NEW YORK - For Kenny and Lynette Seymour, last weekend's black marriage gala was about celebrating their seven-year marriage. They got to meet other black couples while spending a romantic evening together.
"Every time you meet another couple, you learn something new about yourself and relationships in general," said Kenny Seymour, a 39-year-old Broadway music director who lives in Queens. "It was beautiful to be around a bunch of married people in love."
Other black couples will be marking the eighth annual Black Marriage Day this weekend, by attending workshops, black-tie dinners and other activities. Some groups have held events throughout the month, although Black Marriage Day, which celebrates matrimony in the black community, falls on the fourth Sunday in March.
The founder estimates more than 300 celebrations are being held this weekend.
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The aim is to try to stabilize, if not reverse, the trend of non-commitment within the black community.
According to 2009 census figures, 41.9 percent of black adults had never married, compared with 23.6 percent of whites. Studies show blacks also are more likely than other ethnic groups to divorce and bear children out of wedlock.
Experts blame the disparities in part on high black male unemployment, high black male imprisonment and the moderate performance of black men in college compared with black women.
They also note the lack of positive images of black marriage in the media and several misperceptions about matrimony - that it's for white people, that it's a ball and chain, that fatherhood and marriage are not linked.
There are a handful of campaigns to get blacks to walk down the aisle, from the federal government's African American Healthy Marriage Initiative to Marry Your Baby Daddy Day, with 10 unwed couples with children tying the knot later this year in New York.
"You Saved Me," a documentary that explores the marriages of eight black couples, will be screened in more than 20 cities this weekend as part of a Black Marriage Day premiere.
"We want people to take away that successful, positive (black) marriages do exist," said Lamar Tyler of Waldorf, Md., who produced "You Saved Me" with his wife, Ronnie.
Black Marriage Day founder Nisa Islam Muhammad points out that many black children come from single-parent households and contends that the media are not helping.
