The idea of self-sufficiency has a long history among black people in America
By Melanie Eversley
Once each week, a few dozen black men -- social workers, factory workers, teachers -- meet at the Inner City Sub Center on Detroit's east side.
The members of the Million Man March Alumni Group sometimes banter about their new fund-raising project -- Million Man brand toiletries and bean pies. They share ideas on how they'll use the proceeds for their voter registration drive, youth outreach and other programs.
It all comes from the self-sufficiency they promised to practice at the march 16 months ago in Washington.
"It gives us a sense of worth and ownership," Wayne County Commissioner Bernard Parker, a founder of the alumni group, said Friday. "I think what made people the most enthusiastic is the whole idea of economic development, the whole idea of being able to raise funds ourselves and have our own product."
That self-help strain reaches deep into the history of black people in the New World, emerging in the back-to-Africa urgings of Marcus Garvey, the preachings of the Nation of Islam and the works of groups such as Parker's Million Man March Alumni Group and his Operation Get Down, a nonprofit Detroit social service agency.
The message is always the same: Black people should support each other first to lift themselves out of the social ills that affect them in greater numbers.
In the early 19th Century, black slaves in Haiti revolted and took over the island from French colonialists. In the British-ruled Jamaica of the 1700s, black slaves revolted and formed an autonomous community in the island's forest.
In the United States, free black communities of the 18th Century filled a void caused by white-only mutual aid societies and fraternal organizations, said Ernest Allen, associate professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
"Immediately after the American Revolution, you saw these religion formations," Allen said. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, for example, was formed in the 1790s.
In the 1920s, Marcus Garvey encouraged black Americans to reject racism and move to Africa. A decade later, a mysterious drifter named W.C. Fard (pronounced Fuh-RAHD) came to Detroit and introduced the Nation of Islam, reinforcing personal dignity in black people.
Fard mysteriously vanished in 1934 and Elijah Muhammad took over, urging black Americans to "do for self."
"He made us more comfortable with our blackness -- that's his main legacy," said Claude Andrew Clegg III, author of the soon-to-be-released "An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad."
"He reconciled us with ourselves. He sold black people to themselves. It was his emphasis on Africa. It was his emphasis on the worth of our black features and heritage," said Clegg, who teaches history at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro.
But followers of the Chicago-based movement are drawn to its philosophy that black people have played a central role in world history and they should avoid alcohol, drugs and gambling, shun government assistance and rely only on themselves.
"The positive aspect of the movement was that Fard was able, just as Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan, to resurrect people, people who were completely down and out, give them a new sense of pride, get them functioning and give them a new sense of self. And this reflected on their ability to hold onto jobs," said Allen, an expert on the Nation of Islam and former instructor at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan.
In the 1950s and '60s, Nation of Islam members opened businesses in urban areas across the country. Malcolm X, known as Malcolm Little as a child in Lansing, preached self-love to black people as representative for the Nation of Islam and later as a follower of traditional Islam.
Parker, founder and executive di rector of Operation Get Down, said he drew on Malcolm X's ideology.
"We modeled our program after his philosophy that you must do for self, that no one else can solve your problems but yourself and we all should come together around that one area that we all share, which is our blackness," Parker said.
Operation Get Down encourages people to help themselves out of dire circumstances by teaching them about their history along with career skills. It promotes self-sufficiency by partly supporting itself through selling products from Africa.
And the New Marcus Garvey Movement in Detroit borrows from the philosophy of its namesake, closing down crack houses around the city and promoting products made by black-owned companies.
But many observers cite the Million Man March as the most vibrant, modern-day display of self-reliance among black Americans. It spurred a sea of teary-eyed men to hold hands on the Washington Mall and vow to help themselves.
The march, organized by Farrakhan and former NAACP executive director Ben Chavis, encouraged black men to open businesses, launch programs and volunteer as mentors.
According to Dawud Muhammad, minister of Muhammad's Mosque Number One in northwest Detroit, the self-help concept will remain with black America as long as the racial divide drives the creation of gatherings like the march.
"That was the beginning of a collective healing process," Muhammad said. "If there's going to be some thing of a change in our people, it's going to require something of a new beginning or rebirth."