(philly.com) The committee will honor 15 fathers from all walks of life. Bill Cosby has agreed to be honorary chairman, though he won’t be able to attend the reception.
But the Father’s Day Rally Committee is about much more than a picnic in the park and a plaque for fathers.
It’s an effort to ensure that crucial positive imagery of fathers, particularly African-American fathers, is effectively promoted – especially against the backdrop of daily updates on the spiraling homicide count.
“We got together in the winter of 1990 and met at Dr. Thurman Evans’ house and got to talking about the negative images constantly being promoted about black males,” Qayyum said. “To me, it was constantly on when you turned on the TV, like it is now.”
Then as now, the city was afflicted with a rising murder rate.
“In 1989, there were 501 murders in the city, and I think 385 were African-American males, and no one was saying anything,” Qayyum said. “We kicked around some ideas, and decided to do a rally.”
The firt rally was held at Zion Baptist Church, on North Broad Street, where the organizers “put out a call for men to come and talk about images” of black men, Qayyum said.
“Out of that meeting, we hosted town meetings around the city, talking about this issue and about black males in general.”
Qayyum, 60, is a father himself, with five children and 11 grandchildren. Fatherhood and his leadership of Men United for a Better Philadelphia has made Qayyum intimately aware of the true state of black fatherhood – along with the negative, stereotypical views of them.
That’s why this weekend’s fatherhood celebration is so important, Qayyum said.
“You can talk about the negative, but what about the positive?” Qayyum asked. “We decided to show that there’re a lot of black men out there, particularly fathers, who do the right thing. They go to work every day, take care of their kids. There’re a lot of brothers doing that.”
Qayyum said statistics show that the majority of black men in prison did not have a positive father figure in their households, while the ones who did generally had far fewer run-ins with the law and other troubles.
“If you look at the prison population, probably 85 percent of the folks in prison don’t have fathers in their lives,” Qayyum said.
“You look at the drugs, you look at the drop-out rate, all the negative indicators in our community, there’s no father who was involved in that child’s life.”
Qayyum pointed out that, although this weekend’s celebration of fatherhood has a predominantly African-American theme, the issues of fatherhood and family structure transcend race.
“We are honoring a Latino father, and also a white father,” Qayyum said. “There will be a good cross-section. Some are single fathers.” (more…)
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