The Hampton Roads Committee of 200+ Men, Inc. was founded in Norfolk, Virginia in March 1997. It began as an hoc group of African-American men who gathered for the purpose of sponsoring a community welcome from the Hampton Roads region to Dr. Marie V. McDemmond, the president-elect of Norfolk State University. Dr. McDemmond is the first African-American woman named to lead a four-year institution of higher education in Virginia.
During the planning group’s initial meeting, many of the attendees expressed a strong interest in forming a permanent organization that would devote its efforts to improving conditions in the African-American community. In April 1997 the decision was made to form the Hampton Roads Committee of 200+ Men as a permanent community-oriented organization.
A steering committee guided the group through the organizational process. In July 1997 the ad hoc group, then numbering over 200 African-American men, became the Hampton Roads Committee of 200+ Men, Inc. It is chartered in the Commonwealth of Virginia as a not-for-profit corporation. The 200+ Men, as it is now called, held its first annual meeting on July 13, 1997 at the Norfolk Airport Hilton Hotel. Over 150 members elected the organization’s first officers and directors. By-laws were also adopted at that meeting.
In the brief period of twenty-four months, the 200+ Men emerged as one of the premiere African-American men’s groups in Virginia. It is a regional organization that has adopted Community Betterment as its primary goal. The 200+ Men organization shuns a social agenda but places great importance on a number of educational, economic development and community initiatives as an effective means of positively impacting the community. Its membership includes Black men of all ages, professions, trades and viewpoints.
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