FEATURE A R T I C L E S
THE AFRICAN-CENTERED FOCUS OF EARLY ALPHA PHI ALPHA By Brother Kenneth M. Jennings, Jr. During the summer 1996,1 attended the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations' conference in Accra, Ghana along with more than 300 other individuals from the United States, Africa, England, Brazil and The Caribbean. During the conference, I attended a panel discussion entitled, "A Critique of Greek Fraternities and Sororities Among Africans in the Diaspora".The panel leader's position was that the fraternities and sororities founded by African-Americans all looked to ancient Greece for their inspiration. At the conclusion of the panel leader's presentation, I stated that he spoke of the fraternities and sororities as being "Greek-letter" organizations while the panel's title referred to them as "Greek" organizations. My position was that the former was of limited accuracy but the broader position cited in the title—that they were all Greek inspired—was completely inaccurate with respect to Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. The panel leader responded that he knew more about Alpha Phi Alpha than I might think. I later learned that he was an initiate of another fraternity. I stated that while he may think he knows about Alpha Phi Alpha, the organization was founded as a profoundly Afrocentric fraternity in ways known only to initiates—notwithstanding even the public symbolism of the Sphinx and the publicly available history book. In good humor, I told him that if he believed that Alpha was Greek influenced then it was an example of the old adage, "Those who say don't know and those who know don't say." One of the panel leader's associates then spoke up and said that the very use of the letters Alpha and Phi made the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Greek. I responded that the fact that we were sitting in West Africa having dialogue using the English language did not make us Anglo Saxons. Moreover, I pointed out that Martin R. Delaney s classic book, The Origin of Races and Color, written in 1879, took the position that the original Ethiopian alphabet included both the Alpha (Alf) and the Phi (Kof) and the much later de42
veloping Greeks augmented the Ethiopian alphabet with the characters Rho to Omega. Ironically, the panel leader's associate turned out to be an Alpha and it reinforced for me the need for clarity within Alpha Phi Alpha that the Fraternity is not Greek but profoundly Afrocentric. Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. was clearly and unequivocally established on December 4,1906 as a profoundly Afrocentric brotherhood as evidenced by four fundamental sources. Those sources are the Ritual, the meaning of the name Alpha Phi Alpha, the Sphinx as the emblem (the Sphinx is that most ancient of African artifacts and was named HorEm-Aket [Heru on the Horizon] by the African people of the Nile Valley and much later called the Sphinx by IndoEuropean invaders), and finally by the published historical record of Alpha. The published historical record of Alpha is contained in two sources: The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in CollegeLifeby Brother Charles H. Wesley, and Henry Arthur Callis: LifeandLegacy-also written by Brother Wesley. The latter was published in 1977. In The History of Alpha Phi Alpha it states: "In the early days of Alpha, Brother William Leo Hansberry, the distinguished historian, headed a department of "Negro History" in The SPHLNX™ with a special focus upon ancient Africa." It further states, "In view of the wording of the Ritual and the tradition of the Fraternity, this was one of the most important steps which the Fraternity had taken ... the survey articles in The SPHINX™ upon Ancient Africa created interest in the subject itself and gave a fuller realization to all the Brothers of the seriousness of the program of Alpha Phi Alpha," (History, 14th printing, p. 131).
The SPHINX m - Summer 1997