THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170186
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 241 lines
The men standing at the corner of 35th Street and Newport Avenue in Norfolk on Wednesday morning assembled like many of them had a month earlier.
But instead of a Million Man March on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, these 20 men had a different destination this time: They were walking to Monroe Elementary School, two blocks away, to register as volunteers.
The men, most of them members of the Joe F. Boone Masonic Lodge in Portsmouth, had exchanged the jeans and sweats they wore last month for black suits and ties. Their dress shoes gleamed. A couple wore their Navy uniforms, their creases as crisp as the breeze.
The emotions that warmed them a month ago - pride, hope, unity - also warmed them Wednesday.
``This is a little piece of Oct. 16, 1995, right here,'' said Felix Simmons of Newport News, shortly before hitting the crosswalk heading to Monroe Elementary.
``Yes, sir!''
The men were keeping a promise they and hundreds of thousands of other African-American men had made at the historic Million Man March: to come back and help their communities.
Weeks before the march - one of the largest demonstrations of social activism ever - the event's supporters and critics alike said its true significance wouldn't lie in the rally itself but in the days that followed. The marchers would have to take the messages of personal and social responsibility back home.
They have.
In Detroit, the march received some of the credit for holding down the number of arsons this year on Halloween, the city's infamous ``Devil's Night.'' Million Man marchers joined other volunteers to patrol the streets, and the number of fires dropped 50 percent from last year's total.
In Baltimore, the highest-rated black radio station, WXYV-FM, announced recently it would no longer play songs that degrade women or glamorize violence.
Here in Virginia, local schools and community centers have reported an increase in volunteer participation, and local branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have seen membership grow.
One local group, the Congress of African Liberation Soldiers, formed shortly after the march and has begun volunteer work at Monroe Elementary School. COALS has a reading contest with one fourth-grade class, and will sponsor two spelling bees.
``Everyone kept saying: `Well what are you going to do after the march? What are you going to do after the march?,' '' said Habeeb Majeed, president of COALS. ``Well, we're doing something. People who look at us might not see great numbers, but they will see people doing something. We had to take the call to heart.''
So have other Hampton Roads residents: Marching to Monroe
One first-grade girl almost walked into a wall as she stared at the members of the Joe F. Boone Lodge entering Monroe Elementary School in Norfolk on Wednesday morning.
The men in black were turning heads.
As the group moved toward a reception honoring school volunteers, several young black boys poked their heads out of their classroom doors to watch. Some stared, mouths open. Some smiled proudly.
One young man pointed at the men and squealed: ``Look! Look!''
A woman looking on beamed. ``Isn't this beautiful?'' she whispered.
During the reception, Felix Simmons, a professional storyteller, was asked to share a tale with the crowd of honorees and first- and fourth-graders who packed the media center.
He ended by telling them why he had traveled to their school.
``I'm here,'' Simmons said, ``because of Oct. 16, 1995. One million black men in Washington, D.C. I was there and it was all good!''
The group applauded.
``I know some of you couldn't be there, but you young folks were there. I took you in my heart!''
Afterward, the lodge members ate finger sandwiches and studied guides on how to help at the school: reading a story to a class, presenting cultural or career programs, chaperoning field trips.
George Cooper, who organized the mini-march to Monroe, said he would try to come by once a week.
``We can take them for tours of the ships,'' Cooper, a chief warrant officer on the dock landing ship Pensacola, had said earlier.
``We can show them things from overseas. There's so much going on with younger kids, we need to inspire them when they are young. I didn't have that when I was growing up. I was one of those who made it out of my neighborhood when a lot of people didn't.
``So, we're here to help them.'' The economic development club
The advertisement that ran in The Virginian-Pilot's classifieds section two weeks ago read simply, ``A Million Man marcher seeks brothers interested in forming an economic development club.''
Prince Nesbitt, the Chesapeake man who placed the ad, received about 15 calls in five days.
``Oh, men from across the board - business consultants, bankers, career consultants responded,'' Nesbitt, 42, said excitedly.
``So much talent. So many who want to participate. People who have venture capital and want to invest in black businesses. There are a lot of brothers with the expertise but don't know where to put it.''
In pooling these resources, club members can help those who want to start businesses fill out the necessary paperwork and develop bookkeeping and management skills.
Nesbitt was a business major in college and has owned his own businesses for the past 15 years. The march pushed him to figure out how to share his talents.
``The march was a 150 percent positive experience,'' Nesbitt said.
``I didn't hear the `N' word once; I didn't hear the `B' word. . . . The march to me was the third-greatest experience in my life. The other two were watching my two children being born into the world.'' The five-year plan
Mary Welch's plan to strengthen the black community is sketched on stationary with the heading, ``Big Ideas.''
Welch's ideas are grand:
Satellite clinics of Norfolk Community Hospital in Virginia Beach and Hampton, an Afrocentric school in Portsmouth or an education council to help parents work better with the school systems. Chesapeake would be home to a black-owned, full-service gas station, and Norfolk would have a minority-owned, one-stop shopping center where folks could buy dinner and school clothes in the same visit.
Local minority newspapers and radio stations would flourish with community support.
Welch said simply after reviewing the list: ``We could do this.''
Welch, the co-owner of the Self-Improvement and Educational Center in Norfolk, believes because she's seen similar results in other cities.
On a trip to Philadelphia two years ago, she visited the Progress Plaza shopping center, a 17-store mall created with a church investment company. Two-hundred people each contributed $10 a month for 36 months.
Progress Plaza is now billed as the nation's largest black-owned shopping center. The investment fund also has built a garment factory and training centers for the unemployed.
``. . . No one person can do this alone, no one person has to be accountable. If everyone is involved, everyone is responsible.'' Park cleanup; business roundup
Every Monday afternoon at 3:30, Seko Varner and his cleanup crew from Cradock Middle School take several trash bags and head to Douglas Park.
They spend the next half-hour loading the bags.
Varner, a 26-year-old counselor at the Portsmouth school, worked with another school employee who pulled a few students together Oct. 16 to begin the neighborhood sprucing.
But Varner, who participated in the march, has carried its spirit further than the weekly cleanup. He and several of his Omega Psi Phi fraternity brothers are developing a computer data base of community groups and businesses that serve the black community.
They hope to compile 100 to create a phone-in service in which callers can access the information free of charge. So far, 20 businesses are on the list.
``If you want to find a black-owned cleaners or someone who makes wedding dresses, you will be able to call and get that information,'' Varner said.
``This is something we believe that needs providing. If we become a stronger black community, we will help America be stronger.'' NSU and Big Brothers-Big Sisters
About 40 Norfolk State University students trudged through Tuesday's storm to Brown Hall. They wanted to hear what the representative from Big Brothers-Big Sisters of South Hampton Roads program had to say.
The organization, a branch of the country's oldest and largest mentoring network, has a pilot program in several Norfolk and Virginia Beach schools and needs volunteers to work with children one hour a week, giving them a boost in reading skills or self-esteem.
The rep didn't know until after her speech that many of the students had already signed letters of commitment days before as members of the newly formed Thurgood Marshall Pre-law Club. The group had organized shortly before the Million Man March and had made a pact to connect with a community-service organization once the march was over. Big Brothers-Big Sisters is it.
``We decided we were going to answer the call of the march,'' said the group's president, Dawn Bailey.
``We have committed ourselves to work with these kids for as long as we're in college, and will introduce them to other mentors so that they won't be left in the cold once we leave.
``We in turn will find mentors for ourselves. We have to help someone and help ourselves.''
Although the program has a one-hour limit, Bailey and the other students would like to become full-time Big Brothers and Big Sisters to spend more time with the kids.
``The march was just what we needed - we are so excited about helping out,'' Bailey said. ``We have about 30 dedicated people signed up, mostly men. Raising kids' self-expectations
By Jon Glass
As the day of the march approached last month, Stephen Peters sat in bed until 3 a.m. one night, struggling with a question that troubled him: What, as an African-American man, was his responsibility to society?
The soul-searching proved to be an epiphany for Peters, the principal of Lafayette-Winona Middle School in Norfolk, where a large share of the students come from low-income, inner-city neighborhoods.
His answer: To become mentor and friend to a group of 25 or so of the school's most hard-core troublemakers. He formed the Gentleman's Club, with a goal to raise these kids' self-expectations.
So far, he said, the results are encouraging. Two seventh-graders in the club, once school terrors, were recently named most-improved academically. Another student who had been performing below his ability was now earning straight A's.
Instead of disrupting classes, they had become models of good behavior, Peters said.
``That's something I saw as my responsibility as a result of the Million Man March, to try to change people's lives, to expose them to things they don't know about, to let them know there's another side of the world out there for them,'' said Peters, who recently escorted the group to a formal dinner at a local waterfront restaurant - a first for most of the kids.
In the first few days after the march, Peters was euphoric over an increase in the number of dads visiting the school. In the weeks since, Peters said the early momentum has waned. ``I haven't seen what I thought I would see continue,'' he said Tuesday.
One dad, Randy Austin, a Norfolk deputy sheriff, said the march showcased what black fathers should have been doing all along. Austin, who said he has reared two sons alone since his divorce eight years ago, tries to visit their schools at least once a week. He has a son at Lafayette-Winona and another at Granby High.
He sometimes wears his uniform to the schools and helps security guards monitor the cafeteria during lunch period.
``It's our job, it's our responsibility,'' Austin said. ``I don't see that we have any alternative if you want to call yourself a real good father.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by RICHARD L. DUNSTON, The Virginian-Pilot
Members of the Joe F. Boone Masonic Lodge in Portsmouth visit Monroe
Elementary School to volunteer.
NSU club reaches out: (left to right) Carol Pretlow, Yolanda Burton,
Dawn Bailey, Jason E. Porter and Dante M. Burt
Dr. Mary Welch poses with a kinara, a candelabra used in the
celebration of the African-American holiday Kwanzaa/B2
Seko Varner and Michael Brown have organized cleanup teams near
Portsmouth Boulevard and Truxton Avenue/B2
Photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON, The Virginian-Pilot
Felix Simmons Sr. tells a story at Monroe Elementary School in
Norfolk as part of the ``Partners'' program.
by CNB