Reunion Accentuates the Positives for Blacks : Gatherings: Celebration of African-American families reaffirms how far they have to go and how far they’ve come.

A 9-year-old black child in Chicago was asked last summer what he wanted to be when he grows up. His answer broke Brenda Girton’s heart.

“I don’t think I’m going to grow up,” the child replied. “Everyone around me is dying.”

His is precisely the sort of hopelessness that Girton, vice president of the National Council of Negro Women, hoped to reverse at the 8th annual Black Family Reunion in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, where African-Americans gathered this weekend to celebrate the ever-challenged and often-embattled black family.

The two-day event coincided with the 30th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington, adding an element of poignancy for families who gathered to reaffirm not only how far they have to go, but how far they’ve come.

“Dr. King said ‘I’ve been to the top of the mountain.’ But he never told us how deep the valley was. He never told us how far and how long it would take,” said Duran Williams, a 28-year-old airport worker who has attended every reunion since 1986, this time with his pregnant wife and two small children.

“Families Working Wonders, Something to Celebrate” was the theme of this year’s reunion, and row after row of booths staffed by successful black entrepreneurs, families picnicking on the grass and children in uniform high-stepping in a parade were testament to that.

The booths were selling everything from Christmas cards with black Santas to advice on how to “sleep away your tummy.” There was a new line of cosmetics for women of color. Children bounced blissfully on tented trampolines. Toddlers napped in their strollers. The smell of barbecue was thick in the air.

It was a chance to rise above negative stereotypes.

“To see our people coming together this way without any violence, just having a good time. To know we can do this, no matter what other people in other cultures think, that’s what I come away with,” Tamaralyn Siber-Smith said as she prepared to watch a parade with her 4- and 5-year-old sons and her 1-year-old daughter.

The aim of the reunions--also held this summer in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Memphis, Tenn., Atlanta, Chicago and Washington--was to accentuate the positive without losing sight of the formidable challenges that black families in America still face.

A booth set up by the Institute for Black Parenting raised funds to find homes for black male children, who stay in the child welfare system longer than any other group.

Another booth was selling auto license plate brackets that read: “Respect and Protect the Black Woman.”

“Our message is that there is hope. The spirit of the Black Family Reunion is to reach higher than you thought you could reach,” Girton said. “We are a people with problems, but we are not a problem people.”

Alphonso E. Hamilton, publisher of the black Los Angeles newspaper Freedom, stood deep in thought behind his booth.

As he watched the black families stroll by, he thought about the struggle against racism that endures three decades after King made his historic “I have a dream” speech. From that particular vantage point, at that particular moment, the hatred seemed more absurd than ever.

“We are a very peaceful people,” Hamilton said. “Why don’t other people like us?”