MARCHING: RALLY IN SIKESTON DRAWS SMALL CROWD

SIKESTON-- George Baker III, senior managing editor for the Sikeston-based African-American Informant newsletter, walked up to the podium. He looked around at the 60-plus empty seats in front of him, then he looked at the few faces that waited expectantly.

There were several older faces in the crowd. Many more preteen and teen-aged faces. A few female faces, young and old.

"Where are they?" he asked. "We see that men have been called here today. We see empty chairs, and we wonder -- where are they?"

Baker was one of the black men that answered the call of the second annual 100 Man Rally in Sikeston. The rally, modeled after last year's Million Man March on Washington, D.C., was to be a peaceful way to bring black men together and discuss ways to unite them and their community.

"It's an attempt to mobilize men in the black community against Sunset's violence," said Louis Wiggins, one of the organizers of the event. "The problem we're having with black men is we need to take responsibility for our problems and solve them."

Solving problems was supposed to be one of the major themes of the event. But the lack of attendance at the rally, which took place in the Outreach Center in the heart of Sikeston's Sunset neighborhood, turned the discussion to apathy and a decided lack of effort by community leaders.

"Leaders of our community: where are they?" asked Chester Yarber, a pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Sikeston. "Where are the teachers, where are the preachers, where are the people that our kids look up to? There are gaps in this program that need to be filled, and the `leaders' we were given are not even here."

Juanita Pearson, a volunteer who helped with the rally, agreed. "There are black businessmen who should have been here, there are black men that have been on their jobs for years that should have been here. I know that there are 100 black men out there, but what they are doing is standing on the back burner."

This year's rally was expected to be more successful than last year's rally, which attracted nearly 200 people. However, the lack of participation did not keep a good number of young men from attending and hearing what their elders had to say.

"I expected there to be a lot of people here," said Roger Johnson, 14. "Every time you turn on the news, you hear about how bad the black community is. But nobody came. It makes you think about the stuff people do and what you do."

Arthur Cassell, vice president of Charleston's chapter of the NAACP, said the black community need to learn to use the weapons it has at its disposal. There are children who want to work, and the older people need to get out there and show them how to get things done, he said. "When your son sees you standing up as a man," Cassell said, "he will stand up."