Black Leaders Seek to Sign Up 1 Million Men for October Rally : Unity: Religious and political figures are urging African American males to join a march on Washington being planned as a day of atonement and reconciliation.

From a storefront in Leimert Park in Southwest Los Angeles, a call went out Thursday for African American men to register for a “Million Man March” on Washington next month--a demonstration one organizer called the “beginning of black men standing up all over America for what’s good for us and our families.”

The planned march Oct. 16 is the brainchild of Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, who has called for making the day one of atonement and reconciliation among African Americans.

The march and activities leading up to it are aimed at registering African American voters, mobilizing black economic power and strengthening the black family, organizers said.

A cross-section of about 100 community activists, clergy, street gang members and representatives of elected officials turned out Thursday for the opening of the march’s Los Angeles headquarters. Volunteers signed up participants and rallied support in ceremonies that blended elements of a religious revival, political rally and community forum.

“Our atonement is not to America,” Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell said at a news conference before the opening. “Our atonement is to our black mothers, daughters and sisters. We want them to know that we apologize to them for all that we have allowed them to take.”

Nation of Islam Minister Tony Muhammad, a spokesman for Farrakhan, said the march will be “a show of solidarity to the world--not just to the government--that the black man and our women have decided to put down our differences.”

Once in Washington, Muhammad said, marchers will first ask God--”no matter what name we call him by--to forgive us for our sins done one to another. Then we will embrace our brother and ask him for forgiveness whether we know him or not.”

Muhammad said march organizers recently had signed up thousands of Los Angeles participants at the Black Family Reunion and the African Marketplace, two community events that attract tens of thousands of visitors each year.

The march is an idea that has been gaining momentum in Los Angeles in recent weeks in community gathering places from beauty shops to art galleries, restaurants and shopping centers.

Some who support the effort are skeptical that it will attract a million men in a nation whose African American male population is about 15 million, but organizers have said that the pace of registration indicates they will achieve their goal.

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The idea for the march surfaced in the midst of a political climate that many march supporters see as openly hostile to African Americans. They cite Gov. Pete Wilson building his presidential campaign around his opposition to affirmative action, and point to the rabid racism in retired LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman’s taped comments to a screenwriter.

The Rev. Daniel Morgan of the Guidance Church of Religious Science on Crenshaw Boulevard slammed “the audacity of the system to request of us that we, in military terms, do an about-face and march sharply into the past,” reversing gains of the civil rights movement. “We will not do it.”

Muhammad, however, thanked America on Thursday for sending black people what amounts to a wake-up call with attempts to abolish affirmative action.

“We’re not going to let you off the hook with affirmative action,” he said, “but we want you to know we’re going to affirm our own action.”

America owes African Americans for centuries of enslavement and discrimination, he said, “and we’re going to continue to put that in your face. But we’re not going to stand around like Lazarus and wait on some crumbs to fall off the table--not when we’ve got over $400 billion spending power.”

March organizers have been criticized for sponsoring an event that some see as sexist, because it excludes women. Bakewell said Thursday that through the march, black men are saying to black women: “Sit down, Sister. Thank you for leading us for so long. We’ve grown up now.”

Black women are getting involved in the march, Muhammad said, noting that many had registered their sons who are in prison. “We will be carrying their names on placards,” he said. “We will be carrying the names of the slain on placards.”