The Organizational Meeting

These are rough minutes from the organizational meeting for Black Men Read?!, held on January 20, 2007:


I Hate Ice-breakers, But They Work:

We went around the room, introducing ourselves: name, occupation, where’re you from, what you’re reading…


The One and Only Rule: We’ve got plenty to discuss this evening, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re going to discuss guidelines today. As far as rules? There is one, and only one: You’ve got to read the book in order to attend the meeting. (Around this table, we never want to hear phrases like, “Well, I didn’t actually get around to reading the book, but personally, I think…,” or “I didn’t have time to read the book, but it seems to me…” Nope. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK. (And that includes me. If for some reason I haven’t read the book, I’ll let you guys in here and then spend time downstairs in my office until you’re done.) One “rule” only: gotta read the book.

I’m sure we’ve all heard about book groups—stereotypically women’s book groups—where this supposed “book group” is really just a pretense to get them to together, so they can eat and chit-chat and whathaveyou.

Well, we just meet and talk about the book here: we serve no food, and we can talk about whatever we want later at a local restaurant for whoever can hang out after the meeting. Got to read the book.


Meeting Format:

We meet every other month, on the third Saturday of the month. We meet in January, March, May, September, and November (we’ll talk about the summer in a minute).

We meet at 5 p.m. here, on that third Saturday, and we talk for no less than two (2) hours. How much farther beyond two hours depends on how the discussion is going. Under ordinary circumstances, we won’t talk longer than three (3).

After the meeting, we roll to a local restaurant and eat and talk about whatever comes up. For me, this is an important part of the process (I like having five or six guaranteed, regularly scheduled Saturday nights when I can have a burger and a beer and sit around a table and have a conversation with other grownups that I’m not related to), but it’s not required. I figure sometimes you’ll be able to, some times you won’t, but it is part of the regular format: meet at 5 p.m. at UR, discuss book ‘til between 7 or 8, after meeting go hang out and eat.


Number of Meetings per Year: I know I told everyone that five meetings a year worked best and we shouldn’t try to meet over the summer, but given the volume of brothers in this room, we might well want to meet over the summer. So I’ll invite you guys to begin thinking about whether you want to do that or not. That would be six meetings a year rather than five. We’ll come back to that. Just think about it and we’ll discuss it in a minute.

It turned out that brothers wanted to meet in the summer, so there’ll be a July meeting, after all.


Book Selection Process:

After a lengthy discussion, we decided that each member would contribute two possibilities, of any genre, and we would vote to get the next selection.


Ideal Number of Members:

We decided there would be no cap on members; invite anyone you like to join the group


Code of Conduct:

See separate post

Simplicity: This thing is built for simplicity, really. When everything symbolic and racially meaningful gets peeled away, the fact is that I organized this thing for one reason, and one reason only: my own personal pleasure. I find it immensely pleasurable and gratifying to read a book and then sit around and discuss it with some thoughtful brothers. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about for me. So once we have this meeting and start reading books and meeting to discuss them, I’m banking on simplicity, on a low-maintenance group that basically runs itself. We meet every other month, we choose a book for next time, and then we dismantle and reassemble whatever book is on the table. That’s it. I don’t want this group to do any more than that.

If anyone else in the group wants to start a writer’s group, for instance, or has any other ideas, all of that has to happen independently of—that means apart from—this group. All we’ll do here is meet every other month, read books and discuss them, year in, year out. No more. No less.


Where to Meet? Options: here at UR, in this room; or at a black-owned art gallery in Jackson Ward called Propaganda where the gallery owner has offered to have us meet.

We decided that we would leave open the possibility of meeting at Propaganda occasionally.


Book Ordering?: From a black-owned bookstore named Precious Memories? Group discount; she has to have 50% of money before she orders. Pro: It’s a way to keep our money in the community—Barnes and Noble doesn’t need our money; P.M. does. Con: possibly a pain, ‘cause nobody wants to collect money.

Brothers wanted to support this bookstore; I’ll be attempting to find a way we can effortlessly order books from Precious Memories.


First Selection: To get us started, just this once, I brought in two books for us to choose from: Forty Million Dollar Slaves, by William Rhoden of the New York Times, and Barak Obama’s The Audacity of Hope.

The vote went to The Audacity of Hope