Todd Brewster & Peter Jennings by The Century for Young People: 1961-1999: Changing America Page A

an hour after I got there, there were people as far as I could see. I was surprised at how many men brought their sons with them. Young kids. I mean, they were ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. These men wanted their children to see this event, to be part of it.
    There were many speakers throughout the day. And they came from different parts of the community: various religions, various backgrounds. One of the speakers was a twelve-year-old kid. And he gave a speech about how proud he was that he had a black father and that he was there at the march. He said that he represented the sons and daughters of each of the black males that were there. And then he made a demand of the audience. He asked that each person who was at that march go home and, if need be, rearrange their life so that they become a more positive role model in the communities. That they become better husbands to their wives. And a better father to their children. And then he asked everybody at the closing of the speech, “Will you do that for me?” Here’s a twelve-year-old kid and in avery eloquent way he made a request that just seemed so simple and so basic and yet so compelling.
    Black males have been painted as a subculture in our society. So the point about black pride and black male redemption is that we need to change our image. I don’t think we need to change, necessarily, what we do. Because I think we do a pretty good job of being citizens in this community. I think we need to change the image of what people think we do. If we don’t take charge to create and mold the perception that we want people to have of us, nobody else will. People need to understand that black males come in all different shapes and sizes just like white males or any other people in America. And if you can’t generalize as to the other groups, the white males, the Asian males, et cetera, then you shouldn’t generalize as to black males.
    In the 1990s it seemed that much of the way life was conducted in the twentieth century was rapidly becoming “history.” Technology accelerated the pace of change, rocketing America toward the twenty-first century. Old rules and traditions were out of date, and new ones were not quite established. A revolution was taking place. The IndustrialRevolution had brought in the machine age, which was coming to a close. The new revolution was ushering in the information age.
    Computers had been around since the 1940s. The very name shows what they were expected to do—to compute, to add numbers. For decades these enormous machines could be found only in government offices and the headquarters of large corporations. What made the information age and the computer revolution possible was miniaturization. With the development of the microchip, the personal computer—a computer so small it could sit on a desk—became possible.
    Almost overnight, computers changed play (video games), changed research (access to databases), and changed writing and editing (word processors). Computers even began to change work itself. With a modem, people could communicate through their office networks without leaving home. A scientist sitting in her pajamas in Minneapolis could argue with a colleague in Mozambique. More and more, the question about the computer wasn’t “What can it do?” but “What can’t it do?” Every day, it seemed, there was something new that this electronic wizard could do better or faster or more efficiently than people could.
    By 1995 the computer was beginning to take people into the realm of science fiction—into cyberspace via the Internet. Originally developed by the Pentagon as a communications network that couldwithstand an atomic attack, the Internet was slow to catch on. But when it moved into mainstream American life, it swept in like a tidal wave. The most popular way to access the Internet was through the World Wide Web. Now people could find information, go