The Struggle Continues for the Men of the Million Man March

Tamika Mallory, a national organizer of the rally, recited a litany of young black men who have been killed by police in recent years, including Tamir Rice of Cleveland, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner of Staten Island.

On passing the torch, he specifically mentioned Black Lives Matter, the group that arose in response to police-involved deaths of black men, as the “future leadership”.

Among the attendees was Nate Smith of Oakland, California, who joined the 1963 March on Washington and the 1995 Million Man March.

The original march on October. 16, 1995, brought an estimated 850,000 African American men to Washington to pledge to improve their lives, their families and their communities.

“If I’m a seed – and I’m 50 years old and I’m still a seed – [if I] have never been planted in the right environment to develop myself then I don’t have freedom”, Farrakhan said. “They are here because they are the original owners of this part of the earth”.

Farrakhan, 82, spoke to the crowd on the National Mall in Washington and reflected on the importance of passing the torch to the next generation.

Actually, many were irate that the major mainstream networks ignored the unprecedented gathering of black men in the nation’s Capitol. Plus, we don’t know how many others returned home and registered after the event. In fact, the black turnout rate increased by about 13 percent between 1996 and 2012, the agency reports. In 2004, 84.3 percent did, according to the Census Bureau. In September 2015 it was 8.9 percent.

The hashtag #JusiceOrElse has been trending on social media channels, eliciting a wide variety of reactions, most of which are positive.

Taylor Hunt, a Howard University freshman, said that she had been stirred to action after the death of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was found hanged in a Texas jail cell in July after she was arrested on a traffic violation.

So what now? What happens now in the next 10, 20, or 40 years? Farrakhan made a lot of fascinating and no-doubt “problematic” statements during his epic speech Saturday, none of which made Smith’s article, which was more focused on weaponing left-wing grievances than in thorough newsgathering. There’s no way of knowing how many or to what degree the rally inspired to start a business, reconcile with their families or an increase in political participation.