B.L.A.C.K. Inc. celebrates 10 years
Jennifer E. Butler
News Editor
Issue date: 2/16/09 Section: Campus News
|
The three-day reunion, which encompassed the organization's Founders' Day on Feb. 7, included a welcome ceremony for the latest generation of inductees, a Founder's Day ceremony and a caravan to the Mt. Zion Baptist Church.
"I feel so blessed to be part of such an illustrious organization that has unified and uplifted Black men for ten years," said Seth E. Davis, the organization's president and a senior speech communications and theatre major from Memphis, Tenn.
B.L.A.C.K. Inc. was founded at TSU in 1999, by 13 friends whose names would eventually come to be known to all future members.
The organization's mission was, and remains, to "unify and uplift of black men in solidarity for the betterment of their community."
Over the course of its 10-year existence, the organization has seen 11 generations of brotherhood, including its 14 most recent additions.
"It feels good to be inducted during the anniversary weekend," said Edwin Morgan, a junior marketing major from Memphis. "It's almost like a new beginning."
Some of the founders who returned for the weekend, among them Wendell Patton, Alexander Sellers and Larrell Wilkerson, said they were pleased with the vitality of the organization, and even more excited to pass the torch along to the new brothers.
"We never expected to get here (to 10 years)," Patton said. "So to be here at this point now, we don't look at it as our organization-it's (the current members'). As long as they're doing something positive, then great."
The men all left words of wisdom for the new brothers throughout the weekend, and briefly at the Founder's Day celebration, where B.L.A.C.K. Inc. adopted the first floor lounge Hale Hall.
They also outlined a few of the challenges facing the organization in the future. Wilkerson pointed out that one such challenge was attracting and retaining well-qualified black men to higher education.
"If we don't have African-American men even getting to a TSU, then we're going to have a grave problem with getting African-American men to be the leaders they're supposed to be," he said.
Sellers added that another, more campus-oriented issue the organization will face in the next 10 years is the challenge of remaining relevant.
He noted that in B.L.A.C.K. Inc.'s beginning stages, there was a lack of non-Greek black male organizations.
"We originally created our own identity, and it seems that identity can get lost in the shuffle of other organizations," Sellers said. "B.L.A.C.K. Inc. is a unique organization, and it doesn't appeal to everybody.
He continued, "The biggest challenge for the next ten years is keeping the organization what it is. We have to keep everyone focused on maintaining the ideals."•
Be the first to comment on this story