Black Family Reunion marries faith, food, music

Paul and Cynthia Booth have donated their time and money to the Midwest Black Family Reunion since its beginning in 1989.

The Booths gave freely because of their belief in the core mission of the annual event: to promote the strengths, traditions, values and coping skills of the black family and dispel negative contemporary myths and stereotypes of its demise.

The Cincinnati event is the nation's longest-running Black Family Reunion. The 28th annual celebration will be Friday through Sunday at Sawyer Point and other locations throughout Greater Cincinnati.

The Booths, of Amberley Village, will be honored as Midwest Black Family Reunion's Family of the Year.

The overall event features three days of activities and traditions central to the black family: faith, food, music — adding up to togetherness. It transforms Sawyer Point into a carnival midway, where fun and games balance the serious, such as a Sunday morning religious service and two days worth of free screenings that address race-based health disparities.

Today, some outsiders allege the black family has deteriorated and thus created economic and social problems among African-Americans. Yet the Booths and others inside the black community say the black family remains resilient and vital.

“The state of the black family is not different than any other ethnicity, any other family," said Paul Booth Sr., 62, a former two-time Cincinnati City Council member and Congressional aide to David Mann. "That being said, does the black family have some work to do? Yes.

"That’s what the Black Family Reunion is all about: going back to our roots. The Black Family Reunion is no different than the Hispanic Festival or the Oktoberfest. It celebrates the legacy of the black family.”

He and his wife, married for 36 years, said they held fast to their forebears' traditions, family meals and family prayer among them.

"I hope the black family never loses the ability to pray," said Cynthia Booth, owner of six regional McDonald's franchises that ring the Interstate 275 beltline and employs 400 people. "No matter the trials and tribulations they face, I hope they can still pray. It sustains us. The family becomes stronger through prayer.

"There is not a time that our children have not heard us pray, collectively, and for them. We are constantly praying for their well-being and their futures. Prayer has been a very strong force in the black family and needs to take even a greater role as we try to sustain ourselves."

The "total of community'  

The late Dorothy I. Height, president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, created the Black Family Reunion. The first, held on the National Mall in 1986, was sponsored by Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. The second was held three years later in Cincinnati.

In a 2008 interview with The Enquirer, Height said she came up with the reunion concept after watching a Bill Moyers' television documentary titled "The Vanishing Black Family."

She said the documentary focused only on teen pregnancy, not unique to the black community but society as a whole. Instead of protesting, she said, Height wanted to create something positive.

"We felt we needed to show the total of the black family, to celebrate our historic strengths and valued traditions that have kept us alive," she told The Enquirer.

Cincinnati is the only Black Family Reunion remaining of the original dozen-plus that were held across the country in major markets that included Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. Outside of Cincinnati, the only other Black Family Reunion is held in a small city in north-central Illinois, Rockford, where its chapter of the National Council of Negro Women has since organized an annual event.

Thirty years after the Moyers' 1986 documentary aired, the black family remains under assault from some corners of American society. Critics point to a 2013 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing that 72 percent of births to non-Hispanic black women occur outside of marriage.

Yet the same report shows that black fathers were statistically the most involved with their children on a daily basis than any other group of fathers – whether black fathers lived with their children or at another home – in a number of measurable areas: helping their children with homework, discussing events of children's days with them, taking them to and from activities outside the home, and frequency of eating meals with them.

The black family and black church are two institutions that have helped to sustain African-Americans in the face of economic, educational and health disparities, said the Rev. K.Z. Smith, pastor of Avondale's Corinthian Baptist Church, host church of the Midwest Black Family Reunion.

"The two are linked, the family and the church," he said. "As long as I can remember, it was rare to find black children who didn't go to church. Even if the parents didn't go, they made sure their children did."

Yet as the black middle class grew, Smith said, dependence on the church waned and some parents no longer require their children to go to services.

The Midwest Family Reunion, if nothing else, aims to cement that bond between the black family and the black church

Friday's lead-off event, the Heritage Breakfast, will be held at The Word of Deliverance Ministries for the World, Inc., in Forest Park and will feature a keynote address by national civil rights leader the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., one-time pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Lockland.

Sunday morning starts at the reunion with an outdoor service at Sawyer Point. This year, it will feature Pastor Donnie McClurkin, of Perfecting Faith Ministries in Freeport, New York, and a prominent gospel music artist. Attendees can be baptized during the service.

For more black families than not, like the Booths, they said, the church remains an integral part of life.

The next generation

Paul and Cynthia Booth are members of Greater New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, Avondale. It was there in 2007 that Paul Booth Jr. was ordained. The 34-year-old pastor and his wife, Asha, now have a new daughter, 4-month-old Laila. He also has a new church, start-up Legacy Pointe in Kenwood. Paul Jr. is a sixth-generation minister in the Booth family, a string that skipped only Paul Sr. and whose most notable member is Paul Sr.'s father, the late Lavaughn Venchael (L.V.) Booth, a national pioneer in black church-based economic and community development.

Local - The Enquirer - February 20, 1998

Paul Booth Jr. has inherited the even demeanor of a preacher beneath which burns intensity and conviction: calling out the media for focusing more on the shortcomings of the black family than its greater number of achievements, praising the historic and enduring work ethic of African-Americans and strong desire of his people to be educated and achieve.

He and his now 25-year-old brother Martin both attended Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy. Paul Jr. then earned a political science degree from DePauw University in Green Castle, Indiana, before moving to Atlanta and finishing a master's degree in divinity at Emory University.

"We're living in some challenging times where the family unit as we know it, both socially and politically," he said. "And the black family is not enduring any challenges other families are not. But what is covered is what is highlighted and resonates in peoples' minds. I believe that the foundation of the black family is very strong."

Martin Booth — named after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an associate of his minister grandfather — earned an undergraduate business degree from Wake Forest University before moving to Atlanta, where he worked as an account manager at Coca-Cola Enterprises. He recently returned to Cincinnati to work in the family business running McDonald's restaurants but plans to pursue an MBA beginning next year at the University of Chicago or Northwestern University.

"We, as the black family, as you sit and listen to us, we don't want to be viewed as the exception, we want to be viewed as the norm," Martin Booth said. "I believe, going back to how we're viewed on television, that's what we're seen as. We have to educate people as to what you stand for. The black family is strong. We are intelligent. We are hard-working. We are constantly trying to break-down barriers and advance ourselves.

"I don't think our values are an exception. I think it's based on the opportunities you are granted. I think what we have tried to do is try to live out the values we were taught at home."

2016 MIDWEST BLACK FAMILY REUNION

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (highlights)

Friday

8:30-10:30 a.m. Doors open 8 a.m.: Heritage Breakfast and Opening Ceremony, The Word of Deliverance Ministries for the World, Inc., 693 Fresno Road, Forest Park. Keynote speaker, the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss Jr. (Arrive early; seats are limited.)

11 a.m.-3 p.m.: Job Fair for the Community, Sharonville Convention Center, 11355 Chester Road, Sharonville. Attendees asked to bring copies of their resume and dress professionally.

Saturday

10 a.m.: Annual Black Family Reunion Community Parade, begins at the Avondale Town Center, 3529 Reading Road, Avondale. Grand marshal is Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac.

Remaining Saturday and all Sunday events at Sawyer Point. Parking available at 705 E. Pete Rose Way, Downtown.

Noon-8 p.m.: Spirituality Pavilion, Young Adult Stage, Children’s Pavilion, Kids’ Fun Zone, Arts Alive Stage, Seniors’ Pavilion, Chess and Whist Tent, Health Pavilion with free screenings.

2 p.m.: Family Feud, featuring fraternities and sororities.

6-8 p.m.: R&B concert, featuring Cameo.

Sunday

10-11:30 a.m.: Sunday Morning Outdoor Service, with host Pastor Donnie McClurkin of Perfecting Faith Ministries, of Freeport, New York. (event includes baptisms).

10 a.m.-8 p.m.: Spirituality Pavilion, Young Adult Stage, Children’s Pavilion, Kids’ Fun Zone, Arts Alive Stage, Seniors’ Pavilion, Chess and Whist Tent, Health Pavilion with free screenings.

2 p.m.: Family Feud, featuring fraternities and sororities.

5-8 p.m.: Gospel Concert, featuring Donnie McClurkin, with special guests Nu Vision and DJ Brandon Smith.