FEATURE ARTICLE
T
HE MOTHER OF ALPHA WAS ALSO RELATED TO ONE OF THE FRATERNITY'S EARLY GENERAL PRESIDENTS By Brother Herman "Skip"Mason
"I am extremely happy that I was able, in a small way, to stimulate the realization of this dream through the trials and tribulations of the early years." Annie Singleton, 1956.
T
he home of Mr. Archie Singleton and his wife, the affable Annie C. Singleton, was located at the foot of the hill of the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. It was in their home at 411 East State Street in an upper bedroom-which they rented out to a young student from Washington, D.C., Robert Harold Ogle—that "the arguments pro and con were made as to whether the organization which started as a literary club should become a fraternity." Robert Harold Ogle and seven other young men known as Mrs. Singleton's "boys" would later establish our beloved Fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha. "Jewel" Kelley recalled that when the Brothers who lived on the hill were too weary to go home, they would fall in the beds of those Brothers who lived with Archie and Annie Singleton. He remembered that the Singletons were very patient with them. Archie H. Singleton was born a slave in South Carolina in 1854. His father, whose identity is unknown, was born in England and his mother was a native of South Carolina. He and his first wife, Katie, were the parents of two children, James and Willie. In 1904, Archie Singleton married Annie C. Nixon. She was bom in 1874 in Alabama. Her father was from one of the parishes in Louisiana and her mother was a South Carolinian. By the turn of the century, the Singletons had relocated to the township of Ithaca where Mr. Singleton worked as a janitor. Their home on East State Street was a racially-mixed neighborhood where they were one of two African-American families living on the street. Most of the African-American men were employed by Cornell University fraternity houses as janitors and cooks. Mrs. Singleton worked in the home of a white family in Ithaca. By 1920, long after "her boys" had graduated, Annie and Archie Singleton spent their time raising their 14-year-old daughter, Mary, and nephew Albert Nixon. In 1939, at Alpha Phi Alphafs World Fair Convention in New York, the Fraternity invited as its special guest Mrs. Annie Singleton. General President Charles H. Wesley, who realized that many of the Brothers had not seen this grand lady, introduced Annie Singleton to the Brotherhood. It was at this Convention that the name
"Mother" Annie Singleton and two of "her boys" "Mother" stuck and Annie Singleton was officially designated as the "Mother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc." Mother Annie Singleton moved to Toledo, Ohio during the 1940s where she lived for several years before returning to Buffalo and her residence at 107 Northland Avenue. Annie Singleton's ties to the Fraternity were not just with "her boys" at Cornell. She was the aunt of Brother Myles Paige, the first African-American judge in New York and the 19th General President of the Fraternity. Mother Singleton was a special guest at the 27th General Convention in New York City in 1939- She also was honored at the 50th Anniversary Convention in Buffalo, New York in 1956 where she was feted by the organization. She had moved to Buffalo by this time. Mrs. Annie C. Singleton died in her home in Buffalo on July 25, i960. Funeral services were held in Buffalo where she is buried. In i960 during the memorial service at the 54th Anniversary Convention in Washington, D.C., General President Myles Paige, on behalf of the Fraternity, deposited a yellow rose in memory of Mrs. Annie C. Singleton—the beloved "Mother" of the Fraternity and his aunt. Brother Herman ' 'Skip'' Mason, Jr. is the Fraternity's National Archivist.
The House of Archie and Annie Singleton at 411 East State Street in Ithaca, New York.