Long-Lasting Steps

They had no money for gas or food, but they piled into the van anyway, headed to Washington and last year’s Million Man March.

Whenever Tony Kelsey and his four friends saw the gas gauge move close to empty, they knew what to do.

“We’d pull off the freeway, jump out of the van, and I’d sing a cappella,” said Kelsey, 25, who had plenty of copies of a tape he had made. “As soon as I would generate a crowd, the tapes were as good as sold.”

The question of what would happen to people like Kelsey has hung in the air ever since 800,000 came to Washington last Oct. 16 for what was billed as a day of atonement for black men.

In Los Angeles, where the march saw an immediate redoubling of community involvement efforts, the jury is still out on how lasting they will be.

Nevertheless, individuals and organizations report that “something” is afoot, attitudes are changing, however slowly. There is a consensus that the march tapped into an upwelling of frustration that more and more is being harnessed and channeled into strengthening black communities.

For example, at the 112th Street School in Watts, teacher John Hamilton, who attended the march, remembers how difficult it was last year to raise $25,000 to launch the area’s first Pop Warner football team. This year, it was different.

“I don’t know what changed the attitude, but it seemed easier to get the money this year,” he said. “We raised $50,000 and added a second team. No one would have even tried to raise that last year.”

Was it the march, or the pride last year’s team generated? Probably both, Hamilton said.

Such speculation figures only to increase Wednesday when Spike Lee’s “Get on the Bus,” a drama about 20 men who go to the march, is released.

At First AME Church, a mentoring program matching men with boys jumped from 50 to 150 volunteers, said Mark Whitlock, executive director of the church’s FAME Renaissance.

“The march awakened that fellow who has always had a curiosity to do something,” he said. “We see dads coming out and mentoring other young men. The example must be someone making the first step. In the Million Man March, there were a million steps.”

The march, called by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, crystallized a commitment that African Americans have felt to their communities for generations, and it came at a time when those communities--especially the men--have never felt more under siege.

For many men who attended, the march was an opportunity to stand before each other and the world and declare that they are much more than a distorted media stereotype that would reduce them to America’s urban nightmare.

Perhaps no steps were more important than those taken on behalf of children. And none were more ambiguous.

The march generated more than 2,000 calls to the National Assn. of Black Social Workers and hundreds to the Institute for Black Parenting, a local agency that expedites the adoption of black children.

But none of the 70 families who attended orientation meetings run by the institute followed up and began adoption proceedings.

“Los Angeles County has 30,000 African American children in foster care,” said Zena Oglesby, the black parenting institute’s executive director. “People are stunned and overwhelmed by that figure.”

Oglesby contends that Los Angeles County’s adoption system discourages black families. “There is a vested interest in keeping children in foster care,” he said, referring to county payments that foster care parents and operators of group homes receive.

Oglesby has not written off those families who came out but did not follow up. He said adoption can easily take more than a year once a family signs up.

Clarence and Frances Patterson of Garden Grove adopted three children from the same family in Fresno. They are now trying to adopt two more of those youngsters’ siblings.

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Seeing the march on television “made me more determined to adopt the other two children,” said Clarence Patterson, 50. “We have so many kids out here. All of them need families.”

If he had his way, he would adopt all seven children that the Fresno woman has given birth to, but bureaucratic obstacles have prevented that, he said.

His daughter Marshay was 4 when the Pattersons adopted her and her twin brother four years ago. Patterson recalls that she asked him: “Why did you take so long?”

“That choked me up,” he said. “I told her that I wasn’t her real father. She started crying and kept repeating: ‘Yes you are, yes you are.’ ”

At Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles, a similar rush of inquiries has failed to generate a rush of volunteers. The organization signed up 125 prospective volunteers at a Crenshaw district rally shortly after the march--”the most inquiries we’ve had in the history

of this agency,” said Lisa Bennett Garrison, the group’s director of development.

But none of those who signed up at that rally actually became a Big Brother, she said.

“But that doesn’t mean they don’t intend to,” she said. “Sometimes it takes longer, regardless of the volunteers’ ethnicity.”

In the last year 18 additional black men have become Big Brothers in the Los Angeles area, bringing the total to 80. Some were motivated in part by the march.

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Phillip Powdrill, 31, a Big Brother for the past six months, said he was moved by the march’s message that it was time for black men to come together as fathers and brothers. But he would have become a Big Brother even without the march, he said.

A commercial he saw on television asking for volunteers played a bigger role in his decision.

At other agencies, the march helped some volunteers continue when they were ready to give up.

Bryan Thomas, 33, is an attorney who provides free legal services to people referred to him by the Brotherhood Crusade.

He has been volunteering for five years, putting in between five and 20 hours a week. A year ago he was ready to stop.

“I had an attitude that I had done my time in the trenches,” he said. “I’m through. I’m going broke doing this. The march helped me focus and say: ‘I’m doing something good. Keep doing it.’ ”

In Watts, Teryl Watkins, president of the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, said she has seen an upsurge of volunteers. But that is more the result of an exhibit featuring the slave ship Henrietta Marie than the march, she said.

“When everybody got back, they were energized, excited,” she said. “ However, I didn’t see the follow-up I expected.”

But Tony Kelsey, who grew up in Watts , credits the march with making him more determined to turn his life around.

A former gang member who sings under the name Tone Kelsey, he has spent most of his life behind bars and has been shot five times--losing a lung to one slug.

Since the march, Kelsey has revived a dormant singing career with the help of his friend Tony White.

Before White and the march turned him around, Kelsey said, “I didn’t care about anybody. Since the march, it seems that everybody cares.”