EDITOR'S NOTE: 'The State of Black Men 10 Years After the MMM' is the first of BlackAmericaWeb.com's three-part A Million More series examining the myriad issues to be addressed at this Saturday's Millions More March in Washington D.C. Coming Tuesday: the state of black women.

Ten years after the historic Million Man March in Washington, D.C. -- where thousands of black men took a public pledge to provide for their families, adopt black children, support black-owned businesses and stop using drugs -- more black men are dropping out of high school, being jailed at disproportionately high rates and suffering from chronic emotional instability.

Today, black community activists, educators and psychologists say the challenges for young black men are so immense that it will take a coordinated, grassroots approach -- city by city and block by block -- to address all the social, economic and mental health issues that many black men are experiencing in the nation’s urban centers.

They are hoping the Millions More Movement rally scheduled for October 15 in Washington, D.C., organized by Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, will serve as a nationwide catalyst for cohesion and civic action while commemmorating the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March.

"We are responsible for our own conditions," Dr. Robert Atwell, president of the National Association of Black Psychologists, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "Black men are responsible for drinking too much. Black men are responsible for doing drugs. Black men are responsible for homicides within our communities. It’s a public health crisis."

Atwell, who said he supports the Millions More Movement, plans to join the hundreds of thousands of participants who will convene next week on the National Mall.

Organizers say they are hoping for a large turnout on Saturday, a return of the near-million black men who attended the Million Man March on October 16, 1995 in Washington, D.C. This year, however, the rally calls for a union of black men and women to become more politically active; to demand better education for black students; create a black "economic development fund" and to develop a comprehensive health care plan for black Americans.

Detractors of the Millions More Movement question why there’s a need for another mass rally, and some say organizers of the Million Man March failed to marshal a methodical approach to solve complex problems among black men.

But Conrad Worrill, director of Inner City Studies for the Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University and an organizer of the Millions More Movement, said the 1995 Million Man March was designed "to challenge black men to assume greater responsibility" and next week’s rally is "a call to action."

"We need this movement more today than anytime in our history," Worrill told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "We’ve never advanced without a movement, and we need a movement to repair the damage."

Worrill said several black researchers conducted an independent study after the Million Man March, which revealed that black men have adopted more black children, voter registration has increased and more black men are attending church in higher numbers.

"I’ve heard people say that nothing happened after the Million Man March," he said, "but that is not true."

While most black leaders agree that discrimination often contributes to the demise of black men, many contend that solutions for troubled young black men -- and black Americans in general -- rests with the black community.

In an open letter on the organization’s website, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, who organized the Millions More Movement, maintained that "The Millions More Movement is challenging all of us to rise above the things that have kept us divided in the past, by focusing us on the agenda of the Millions More Movement to see how all of us, with all of our varied differences, can come together and direct our energy, not at each other, but at the condition of the reality of the suffering of our people, that we might use all of our skills, gifts and talents to create a better world for ourselves, our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren."

Community activists say there are numerous positive stories across the country about black men who left the Million Man March and made good on their pledges to improve the quality of their lives and the lives of others around them.

The service organization "100 Black Men," for example, continues to mentor young black men in cities like New York and Philadelphia; black men from California have adopted children; others like Steven Bacon not only supported black businesses as stated in the Million Man March pledge, but he also started his own media technology firm, Blacon Media, in Atlanta, Georgia.

In Detroit, the Million Man Alumni still meets every Thursday and offers young black men political awareness programs and other community services. In Washington, D.C., the Rev. Willie Wilson, executive director of the Millions More Movement, continues to assist young black men through his Southeast Washington church.

The spirit of the Million Man March also still lives inside Ayinde Jean-Baptiste, 24, a student at Northwestern University in Chicago. Ten years ago, at age 14, Jean-Baptiste energized the crowd at the Million Man March with a rousing speech about black collective responsibility.

And Jean-Baptiste is still firing-up audiences with his oratory. This summer, he joined his father, Chicago alderman and attorney Lionel Jean-Baptiste, for the National United Black Front’s annual Malcolm X Birthday Commemoration and African Liberation Day Celebration. Ayinde, who is working with survivors of Hurricane Katrina, is also scheduled to speak at next week’s Millions More Movement.

"It’s important to raise your children to fight," Ayinde Jean-Baptist told a crowd in Chicago. "Raise them by standing up yourself and fight."

Although there are many anecdotal examples of black men who are now attending church on a regular basis, paying their child support, treating black women with respect and walking away from a life of drugs and crime, national statistics paint a troubling picture of black men performing poorly in school and overrepresented in jails and juvenile detention centers.

According to the Joint Center Health Policy Institute, the outlook for young black men -- a decade after the Million Man March -- is not promising.

• More than 25 percent of black men who are 20 years old today are likely to go to prison at some point in their lives, compared with 4.1 percent of white men of the same age.
• High school drop-out rates have increased and college enrollment levels have declined for young black men as incarceration rates have grown.
• Many young black men are unable to recover from serious mental illness because they are warehoused in juvenile detention centers -- often with no charges filed against them -- where community mental health care is severely limited.
• School systems assign black students in disproportionately large numbers to "mental retardation" and "emotional disturbance" categories in special education programs.
• Blacks are over-represented in the foster care system, a population that is more likely to have behavioral or emotional problems and to be suspended or expelled from school.

"I think that black men in America face many of the same challenges that were the focus of the Million Man March in 1995," Alvin Williams, president of the conservative Black America’s Political Action Committee, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

"In order to assist in meeting these challenges," Williams said, "we must take a multifaceted approach that focuses on increasing opportunities and access to these opportunities in the areas of education, economic empowerment, entrepreneurship and other areas. At the same time, we must continue to instill a sense of responsibility and perspective in younger generations of black men."

Ron Scott, a longtime Detroit community activist and a former member of the Black Panther Party, said White House policies are having a devastating impact on black men.

"Under the Bush administration and the right-wing agenda, I see a major setback and a downturn," Scott told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "These policies diminish the ability to allow African-American men to change their conditions."

Bishop Ira Combs, pastor of Greater Bible Way Temple in Jackson, Michigan and a member of the Republican National Committee’s African American Advisory Board, told BlackAmericaWeb.com that black men in Detroit have a 50 percent public school dropout rate and that 56 percent of all Michigan prisoners are black.

Combs said Farrakhan "missed an opportunity" after the Million Man March by not organizing blacks at the grass-roots level to systematically address the problems among black men today, which include substance abuse, absence of fathers in households, the proliferation of drugs and black male prisoners with HIV being released into black communities.

"The situation has gotten worse," Combs said in an interview. "There was no strategic plan to bring these issues to the forefront. [Farrakhan] spent more time pointing fingers and not enough time seeking solutions."

Black leaders, however, say neither schools, churches, jails nor community groups have addressed the problems effectively, which led the Joint Center Health Policy Institute to commission a national panel of experts, The Dellums Commission, to examine the cumulative impact on community health that limits life options for young black men who are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates.

Ron Walters, a political science professor at the University of Maryland and a member of the Dellums Commission, told BlackAmericaWeb.com there are "substantial barriers" that prevent young black men from improving their conditions.

Walters said, for example, that when the federal government scrapped a successful inner-city jobs program in Washington, D.C. several years ago, young black men turned to the streets. Many of America’s young black men are in prison for "petty" drug crimes, he said, which could be significantly reduced if there were more job opportunities.

"What real alternatives did they have?" Walters asked. "D.C. had one of the best summer jobs programs in the country. When they cut out the job training programs, kids starting selling drugs. They only have so many choices."

As overall child mortality fell dramatically from 1981 to 2001, experts said, the only group that did not experience a reduction in death rates was black Americans between 15 and 19 years old, mostly because of a rise in homicide and suicide rates.

Dr. Atwell told BlackAmericaWeb.com that many young black men are presently in crisis and need immediate mental health counseling as unemployment in black communities continues to rise.

"When black men can’t find jobs, they can’t do what society says they’re suppose to do and they feel devalued," he said, "so they use their physical capabilities to dominate other people because they don’t have the means to compete economically. For many black men, the opportunity for self-validation is very limited in this society, and it has a subtle but continuous impact on their emotional well-being."

"We’re killing each other," Atwell added, "which is a counterproductive reaction to this systematic oppression."