Over the past 15 years, the National Center for the Missing & Abducted (www.missingabducted.org) has tracked a disturbing surge in missing Black men, first in Southern states, and now growing steadily in urban northern cities across the country. Hundreds of thousands of Black males have been reported missing. In 2008 alone, more than 120,000 Black males were mising, more than 20,000 under the age of 18 and more than 98,000 over the age of 18, according to National Center statistics. During the early 1990s, this trend was initially seen as an anomaly and overlooked due to national attention garnered by the epidemic of African American church arsons, the reluctance of reporting due to pending law enforcement warrants on some missing individuals as well as disparities in media coverage of missing minorities. According to an Associated Press article dated 6/15/05, most of the missing adults tracked by the FBI are men. More than one-in-five of those abducted or kidnapped are black. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism told the AP: �To be blunt, blond white chicks who go missing get covered and poor, black, Hispanic or other people of color who go missing do not get covered. You are more likely to get coverage if you are attractive than if you are not." In the spirit of the Million Man March, the NCMA is seeking 1 million signatures on its e-petition before forwarding to the Administration, Congress and the U.S. Attorney General (via snail mail and email). If you support our efforts for a federal inquiry into an epidemic trend of missing Black men across the country, please add your signature below and forward this link to everyone you know, encouraging them to do the same.

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