Black Marriage Day

African Americans will celebrate the third annual Black Marriage Day on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005. I can’t imagine why we would pick Easter Sunday, when the occasion is likely (certain?) to get eclipsed by holiday plans, but we have.

There’s reason to pay attention. Here’s a nice summary from the Washington Post about the nature of the challenge:

62 percent of adult whites and 60 percent of adult Hispanics are married; only 41 percent of adult African-Americans are.

There are 23 divorces per year per 1,000 black couples, in comparison to 19 divorces per year for whites.

The number of unmarried women having children is 25 percent for whites, 42 percent for Hispanics, and 69 percent for African-Americans.

Here’s a link to the African American Healthy Marriage Initiative (within the Department of Health & Human Services).

Here’s a statement from the Black Marriage Day website:

We will laud the bold and brave couples around the country that have committed to each other until death do they part. We recognize their boldness because in this day and time, it is the daring couple that goes against the popular way of the world to stand before God and community and say, “I do”. We want to acknowledge their bravery because in a world where it is far easier to break up a family than it is to get help to stay together, it takes sheer courage to fight for your marriage and resist divorce.