By:  Lynn Green

I’ve been following, as much as possible, Soledad O’Brien’s special on black America. I hope she wins an Emmy for that, as it’s superb. My husband just sent me an article about a woman who was highlighted in the special.

Maryann Reid is making it her business to encourage a return to marriage in the black community. I LOVE it. What this woman is doing and what Soledad is doing far exceeds what Tavis Smiley is doing. His State of the Black Union nonsense renders nothing. It’s just a group of black folks sitting in chairs complaining, moaning and whining. I’m beyond that.

The black community is in a crisis situation and what we need is action. Nothing less will do at this point:

Reid, 31 and single, dreams of wedding bells. But not just for herself. She wishes they jangled more for her peers in the African-American community, where the marriage rate is 36 percent and 70 percent of children are born out of wedlock.

Statistics like these are what convinced Reid to take matters into her own hands: She has christened Sept. 27 “Marry Your Baby Daddy Day.” An act of grass-roots social engineering, her effort to wed unmarried black couples who have children echoes efforts – by government, churches, and social welfare groups – to strengthen the institution of marriage.

The first Marry Your Baby Daddy Day, in 2005, was marked by an all-expenses-paid wedding at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn for 10 black couples with children. Ten more walked down the aisle at Manhattan’s Riverside Church last September .

For each ceremony, Reid convinced dozens of local businesses to donate goods and services – such as designer dresses, bouquets, wedding cakes – $90,000 worth for the first mass wedding, and $125,000 for the second.

Reid hasn’t earned a dime from the enterprise, but she claims she seeks something more intangible. “I want to go back to what African-Americans were known as,” she says, citing the decline of marriage among blacks, a trend that scholars attribute to factors ranging from the legacy of slavery to rising incarceration rates among black men. “They have historically been a married people. But now we don’t have any family structure in our community at all.”

The article is very long and you can GO HERE to complete it. However, I appreciate what this woman is doing. Notice that she is acting, doing. And once she took a step towards a positive, companies came on board to back her. That’s what we need.

1. Acknowledge that the black community is in crisis

2. Look at the “pie” of various problems

3. Choose a slice of that pie to address and tackle

4. Establish a game plan

5. Act on that game plan

Every little bits helps. Two thumbs up to Ms. Reid for targeting her piece of the pie and moving forward!

Hat tip to Greg for story lead