The District Chronicles

Issue date: 4/5/09 Section: Cover

Media Credit: Crytsal Cooper

It was the second of several workshops that 24-year-old Kalyn Hall and her fiancé Lloyd Hermonstein, also 24, would attend that Saturday. She rested her head gently on his shoulder one ear cocked upward, listening intently to the presenters at the workshop, "Why Marriage Matters; 10 Steps to a Healthy Marriage."

Linda Walton, who has been married for nearly 20 years, was discussing the factors that lead to a healthy marriage. "Healthy marriage step number five, self discovery," Walton said.  "When I married my husband, my self respect was high. I didn't need him to tell me anything."

Her co-panelist, husband and best friend Winfred Walton chimed in,  "She has to feel as important as you want to feel." "Step number three, mutual respect," Winfred Walton added.

Hall took notes. For nearly eight hours, she and Hermonstein roamed Howard University's Blackburn Center where speakers at a two-day D.C. Metro Marriage Conference dished out tips on how to make a marriage last. That was March 20, two days before Black Marriage Day, March 22.

Hall and Hermonstein wanted to learn what would make them a successful married couple once they say "I do."  They and others at the conference were drawn together by a desire to dismiss the notion that happily married couples are an anomaly in the Black community. But it's a dream that has eluded many African-American men and women since 1940 when marriage rates in the Black community began to drop.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's data, 40 percent of children in the United States are born out of wedlock. That number is 30 percent higher in the Black community, where seven out of 10 children are born to single parents.

Such statistics moved the St. Petersburg Times to publish an article on Sunday March 22 - Black Marriage Day - declaring, "Black Norm Doesn't Look Like the Obamas."

That may be so, but one Washington woman, Nisa Mohammed, executive director of The Wedded Bliss Foundation, is determined to celebrate marriage in the Black community. In 2003, she founded Black Marriage Day. This year, more than 300 cities across the nation held events celebrating and promoting healthy marriages in the Black community.

Here in DC, Mohammed offered the opening remarks of two-day festivities at Howard University. She said she was moved to action by what she had found to be positive effects of healthy marriages.

One advantages of marriage she had found was that married men made more money than their single counterparts because they're seen as more reliable at work. She also found that healthy marriage rescued women from poverty by relieving the burden of parenting and providing simultaneously.  Her research had further found that children of happy marriages got better daily financial and emotional support.

"As I surfed the Web, I stopped and thought to myself, 'I wonder if Black people know these facts?!'² Mohammed told the workshop crowd.

Forestville, Md., resident Julius Jefferson, 23, shares Mohammed's passion for healthy marriages in the Black community.  He says he is happy he made the right decision when he married his college girlfriend Erica Jones after she conceived a baby girl in their senior year at North Carolina State University.

"I just wanted to miss as little of my daughter's life as possible," Jefferson said, thinking back to August 2007. "I felt a little unprepared but I definitely couldn't see any one else raising my child."

The best part about marriage, he said, is the constant unwavering support of a partner.

"My wife and daughter are even there to cheer me on at flag football practice," he gloated.

Mohammed spent Black Marriage weekend traveling across the country from the Nation's Capitol on Friday, to Los Angeles on Saturday and Dallas on Sunday, spending time with the people that made her cause a success.

At Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast D.C., over 100 couples renewed their vows to emphasize that marriage is a lifelong commitment.

Mohammed's foundation, The Wedded Bliss Foundation, has teamed with the National Fatherhood initiative for a marriage legacy campaign. Log onto ttp://legacy.fatherhood.org to add your story to the African American Marriage Wall.

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