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Monster Meetings series gets a reboot at YMCA

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Monster Meetings, a recurring series that served as a meeting ground for African Americans for more than half a century, will get a reboot in October.

The first meeting will start at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 3 at the OrthoIndy Foundation YMCA, 5315 Lafayette Road. There will be music and time for attendees to share their opinions and personal stories, similar to how the original Monster Meetings went. Sampson Levingston, who leads historical tours, will be the emcee. The meeting will end around 6 p.m. Register at monstermeeting.org.

Charles Henry DeBow III, the son of Lt. Col. Charles Henry DeBow Jr., who as a young man would have attended Monster Meetings, will be the featured speaker.

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The theme for the first series is racial reconciliation. There are two more meetings scheduled for January 2022 and February 2022, and then organizers will use feedback to choose a new theme for the next series.

Monic Hill, executive director of the OrthoIndy Foundation Y, said the goal for the first three meetings is to educate people about the ā€œrealities of systemic racism.ā€ The original Monster Meetings were meant to address the issues of the day, Hill said, and even though things have changed over time, bringing people together is a worthwhile way to solve problems.

Monster Meetings started in 1904 as evangelical events and eventually became a platform for a broader public forum at the Senate Avenue YMCA, which opened in 1913 as the only Y for African Americans in Indianapolis. The Senate Avenue Y moved to Fall Creek in 1959.

Monster Meeting guests included Booker T. Washington and Jesse Owens. Howard University President Emeritus Mordecai W. Johnson addressed the series for more than 50 years.

In 1968, the Recorder wrote Monster Meetings encouraged ā€œfree and open discussion on all subjects of human interest and strived to stir the imagination of the black community.ā€

The original Monster Meetings series ended in the late ā€˜60s but had at least one reboot in 1979 at the Fall Creek YMCA, which closed in the early 2000s. The meetings were paired with swim lessons, fashion classes and a gym class for women.

Helen Duncan, then 74, worked at the Senate Avenue and Fall Creek YMCA for 44 years when the Recorder interviewed her in 1991.

ā€œThese meetings were public forums to enlighten black citizens,ā€ she said. ā€œSometimes the YMCA gymnasium crowds were too large to accommodate the community.ā€

Scott Taylor, who helped organize the Monster Meetings reboot, wants the current series to have the same energy and purpose as the original by bringing people together to help solve issues. Itā€™s important to give people a space to be heard, he said, while also empowering future leaders.

ā€œWe want to encourage citizenship,ā€ he said.

Hosting Monster Meetings at the OrthoIndy Foundation Y is significant because itā€™s the descendant of the Senate Avenue and Fall Creek locations that served mostly African Americans, since the Indianapolis YMCA didnā€™t integrate until 1950.

Taylor said the meetings are a way to honor the legacy of what those YMCAs meant to the community before they closed.

ā€œI felt very much that we were the stewards of the soul of the Senate Avenue YMCA,ā€ he said.

Contact staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick.

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