At the Corner of Progress and Peril

For all the diversity within their numbers -- as in this group gathered at Bunker Hill Elementary School in Northeast Washington -- black men in the United States often feel a connection to, and responsibility for, one another. For the stories of the men pictured, see interactive feature. (Michel du Cille and Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)

Where the nation was once largely segregated along a black-white divide, the country has become more racially and ethnically mixed, creating opportunities -- and new sensibilities.

Erin Smith, 23, who recently graduated with a business degree from Howard University, once considered himself a militant. "You kind of get groomed, in a way, in that totally pro-black environment at Howard." But as he began to pursue his business dreams -- a fledgling multimedia company he created his freshman year and a real estate venture with his father -- Smith started to expand his thinking.

"I saw myself as potentially being kind of racist," he says "of closing myself off to people. I'm still pro-black, but we don't need to totally focus on race. We're all part of the human race. I kind of grew a little bit. I look at life as a puzzle -- day by day, you get a new piece. Some young men think success is 20-inch rims, flat-screen TV. They only think of success as what they see -- and that's what they see."

What does it mean to be a black man?

Marc Morial was leaving the downtown Madison Hotel when he got into an impromptu conversation with a doorman. The doorman, also black, wore a uniform and a whistle around his neck; Morial was dressed in an immaculate gray suit with a crisp white pocket scarf. When the chat concluded, the two locked arms and pulled each other close in a signature embrace that is common to black men across the country.

"Black men relate to each other in a special way," Morial says.

On the streets, strangers frequently give each other an uptick of the head when their eyes meet, a nod of black male acknowledgment. Black men have invented so many special handshakes that a recent McDonald's commercial turns on this fact. Their commonality is often defined by their style, their walk, their slang and even how they refer to each other ("Slim," "Shorty," "Dawg," "Mo," "Brother"). Wherever black men congregate, there is often a comfort level that crosses class and generational lines. There is even a universally acknowledged black men's club, the barbershop, where no subject is off limits.

"It's the cohesion that comes from knowing whatever your situation in life is you're carrying a special burden," says Morial, a former mayor of New Orleans. "But also that you're strong enough to do it. Whatever they put on you, you can handle it. You can knock me down, but I'm getting up. You can't knock me down with no love tap."

* * *

Over the past 100 years, perhaps no slice of the U.S. population has been more studied, analyzed and dissected than black males. Dozens of governmental boards and commissions have investigated their plight, scholars have researched and written papers on them, and black men have been the subject of at least 400 books.

In the early 20th century, researchers pioneered a still-evolving movement to pinpoint a biological link between black men and crime. After the social turmoil of the 1960s, experts spotlighted the rampant deprivation and lack of opportunity among black men that lent urgency to President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty.

Later, the focus became the diminishing opportunities in cities, where well-paying manufacturing work was vanishing, locking many unskilled black men out of the job market. That gave way to concerns about drugs and crime and the fraying of the family structure, as 70 percent of black babies were being born to unmarried mothers and incarceration rates soared.