The District Chronicles

Issue date: 6/22/08 Section: Cover

Fort Washington, MD,  resident Bernadette Williams is encouraged that someone is finally taking a stand to encourage Black single mothers to wed their baby daddies. "I think it's a wonderful concept that Mary Ann Reid came up with," said Williams, a senior counselor in the School of Communications at Howard University. "It really takes two parents to raise a child."

Reid's idea is to take unmarried couples who live together and share biological children 13 years or younger, and coax them into tying the knot in exchange for an all-expense paid wedding. Reid, a single New Yorker,  conceived the idea three years ago after she was stood up by a suitor at the alter.  She decided to channel that hurt and frustration into a book, "Marry Your Baby Daddy;" a non-profit organization, Marry Your Baby Daddy, Inc.; and a national day of Black marriage celebration, Marry Your Baby Daddy Day.

The book chronicles the stories of three sisters who had to marry their significant others in order to receive their grandmother's inheritance.  "It was a satisfying experience but I didn't want it to end there -- in the land of fairytales," Reid wrote in a commentary in the Christian Science Monitor in April 2006.   "I wanted to see tangible results - an actual wedding. And so I set about searching for 10 couples who would tie the knot for the first time on Marry Your Baby Daddy Day in exchange for an all-expense paid ceremony."

Washingtonian Ayo Handy-Kendi, creator of Black Love Day, likes the idea, which has yet to catch on in the Greater Washington DC area.  "It's a novel opportunity to the African American families for serious family unification," she said.  "If we take a day to celebrate any kind of family, I'm for it."

So is Rev. William Jones Jr., senior pastor of Reclaim the Streets Ministries, in Harrisburg, PA. On June 12, Pastor Jones held a Marry Your Baby Day ceremony for four couples who had been living together an average of eight years but for one reason or another had not said "I do."

The couples met the Marry Your Baby Daddy Day marriage screening guidlines --- they had 11 children of their own among them and went through a grueling screening and counseling process to make sure they were committed to legalizing their living together as husband and wife.

"We wanted to celebrate marriage in Harrisburg," said Jones, who has been a minister for two decades. "We wanted a vehicle to push marriage in Harrisburg."And he found the vehicle on television.

"I was watching (ABC News') "20/20," and they had a special report on this Marry Your Baby Daddy Day," Jones said.

So far, Jones said Harrisburg and New York are the only cities in the country embracing the idea. He has partnered with another Harrisburg faith-based organization, Firm Foundation of Pennsylvania, and several businesses to provide the no-expense weddings.

"We've been making plans," said Jason Green, who has been with Lakeya Taylor for four years and has four children. "We just didn't feel we could afford the kind of wedding we wanted to have."

"We saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime," said Taylor, who responded to the church's e-mail announcing the program. "We always wanted to get married. Now we have that opportunity."

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