you can get 50 or 100, that's 50 or 100 more that will take something back to the community,'' said Harold Cannaday II, who organized the second annual march.
Cannaday, who got the idea from the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, invited men from all walks of life to demonstrate that the Roanoke Valley's black community is full of people who contradict negative images that are all too prevalent.
``A lot of the perception is that the community is all infested with drugs and criminal activity, but that's just a small, small percentage of what happens in the black community,'' said Sherman Holland, who carried his 22-month-old son, Jamal, along the march route.
``We do a lot of positive things that don't get reported in the newspaper.''
Darryl Rogers brought his 7-year-old son, D.J., to the march ``because it's something positive. It's something that I think all fathers should bring their sons to.''
The Hollands and the Rogerses joined about 100 other marchers - fathers and sons, city schoolteachers and police officers, professionals and laborers, custodians and former City Council members - on a route from Washington Park to nearby Addison Middle School.
Before they set out, the Rev. Ivory Morton challenged the marchers to make a difference in their community by taking the spirit that brought them there and applying it to their daily lives.
``Are we here as an audience, or are we going to participate?'' he asked. ``Are we going to just walk to Addison and then wait another year, or are we going to participate?''
Once at Addison, many of the marchers attended a program that honored five of the city's African-American Pioneers.
The awards were presented to Dr. Wendell Butler, a dentist who has served on the Roanoke School Board, City Council and as vice mayor; Marilyn Curtis, a businesswoman at Hamlar-Curtis Funeral Home who serves on the School Board and in a number of civic groups; and George Miller, dean of Coulter Hall at William Fleming High School and head coach of the football team.
Pioneer awards were given posthumously to Jeremiah Holland, an ice cream vendor known as ``Jerry the Popsicle Man,'' who was one of Roanoke's earliest black entrepreneurs, and to the Rev. William Hunter, former pastor of Jerusalem Baptist Church, who was instrumental in the building of Hurt Park Elementary School.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. 1. The Rev. Ivory Morton greetsby CNBJamal Holland, son of Sherman Holland. 2. One participant, Darryl
Rogers, called the march ``something that I think all fathers should
bring their sons to.'' color.