I AM GREEK

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Double Concisouness is used to describe an individual whose identity is

Monthly article by W.E.B. DuBois titled “Strivings of the Negro People

Spiritual Strivings” in his collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk.

eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that loo

American, a Negro; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogge

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife — this lon

better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selv

too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his N

blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it p

cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of

has three manifestations. First, the power of white stereotypes on blac

one’s own people while also having the knowledge of reflexive truth). S

of society, being both American and not American. Finally, and most s

simultaneously. Double consciousness is an awareness of one’s self as w

double consciousness resides in conforming and or changing one’s iden

s divided into several facets. The term originated from an 1897 Atlantic

e.” It was later republished and slightly edited under the title “Of Our

. He spoke of “This sense of always looking at one’s self through the

oks on in amused contempt and pity,” and of a two-ness, of being “an

ed strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Du Bois explained:

nging to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a

ves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has

Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes that Negro

possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being

f self-development. The concept of DuBoisian “double consciousness”

ck life and thought (being forced into a context of misrepresentation of

Second, the racism that excluded black Americans from the mainstream

significantly, the internal conflict between being African and American

well as an awareness of how others perceive that person. The danger of

ntity to that of how others perceive the person.

01

Tell Them We Are Rising

02

Fighting for Our Rights

03

Which One of You Is It?

04

Black Haze

05

DoubleConsciousness

06

Jiggaboos vs

60

ehT seebannaW

07

Proud to Be

08

The Future of Black Greek Life

Wake up.

Among the sayings of our race, suggestive and surprising, that fill a most exalted place, is...

...Tell them we are rising.

Although Black Greek-letter fraternalism, to a great degree, evolved as a contestation to white privilege, racism, and elitism, many argue that these same organizations have been guilty of promoting intra-racial social stratification. In the early 1900s, the groups were small, intellectually elite, and rather secretive in their activities. By the 1930s and 40s, the fraternities and sororities had become more dominant on campus, offering large social gatherings and serving as a magnet for not just the intellectual elite, but also to the social elite, who looked to the organizations as a way to distinguish themselves from non-members who could not afford the membership fees or pay for the kinds of clothes, parties, and automobiles that were de rigueur for members.

Disturbingly for some, a pecking order has existed among black Greeks since their inception, even though it is considered in poor taste to speak of this in “mixed” black Greek company. But, be that as it may, many black Greeks and non-Greeks alike generally acknowledge these tiers in black Greekdom. A great deal of what has determined the prestige of specific fraternities and sororities depends on the age of the organization, its size, and the wealth and prominence of its members.

In fact, many amongst the old guard black elite would argue that only three of the fraternities: the Alphas, Kappas, and Omegas and two of the sororities: the AKAs and the Deltas actually fit the “society” profile.

As is evident, some form of elitism has always been present in black Greekdom, which has historically and contemporarily caused a certain level of angst within the black community. Some blacks were opposed to these groups because they viewed them as antithetical to black struggle and sociopolitical consciousness. Whether this assertion is accurate depends on whom you ask, but few would deny that the groups were indeed born of struggle. And whereas the social/political status and orientation of their memberships have certainly been broadened, the organizations still claim to attract the best and brightest that black America has to offer. One need look no farther than the origins of college life and fraternalism itself in the United States to prove this point.

Unreconciled Strivings In 1903, on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, IL, a black sponsored Greek-letter organization came briefly into being, with the purpose of strengthening the African American voice at the university and the city. Alpha Kappa Nu is the first recorded collegiate black Greekletter organization (BGLO) in the history of the United States. Very little is known about the early club, and there is no record of its having survived.

Similarly, two years later, a second black Greekletter fraternity, Gamma Phi, was founded on the campus of Wilberforce University in Ohio. And although it continued for nearly three decades, during which time it spawned four chapters, it appears that neither the Alpha chapter nor its offshoots have survived.

These first attempts to establish BGLOs hardly seem noteworthy, but despite their failure to take hold, they represent an auspicious beginning in the germination of a new idea. It is not that the idea of a college fraternity was unprecedented, for it had been part of the liberal arts tradition since the founding of Phi Beta Kappa more than two centuries earlier at the College of William and Mary. Certainly, on campuses like the one in Bloomington, IL, white students participated in Greek-letter fraternities. And nor was the secret fraternal ideal unfamiliar to blacks, for in the Elks, Masons and numerous other benevolent, mutual aid, and social organizations, they had a longestablished tradition of self-help and solidarity.

It was, however, the first time that blacks would establish such an organization on a college campus.

At a time when few students of any race made it to the postsecondary level, blacks in northern institutions of higher education belonged to an elite class, far removed from the masses of the ordinary African Americans four decades after emancipation. However, in the age of Jim Crow, most whites still lumped all blacks together under the assumption of “Negro inferiority.� At the turn of the twentieth century, even for the rising black intellectuals in the North, there was no sanctuary from the indignities of white supremacy.

In the face of these conditions, it is highly likely that the black students at Indiana University were seeking a vehicle for selfhelp and racial solidarity which would allow then to experience the full breadth of the liberal arts tradition, despite restraints of the color line. But, in their choice of the exclusive Greek model, they also reflected the tendency of the black elite to define self-help largely in terms of assimilation, and to pursue an even higher status through the adoption and the adaptation of white upper-class institutions and values. Regardless of their motives, small numbers during the first few years hastened the demise of the organization, and Alpha Kappa Nu faded into obscurity soon after it began.

As the self-appointed leaders of the black masses, the black intellectual elite strove to gain education, refinement, and culture and then to fortify the masses through training and example. But at the turn of the twentieth century, their ascent into the “kingdom of culture” only led them to new heights of exclusion. While rejection by whites spurred race-conscious responses, their endless quest for status in the white world led them to distance themselves from the masses of their own race. Greek-letter organizations were creations of this “doubleconsciousness,” reflecting their impulses toward both black communal values and the trap of white American elitism.

Reconstruction If at first four million Blacks thought emancipation would bring them the status they so desired, they were soon proved wrong. The promise of radical Reconstruction, which made them into citizens, enfranchised black males, and established common schools throughout the South, was quickly withdrawn when the Compromise of 1877 restored white rule. Black southerners, who formed majorities in some state legislatures, saw suffrage repealed throughout the South and by 1910, they were once again disenfranchised.

This counterrevolution was reinforced by organizations such as the KKK, Knights of the White Camellia, and the Red Shirts, as well as by violent mobs that used murder and intimidation to curtail black rights and to preserve white rule. Their reign of terror during the night riding and the riots extended into the North and continued well into the next century.

In a series of cases decided between 1873 and 1883, which nullified the Reconstruction Amendments and Civil Rights Acts, the highest court of the land joined in the conspiracy to re-enslave and disenfranchise blacks. With its infamous 1896 ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson sanctioning the doctrine of “separate but equal“ it reified the idea of black inferiority, an idea which would be inscribed in the law for nearly sixty years.

In the face of these betrayals, a spirit of black nationalism was reignited. If political equality with whites was impossible, self-determination and self-sufficiency seemed to offer the only vehicles for status, if not within the white world, then alongside it.

In search of economic opportunity and an escape from white violence, a handful of blacks migrated to Africa; others went west in the Exoduster movement; and many headed North. This widespread dislocation resulted in the formation of a number of all black towns in states like Kansas, Oklahoma, and Florida, many of which eventually failed for the same reasons that called them into being the economic and political vulnerability of the settlers. Locked out of the growing industries of the North and South and overwhelmingly tied to land they did not own, in 1900, nine-tenths of all African Americans remained in the South, poor, and largely illiterate, and trapped at the bottom of the class structure.

Alongside black masses rose a black professional class, which earned its status by catering to the needs of segregated black communities. Educated and economically self-sufficient business owners, physicians, lawyers, clergy, journalists, and teachers were the leaders in their Jim Crow communities. Many were mulattoes, who traced their antebellum roots to free blacks and privileged house slaves in the South and took pride in the education, wealth, and light complexions which they had inherited from their white relations. This black upper class, having assimilated to white culture by education and, in some cases, relatively close contact with whites, sought status by distancing themselves socially from the uncultured masses of African Americans.

Nevertheless, they felt it their duty to uplift the lower sort, perhaps in fear of being pulled down themselves. These leaders of the elite established hosts of conventions, and conferences to forge action plans for racial defense and advancement. The AfroAmerican League and its successor, the Afro-American Council; the American Negro Academy; National Association of Colored Women; and the National Business League were just a few such efforts. Extolling the virtues of industry and morality, they built institutions for self-help: banks, labor unions, businesses; churches, schools, and a number of secret benevolent, fraternal, and social organizations.

Noting the popularity of the latter, Leon Litwak explains: “The rituals, uniforms, and titles that characterized the fraternal orders brought members a welcome respite from their daily routines and made them feel like somebody in a society that told them they were nobody.�

As they weighed strategies to counter the effects of white supremacy, they also considered solutions to the “Negro problem” Their remedy to both was education.

By education, they had in mind the preparation of the masses for the rights and the responsibilities of citizenship, led by a vanguard of black intellectuals like themselves whom DuBois dubbed “The Talented Tenth.” The majority of uneducated blacks just out of slavery viewed the acquisition of education as a practical necessity as well as a social advantage. The ability to read and write their names, to understand labor contracts, to calculate their compensation, and to read the Bible would make them self-sufficient, and self-sufficiency would give them status within their communities.

For blacks at the turn of the twentieth century, higher education was a prerequisite to entrance into professional occupations and hence an important determinant of class status. It was a mark of achievement to earn a degree from one of the “better” black colleges, but for many status-seeking blacks, getting one or more degrees from a white institution in the North with the advantages of superior educational offerings, opportunities for graduate advancement, and contact with the elite of the elite was a symbol of upper-crust status. Black elites sought to distance themselves from the masses of blacks by identifying with upper-class whites in whatever manner they could.

On this point, E. Franklin Frazier states: “A large section of old middle class Blacks sought compensation in their white heritage. They were not only proud of their white complexion, but they boasted of their kinship with the aristocratic whites of the South. In fact, in some cases their white ancestors helped them to secure an education or provided for them economically. They also sought compensation in the standards of puritanical family which set them apart from the black masses.

But the most important compensation for their inferior status in American society was found in education.”

While their racial heritage and conventional standards of morality only gave them a privileged position in the Negro community, education gave them access to a world of ideas that provided an intellectual escape from their physical and social segregation in American life. Therefore, they placed an exaggerated importance upon academic degrees, especially if it was secured from a white colleges in the North. If one secured the degree of doctor of philosophy in a northern university, he was regarded as a sort of genius. Consequently, for the relatively small group of educated Negroes, education was an indication of their “superior culture” and a mark of “refinement.”

The Fraternal System The Greek-letter fraternity system experienced considerable growth during the first half of the 19th century, largely in response to the religious fervor, patriarchal control, and strict discipline of American colleges. According to one historian, the fraternities offered an escape from the monotony, dreariness, and unpleasantness of the collegiate regimen which started with prayers before dawn and ended with prayers after dark; and escape from the long winters and ingrown college world, from the dormitory with its lack of privacy. In this pious environment, fraternities offered a beneficial diversion from mundane concerns, with their emphasis on “good friendship, good looks, good clothes, good family, and good income.” They were virtual “schools of success,” which assumed responsibility for members’ housing, catering, manners, and participation in athletic competitions and other campus activities, were “institutionalizing new prestige values, the attributes of a successful man of the world.”

As the century went on, adherence to the German model of education moved colleges further in the direction of secularism, and toward an emphasis of intellectual discovery as the basis of national unity, pride, and culture. The first American university which was based entirely on that model was Johns Hopkins, incorporated in 1867, where a focus on faculty professionalism and research, the differentiation of the undergraduate and graduate study, and the use of electives enhanced the relevance of the curriculum to fit an increasingly specialized, industrialized society. No longer just mererly serving as a training ground for aristocracy, education was increasingly linked to the political and economic needs of the state.

As the emphasis on specialization during the latter part of the century shifted the focus away from athletics, clubs, and other extracurricular activities, fraternities increasingly filled the void. Left to provide for their own recreational needs in increasingly cold and impersonal institutions, students turned to the fraternities for a sense of identity and belonging. Eventually, college presidents came to appreciate the role of Greek-letter organizations as complements to their curriculum for the development of the “whole” student, and in 1909 they joined with fraternity representatives in the founding of the National Interfraternity Conference. Just as the colleges and universities were sorting students to fit the economic and political order, the fraternities were grooming a select few for privileged status in society.

In other aspects of campus life, black students were tolerated on northern campuses to varying degrees. As a student at Harvard in the 1880s, DuBois joined some clubs, but the Glee Club rejected him because Harvard “could not afford to have a Negro on its Glee Club traveling about the country.” Blacks on the whole were relegated to the margins of white college life.

Recalling the virtual dynasty of wealthy New Englanders who dominated campus life, DuBois noted, “The crew and most of the heads of other athletic teams were selected from similarly limited social groups. The class poet, orator, and other commencement officials invariably were selected because of family and not for merit.” When his peers conspired to challenge this tradition by naming an unquestionably deserving black man as class orator, it generated a national fire-storm of controversy.

For DuBois, and many of his black peers, racial exclusion both on and off campus was a salient feature of the college experience, helping to further foster a heightened racial consciousness that superseded geography and school affiliation. As he would recount “Thus this group of professional men, students, white-collar workers, and upper servants, whose common bond was color of skin in themselves or in their fathers, together with a common history and current experience of discrimination, formed a unit that, like many tens of thousands of like units across the nation, had or were getting to share a culture pattern which made them an interlocking mass, so that increasingly a colored person in Boston was more of neighbor to a colored person in Chicago than to a white person across the street.”

Paradoxically, this racial unity was circumscribed by a strict class-consciousness, so that the segregated world of black elites like DuBois was, in many ways, but a mirror image of the white world from which they were excluded.

Despite Cornell University’s reputation for being liberal in its admissions policy, in the early 20th century, its campus was by no means free of racial discrimination. One of the founders of Alpha Phi Alpha, George B. Kelley, would recount a general atmosphere of exclusion: “The Negro at Cornell, as at any other large university, was set aside and we could not do some of the things that the others were doing.” In the social hierarchy of the campus, the white fraternities stood at the pinnacle, with their “splendid fraternity houses,” imitating the homes of the arrogant newly rich. Indeed, the sumptuous houses were a source of consternation to Cornell president, who considered them antithetical to the “democratic spirit” for which the university was known. Also around the turn of the century, the Cornell fraternities began excluding Jewish pledges, thus spurring the establishment of the university’s first Jewish fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, in 1907.

Not surprisingly, these fraternities also prohibited membership by black students. The black students who would establish Alpha Phi Alpha, some of whom had worked at the white fraternity houses, hoped to organize in a way which would allow them to provide the same type of aid educationally, in their work, and by advice. And clearly attracted to the Greek allure, they determined to have a fraternity of their own.

The Divine Nine Had it not been for the elite status that white college fraternities enjoyed, Alpha Phi Alpha founders might have chosen a different organizational structure and purpose, for a number of alternatives had already been established within the black intellectual community. It is clear that they considered at least one, initially forming a social study or literary club. Modeled after white organizations such as the Junto Club, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, black literary societies were formed in response to blacks’ exclusion not only from the white organizations but also from other formal educational opportunities in general. Combining an overall interest in culture along with concerns for black liberation, many shared their members with the antislavery societies. And in advocating for racial reform, they revealed the “internalized racism” inherent in what Kevin Gaines calls “racial uplift ideology,” for their insistence on black intellectual and moral improvement reflected the paternalistic values of the dominant culture, as well as their own low opinions of the black majority.

Of its purpose, DuBois wrote, “The Negro Academy ought to sound a warning that would echo in every black cabin in the land, unless we conquer our present vices they will conquer us; we are diseased, we are developing criminal tendencies, and an alarmingly large percentage of our men and women are now sexually impure.

The Academy should seek to gather about it the talented, unselfish men, the pure and noble-minded women, to fight an army of devils that disgraces our manhood and our womanhood.”

When six black doctors from Philadelphia in founded Sigma Pi Phi in 1904, they had no “social action agenda.” But, because they were unwelcome in elite white organizations, they organized for purely social reasons, in order to “bring together a selected group of men with a minimum degree of superior education and culture.“ The first elite black men’s club, known as the Boule, was open only to college graduates who distinguished themselves by their superior professional or intellectual achievements. Though himself a member of the prestigious group, which also included other noted Black elite such as Alain Locke and Carter G. Woodson, DuBois would later criticize the organization for its lack of social consciousness. With its Greek nomenclature, secret activities, and with its emphasis on strictly social activities, the Boule exemplified yet another organizational option for race-conscious intellectuals like Henry Callis and his peers to pursue.

It is clear that of all the options that lay before them, none could match the appeal of the collegiate Greek-letter fraternity, which was, after all, the paragon of status within the white campus culture. Adapting its white structure to a black purpose offered the founders of Alpha Phi Alpha a legitimate vehicle by which to nurture their social needs, help compensate for their total exclusion from white fraternities, and give them status among other black collegians. As other black fraternal and sororal organizations came into existence, community service as a mechanism for racial uplift would become the hallmark of many of their activities.

As the sons took their cues from their fathers, so the daughters of the black elite emulated their mothers.

Though surrounded by others of their race, the nine women who initiated Alpha Kappa Alpha must have experienced feelings of alienation in response to this atmosphere of white patriarchy and paternalism just as the founders of the black fraternities at Cornell and Indiana were moved by hostile conditions to create their own vehicles for self-help and status. Caught in the double bind of race and gender, these women certainly must have felt a heightened desire for group unity and social status. Following the example of Alpha Phi Alpha, which established a chapter at Howard University the year before, they organized the nation’s first black sorority in 1908.

Though similar to their fraternal predecessor in their Greek trappings, the founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha would put greater emphasis on community service as preparation for their lives as professional women. Sororities were as much service organizations as they were social clubs. Just as women in black clubs and church women were leading the way in social welfare reform and racial uplift, so the early black sororities hoped to promote community service at the college level.

Since the first black sororities developed at Howard University, their members already felt a sense of racial solidarity because of their exposure to Howard’s atmosphere. But what they also hoped to accomplish was an experience in educational reform activities and the formation of a network of like-minded women who would ultimately form the core of national reform circles. By combining a Greek tradition with their own vision of social reform, the founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority would establish community service as a distinct priority within the burgeoning black Greek-letter tradition.

Similar ideals would be expressed by the founders of Delta Sigma Theta sorority (1913) and Zeta Phi Beta sorority (1920), both of which were established on Howard’s campus, as well as by Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, established in 1922 on the white campus of Butler University. Following Alpha Phi Alpha at Cornell University and Kappa Alpha Psi at Indiana University, Omega Psi Phi at Howard, became the first black fraternity to be founded on a black campus in 1911. The establishment of Phi Beta Sigma at Howard in 1914, and of Iota Phi Theta in 1963 at Morgan State University, would bring to nine the family of BGLOs. This cadre of 20th-century black elites would lodge protests against lynching, lobby for civil rights, campaign for literacy as well as social welfare, and serve as a mechanism for social prestig e for the growing ranks of educated African Americans.

A Place of Their Own The black Greek-letter tradition was the product of the African American struggle for recognition and respect. Despite steady gains in their material well being, exemplified by the presence of an educated black middle class and elite, African Americans as a group have remained outside of the mainstream of American life, tolerated, but also proscribed to a separate caste.

Even as they began to establish their presence in institutions of higher learning, they faced isolation and exclusion on the white campuses of the North and white paternalistic control within the campuses established especially for them. In response to this alienation, they turned inward for social intimacy, mutual support, and status. The organizations they developed not only satisfied these needs but also served as symbols of their assimilation into an elite white academic tradition that worked to distance them even further from the ordinary black masses.

Despite their elitism, or perhaps because of it, the popularity of black fraternities and sororities was assured by their appeal to the ideal of racial uplift.

Unfortunately, by limiting the vision of racial uplift to the inherently conservative concept of reform, they failed to leverage the revolutionary potential of posing more radical challenges to the structure of inequality. Symbolic of the paradox of doubleconsciousness, BGLOs reveal the struggle and the contradictions with the black quest for elite status in the midst of group oppression.

Lobbying Congress for Civil Rights The American Council on Human Rights, 1948-1963

The American Council on Human Rights

From December 27 to 31, 1952, six of the eight major BGLOs in the US held an unprecedented joint meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, with 4,000 delegates present. Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Sigma Gamma Rho, Zeta Phi Beta sororities and Alpha Phi Alpha and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternities scheduled their national conventions to take place at the same time. One of the founders of Alpha Phi Alpha addressed the combined meeting and remarked that during the past forty years, the most significant result of their mutual efforts had been the U.S. government’s agreement in 1917 to train black men as commissioned officers in the U.S. Army.

At that time members of the fraternities and sororities thought that there would be greater cooperation among the Greek-letter organizations. But a generation passed before establishment of the American Council on Human Rights (ACHR). He concluded that these organizations had grown out of faith in a people who had survived centuries of inhumanity, that they were conceived from the pain of the distressful plight of a people struggling for dignity, self-respect, and just rewards, for their service.

ACHR had its origin in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority's National Non-Partisan Council on Public Affairs, formed in 1936 to monitor legislation, lobby Congress and the executive branch for civil rights, and keep the public informed about domestic and foreign affairs. The council let the country know that African Americans “were actively and intelligently concerned about those national and international questions important to all Negroes.” Efforts in 1940 to combine resources for a legislative project were soon interrupted by World War I. After the war ended in 1946, leaders of the Greek-letter organizations met in Detroit to discuss greater cooperation. By January 1948, six of the eight organizations had agreed to move forward and to make an annual financial pledge of $2,500 each to form the American Council on Human Rights.

The ACHR would concentrate primarily on encouraging Congress and the federal government to pass legislation and formulate administrative policies in order to achieve its goals. A dinner was held in October 1948 to launch the organization, which now had a constitution and bylaws, a well-defined program, national office, along with a full-time staff. Elmer W. Henderson of Kappa Alpha Psi, became the executive director, and Patricia Roberts of Delta Sigma Theta, became the assistant director. The ACHR was organized eleven months before the United Nations adopted its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948, so it is somehwhat difficult to draw a direct connection between the two.

The UN Charter, however, which was adopted in June 1945, contained specific references to human rights and might have influenced the name of the ACHR. To stimulate interest in the ACHR among undergraduate students, the organization sponsored a slogan contest on college campuses across the country. Faculty judges at each campus selected the best entries and forwarded them to the national judges: John Hope Franklin, professor of history at Howard University and member of Alpha Phi Alpha; Dorothy Height, president of Delta Sigma Theta; and Nancy Woolridge, professor of English at Hampton Institute and member of Zeta Phi Beta. Miss Willie Lee Martin of Benedict College in Columbia, SC, won first prize with her entry: “Human Rights Democracy's Birthright.”

The ACHR established local councils in the cities of Baltimore, Charleston, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Winston-Salem, and Chicago. By 1952, there were twenty-six local councils across eighteen states and the District of Columbia. The local councils were established to unify member organizations in support of the national program, to organize letter-writing campaigns and put

other forms of pressure on congressmen and senators, and to provide a vehicle for the political education of their members.

During its first six months of operation, the ACHR published a bulletin on important legislation going before Congress and a brochure which listed important civil rights bills along with suggestions on how to secure their passage. The organization also supported an education bill to set a minimum expenditure of $55 per elementary and secondary school student throughout the country. It fought against an immigration bill that would limit immigrants from the Caribbean, especially from Jamaica and Trinidad, and favored the extension of Social Security benefits to domestic and farm workers. The ACHR also sought legislation to bar discrimination in employment, protect the right to vote, ban racial segregation in interstate travel, abolish polltaxes, make lynching a federal crime, and eliminate racial segregation and discrimination in the nation's capital.

The ACHR became the first organization to break the segregation policies of Washington hotels. And each year, the ACHR recognized members of Congress and others who had demonstrated meritorious service to advance human rights. The inaugural awards dinner in 1948 honored Norma E. Boyd, founder and director of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority's National Non-Partisan Council on Public Affairs; Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas of California for her work to achieve the benefits of citizenship for all U.S citizens and for her efforts to end discrimination against African American members of the armed forces; Senator Wayne L. Morse of Oregon for his commitment to racial equality, especially his opposition to legislation that would have driven segregation in education. In 1949, the ACHR also recognized Secretary of the Interior Julius A. King for his stand against racial discrimination in the use of Washington swimming pools and other recreational facilities.

The following year, Judge J. L. Waites Waring of Charleston, SC, was honored for outlawing the white primary in that state. Phi Alpha Psi fraternity of Amherst College received recognition for initiating an African American member and facing expulsion by its national organization. The ACHR then developed a nine-point platform on civil rights to be presented to each political party.

It called for outlawing the filibuster in the Senate; abolishing segregation in areas under federal authority; passing a fair employment practice law with enforcement powers enacting antilynching legislation; strengthening the civil rights section in the Department of Justice; creating a permanent Civil Rights Commission; providing home rule for the District of Columbia; supporting statehood for Alaska and Hawaii; and adopting an anti-poll tax law; The ACHR determined that basic issues of civil rights were going to be decided in Congress, its members should pay close attention to the elections, especially for the House and Senate. The ACHR recommended a timetable for local councils on voter education and get-out-the-vote campaigns, observance of United Nations Day on October 24 and election day on November 4, meetings with newly elected senators and representatives, celebrations of the Human Rights Day on December 10, and a community self-survey of civil rights for January of the new year. The goal was 100% black voters.

“Our Flag is the American Flag”

At the 1952 joint meeting of ACHR member organizations, the group honored President Harry S.Truman for his contributions to human rights and equality. Secretary of the Interior, Oscar L. Chapman accepted on Truman’s behalf and Chapman reaffirmed that racial segregation in the nation’s capital would soon end. Sir Zafrulla Khan, Pakistan’s minister of foreign affairs, also addressed the assembly on the work of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He indicated that despite progress, the vast majority of the world’s population still did not enjoy fundamental freedoms.

The joint meeting called on President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower to make sure that qualified Negroes received policy-making positions in his cabinet and to see that all departments and bureaus of the government conducted their programs on the idea of strict equality in participation. The delegates asked him to end racial divisions in the District of Columbia and in the armed forces. The meeting also passed resolutions that urged the Senators to wipe out the filibuster rule that stifled civil rights legislation and implored Congress to enact enforceable fair employment legislation.

In 1952, the ACHR learned that the U.S. Army had authorized bandsmen of the Thirty-first Infantry from Mississippi and Alabama to wear the Confederate uniform, and received reports from Korea about the Confederate flag being flown alongside the United States flag on the battlefield and military installations. The organization then called a meeting to address those concerns and petitioned the U.S. to remove the Confederate flag from military installations and to prohibit anyone engaged in government business from wearing the Confederate uniform. The ACHR distributed thousands of automobile and window stickers with the slogan: “Our Flag is the American Flag.”

During its early years, local councils of the ACHR expressed concerns as to whether the ACHR duplicated the work of other organizations, such as the NAACP and National Urban League.

The ACHR did not believe that its work overlapped with that of the National Urban League, because of its limited activities in the nongovernmental arena, but it acknowledged the similarity of its work and that of the NAACP. However, the NAACP had a more broad-based consituency, whereas the ACHR represented a more specialized constituency of 200,000 college grads and students, including a large number of educators. Education was the ACHR’s chief means to bring about change in civil rights and human relations, and sought to involve members of black Greek-letter organizations in social and political action. The only issue was that BGLOs had a reputation for being insular and remote from the masses of African Americans. At the 1952 joint meeting in Cleveland, Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, remarked that he was overjoyed and that six of the Greek-letter organizations came together under the banner of human rights.

The ACHR worked closely with the NAACP and was among the twentyfive organizations that Walter White, NAACP executive secretary, called together in 1949 to form a Joint Committee on Civil Rights.

This was a precursor to the 1950 Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Because various organizations were lobbying Congress for different pieces of legislation, confusion was often created and often used as an excuse for not taking any action. White stated that with greater coordination and a unified strategy, legislative victories would be easier to achieve.

Evaluating the Council

At its board of directors meeting on October 19, 1951, the board discussed funding of the organization's programs and addressed concerns that the ACHR duplicated the work of other organizations.

John Hope Franklin, a member of the board, representing Alpha Phi Alpha, observed that “the individual remarks and misgivings concerning specific attainments of ACHR made it imperative that we reexamine, and if necessary reevaluate and reformulate, our policy on Human Rights.” The board of directors agreed that the ACHR should clarify its approach and program in clear terms to avoid duplication with other organizations. Two years later, in May 1953, the ACHR contracted Dr. Howard H. Long, dean of Central State College in Ohio and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, to undertake an objective appraisal of the organization's working light of its purpose, which was "the elimination of racial discrimination and segregation in employment, armed services, international affairs, accommodations and other areas of civil rights. Dr. Paul Cooke, an associate professor of English at Miners Teachers College in and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, served as researcher for the project.

The result of the evaluation was a 123-pg published report with three parts: a background chapter; review of the ACHR's programs in fair employment, civil rights, armed forces, housing, education and public relations, international affairs, local councils, and operation; and a summary and evaluation. The evaluation revealed that the ACHR relied primarily on letter writing, testimony before Congress, meetings with key government officials, and, in a few instances, lawsuits to accomplish its objectives. It did not picket boycott, strike, or sit in. Its purpose was the “extension of civil rights without regard to race, color, or religion.” The ACHR sought specifically to end racial discrimination in DC, because it was the nation's capital. The evaluation report further observed that BGLOs had suffered from criticism in the press and elsewhere for their excessive social activities, which might have influenced them to engage in serious social reform programs.

Immediately after World War II, there was a sense of great social change throughout the world, based on principles of freedom by the Allied powers. And college-educated Negroes, according to the evaluation report, were perhaps the most restive of all African Americans because they sought to do something meaningful for themselves and for their fellow citizens in order to gain firstclass citizenship.

The evaluation report recommended the continued operation of the ACHR and called on its board of directors to “reaffirm their faith both in the ACHR purpose and the Council's ability to move steadily toward the goal” of ending racial discrimination. The report suggested that the ACHR expand its membership by inviting college fraternities and sororities, without regard for race or religion, to join in the cause for civil rights. Membership in the ACHR would also help Greek-letter organizations overcome the stigma of being perceived as frivolous, snobbish, exclusive, and irrelevant groups. Moreover, a broader membership would provide greater financial resources for a larger and more effective operation.

An increase in the budget, better pay for staff, and more aid to the local councils were priorities identified by the evaluation.

The report endorsed the ACHRs social action program, with its emphasis on housing, public accommodations, employment, armed services, and a cloture amendment. This idea of “preparation for integration” although not explicitly expressed in those terms, became the basis for "freedom schools" in the South during the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. The report also urged the ACHR to increase its work in educating the public about human rights and its goals.

But just a year after the evaluation report, Elmer W. Henderson resigned as executive director of the ACHR, although he remained on the board of directors as a representative from Kappa Alpha Psi, Henderson now assumed the post of associate counsel to the House Subcommittee on Executive and Legislative Reorganization.

At a March 1955 board of directors meeting, it was decided to hire a part-time director and consultant, a full-time administrative assistant, all while the personnel committee searched for a fulltime director. Aubrey E. Robinson Jr., a member of Alpha Phi Alpha and general counsel for the ACHR, became the part-time director, and Paul Cooke, who had served as researcher for the evaluation report, became a part-time consultant to work with the local councils.

In fact, the ACHR would soon become an organization of African American sororities, as Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity left in 1956 and Kappa Alpha Psi withdrew a year later. Then with the Brown vs. Board of Education decision prohibiting racial segregation, the fraternities concentrated their efforts on more civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, the National Urban League, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Those male-dominated organizations were headed by members of fraternities, which may explain why the sororities continued their support of the ACHR. Eventutally, Phi Delta Kappa sorority, founded in 1923 as a black female professional sisterhood among black teachers, joined the original four sorority members to continue the work of the ACHR. With the withdrawal of all of the fraternities by 1957, the ACHR looked to broaden its membership by adding other women’s groups, such as Chi Eta Phi, the nurses’ sorority. But those efforts were unsuccessful, and the organization continued with a membership of five sororities.

Reorganization and Activism

At its October 1956 meeting, the ACHR board of directors announced that its inquiries, along with those of other organizations, to the president of the American Psychological Association had led to a report by eighteen leading psychologists that there was no proven difference between the mental potentials of whites and of Negroes. The Committee on Program recommended that the ACHR, in preparation for its integrated living project, use local councils, youth agencies, school organizations, churches, and the like to instill in black youth an awareness of the responsibilities that came with full citizenship. The focus of the project should be on courtesy, cultural standards, social amenities, and so forth.

Members of the ACHR were primarily middle-class African Americans with bourgeois values. They were part of W.E.B. DuBois’s “Talented Tenth” who felt an obligation to set standards of respectability for black America, especially for terms of their interaction with the broader society after the fall of segregation.

The ACHR held workshops from 1956 to 1960 for college students to discuss equal opportunities in voting, employment, housing, and education and to develop leadership skills. The theme of the 1960 workshop, which attracted 500 students from colleges throughout the country, was “A Political Primer for the 1960s: Education and Understanding Action.” In the 1956 presidential election, only 3.5 million African Americans out of 9.25 million eligible voters went to the polls. The black turnout was 20 percent less than that of eligible white voters who cast ballots. The ACHR then decided to launch a national crusade to register African Americans to vote in the 1960 presidential election. In addition to the direct action campaigns, the ACHR believed that voting, and litigation were the most effective weapons available to achieve racial equality.

In March 1961, the ACHR, now an organization of five sororities (four college based and one professional) representing 100,000 members, sent a position paper, to newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy, who had appeared before the council’s Political Workshop and Leaders Conference at Howard University in October 1960. The position paper addressed four major areas: education, employment, equal opportunity, and housing. The ACHR endorsed the president’s call for legislation to address school construction, teachers’ salaries, and federal scholarships but objected to the possibility that federal friends might be used for segregated schools.

Although the ACHR had survived from 1957 to 1961 primarily as a black women’s organization, it received a severe jolt in 1961 when Delta Sigma Theta sorority withdrew from the council. The Deltas decided to focus their resources on organizations such as the National Council of Negro Women, whose president, Dorothy Height, had headed the Deltas from 1947 to 1956. Although each of the BGLOs had social action programs, the ACHR brought together the united strength of six black fraternities and sororities, about 200,000 college-educated women and men, to press for civil rights. Through its national programs, and its local councils, the ACHR helped to energize the civil rights movement, inspiring many black college students to work for freedom, justice, and equality. Although it is difficult to measure its direct accomplishments, the ACHR kept pressure for civil rights on the executive and legislative level of government until the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights established a formal lobbying office in Washington, D.C., in 1963.

Which One of You Is It?

More than any other facet of the Black Greek-letter experience, pledging has been one of the major defining characteristics of the organizations. The concept of pledging has been a way for members to identify themselves. As a part of any introduction of members, both within and between organizations, when the person pledged and where they pledged is usually the primary focus of conversation. In fact, members of these organizations generally introduce themselves by their name, chapter, school and term of pledging (i.e., Walter, Zeta Pi, spring ‘86).

The pledge period has been viewed as a rite of passage for all Black fraternal organizations. The “badge of honor� gained by students who completed a pledge program and were initiated elevated their status on their respective campuses. The pledge process was the event that gave Greeks a measure of mystique with their peers and thus they were seen with a new admiration because they completed the process and achieved a goal that many, whether they verbalized it or not, sought to accomplish as well to become a member of a fraternity or sorority.

Yet, this process so central to the identity of Black Greek-letter organizations and their members remains vaguely understood.

The importance, origin, and significance of the pledge process has as many variations as there are members of Black fraternal organizations, which, based on statistics touted by the National Pan Hellenic Council, include over 1.5 million people. Pledging has evolved in a sense as a mystical process which has affected everyone differently, and thus made the meaning of the process different for each member.

However, time revealed that the concept of pledging was very flawed. Members were not making lifetime commitments they promised to through pledging, and the process itself became responsible for a number of countless injuries and deaths. But pledging was easily justified at least in the minds of members because it was thought to have existed since the beginning of the organizations. But in the broadest sense, pledging should be best described as a culture within a culture and defined as a cultural appendage that has taken on a life of its own.

As mentioned earlier, pledging in many ways was the defining experience in Black collegiate Greek life. During that time the pledges were the center of attention for many Black students, and their activities were highly watched. While activities of the pledges defined them as aspiring Greeks, more important than that, their activities provided the foundation for much of the culture of Black Greek life. The initial innovation in developing these pledge clubs was the naming of groups working toward membership in the organizations.

In 1919 the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity defined its aspirants as Scrollers and inaugurated the Scrollers Club. The name Scroller itself was chosen because of the scroll on the fraternity’s badge.

Students at Tennessee State University wrote: “The Scrollers

Club which is an integral part of the Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, was founded on the campus of Ohio State University, May 19, 1919 with the purpose of unifying those men who aspire to the achievements that Kappa Alpha Psi offers.”

Pledge clubs existed from the beginning of the organizations, but with an increase in pledges after the war, the pledge clubs were needed for “a thorough, effective, and new standardized orientation” and each organization defined what their club was for and the purpose of the organization. So in 1921, the Alphas instituted the Sphinx Club at Howard University. While pledge clubs developed throughout the 1920s, their purposes varied among the organizations and each organization developed a name for its pledge club.

In 1930, Zeta Phi Beta at Howard indicated, “For those young ladies who wish to become Zeta members and have expressed that desire, they will become ‘Archonians’ pledge members.”

And at Wilberforce in 1923, Delta Sigma Theta established the Pyramid Club composed of freshmen women. They indicated that the “club has for its aims the highest in scholarship, ideals and womanhood. The symbol of the club will be the triangle: the base of which represents fidelity, one side for enthusiasm, and the other for womanhood.”

Later years saw more development of the clubs. The aims as described included values that new members needed to learn.

Members of the Sphinx Club at Howard in the mid 1940s were responsible for sponsoring a project as well as learning about the aims of the fraternity. Scrollers of Kappa Alpha Psi during this time had to learn parliamentary procedure along with the fraternity ideals. In the 1950s, the Lampados, or the pledges of Omega Psi Phi, had to prove they were worthy of membership, including maintaining their scholastic average and performing service. And pledges in the Crescent Club of Phi Beta Sigma at Jackson State were expected to always practice good manners anywhere and at all times.

The first term used for those attempting to gain membership was “pledges,” a term used in relation to the Ivy Leaf Club at Wilberforce in 1923. During that time, the terms “pledging” and “probation” were also interchangeable. The specific term probation emerged in the 1950s. It symbolized the status the pledges had with the rest of the campus. In other words, they were on probation from interacting with persons other than members of their pledge club, members of the organization, and faculty or staff. At Jackson State in the 1960s, the phrase “pledges” on probation signified the state the pledges were in during that time. The term probation was prominent until about the 1970s, when the term pledging became preferred.

Another important element of pledging that evolved was the single file line of initiates moving across campus. This image is important in African-American history in several ways. Slaves were marched to ships in chains when they were transported to America. And when Harriet Tubman led slaves to freedom, they were told to walk in single file line, literally stepping into the footprint of the person in front of them in order to not be detected by the slavemasters who were hot on their trail.

A picture of the members of the Alpha chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha in 1907 shows the chapter members standing in a line according to height. This is the earliest image of the concept that would develop for the next sixty years. But it would not be until the 1950s that organizations finally solidified the line concept. By the middle 1970s, persons pledging were almost unilaterally referred to as a line and pledges went from being “on probation” to being “on line.”

The image of a pledge line was also very similar to candidates participating in an African rites of passage. Candidates could be seen standing close together, back to front, and sometimes with arms connected or locked. Lines would then be punished if they were separated or if someone “broke the line.” Again, pledging has served as a historical reenactment of sorts. Slaves clung to each other to prevent separation, just as pledges did during their process.

As mentioned earlier, lines were always tight and mirrored in some regard the traveling slaves on slave ships. In the 1950s, the terms “ship” and “shippie” emerged as yet another way to to describe a pledge class and thus reinforce the line concept.

At Jackson State in 1959, each pledge club was referred to as a ship, such as the Zeta Ship, or the Sigma Ship. The symbolism included calling the first person in line “the captain,” and the last person “the anchor.”

As the line symbolism and concept solidified, additional parts of the pledging culture began to emerge. As early as 1956 at Central State University, the pledge club or “the line” received an additional name that would mark their place in history: the Kappa Alpha Psi pledge ckub was called “The Tragic 19” in a yearbook photo, but there was no immediate proliferation of line names on the campus. Five years later at Howard, a Delta Sigma Theta line was clearly deemed the “Eveready 42,” thus inaugurating the use of collective line names. During the next year Howard University would be introduced to “The Fine 29” of Alpha Phi Alpha, “The Grand 16” of Kappa Alpha Psi, and “The Slick 21” of Omega Psi Phi. By 1969 the use of collective line names appeared at Jackson State. And once a numerical adjective was added to the pledge club, then the next logical designation was for each individual to assume a number that represented their place in the line. By the mid 1960s, pledges could be seen with objects bearing their number. Even college yearbook photos in the 1960s showed most members wearing paraphernalia that bore not only the term and year that they pledged, but their number in the line. As more collective line names developed, soon each individual member of the pledge club received a nickname, called a “line name.” Individual line names were not really evident until about 1970.

Several other features developed along with pledging which helped to define the process as well as define it as the Black Greek experience. As early as 1940, pledgees could be seen carrying objects of significance to that specific organization.

Lampados of Omega Psi Phi began carrying lamps while Ivies of Alpha Kappa Alpha might carry an ivy plant. The Pyramids of Delta Sigma Theta carried a plastic duck. Over time, many pledge clubs could be seen carrying paddles decorated in the organization’s colors and bearing the symbols. Based on the analysis of pledging, the paddle was not only a visible symbol of pledging but also behind the scenes method of punishment.

The pledge process thus created language which defined the various roles members and aspirants played. One of the main features was the roles of brotherhood and sisterhood which were acted out while persons were pledging. As with White fraternities and sororities, Black Greeks employed the terms “big sister, little sister... big brother and little brother.” In this time also, the development of pledge “families” within the line came about as well. In the Howard yearbook that year, a page about the Ivy Leaf Club declared, “Ten of us freshmen are

building new hope on the first step of the ladder of a nationwide sisterhood. We are the little sisters of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.”

While the uniform dress that was worn as a part of the pledge process for Black Greeks was generally in good taste, the use of derogatory names was a significant part of probation and pledging. As early as 1925 at Wilberforce, Sigma Gamma Rho and Delta Sigma Theta called their aspirants “barbarians.” The Delta Sigma Theta description was more informative, as with the page listing the chapter’s social calendar, they discussed the nine barbarians, indicating a pledge club of nine women.

But the practice did not take hold until the 1950s. As early as 1950 at Central State, the term “barb” was used as a shorter version of barbarian. The term “worm” was also used for the pledges of sororities. At Tennessee State, the term “dog” was given to the pledges of Phi Beta Sigma, Alpha Phi Alpha, and Omega Psi Phi. The Alpha Kappa Alpha pledges were called “worms” while the pledges of Delta Sigma Theta were called “barbarians” as they were at Wilberforce. Students at Howard also used barbarian, but for a while members of Alpha Kappa Alpha called new pledges “plugs” in the late 1950s. By 1961 at Howard, Alpha Phi Alpha pledges were called “Apes.” But as late as 1962 at Wilberforce, the dog symbolism still persisted.

Captions in the yearbook indicated “KAY dogs are coming” and the “Dogs of AFA.” But around this time, and as early as 1950, an interesting phenomenon developed.

In the matter of a few years, the members of Omega Psi Phi unofficially adopted the dog symbolism and carried it to the next level. Probates of the fraternity could be seen on college campuses wearing dog collars and leashes, and drinking from bowls, as well as barking. Over the next forty years the canine reference would become pervasive, as members would soon become known as the “Que Dogs,” barking to acknowledge each other, just as other organizations developed calls during the late 1970s and early 1980s. So once the big/little brother and sister distinction was established between members and pledges, big brothers and sisters reinforced the subservient nature of the pledges by requiring them to “greet,” or make a loud, verbal acknowledgment of the members. In 1954 at Tennessee State, on a yearbook caption under a picture of a Zeta Phi Beta line read, “Please, Most Noble Greek, May We Be Seated?” And at Jackson State, a picture of Scrollers was described in the caption as “Today, along our way to

the land of Kappa Alpha Psi, we greet our superiors.”

The practice of greeting would grow to such an extent that by the 1980s, pledges could be heard giving long and elaborate greetings to big sisters and brothers and sometimes to other Greeks or to sweethearts. For Black Greeks, this represented a display of respect for the Greeks who came before them.

One final concept that emerged during pledging process was the “crossing of the burning sands.” There were also gifts and celebration by the community when the pledgees completed the period. Today this is known as “going over.” Just imagine returning to the West African fishing city of Cayar after fishing in the Atlantic; and after mooring the vessels on the hot sands of the beach, you celebrate a safe return. In essence, crossing the burning sands, also known as “crossing,” signified the end of the pledge process and was the symbolic process of moving from non-Greek to the ranks of brotherhood or sisterhood.

At Howard in 1954, the phrase “crossing the burning sands” appeared in an article about the Lampados of Omega Psi Phi:

“The Club expects the highest standards of morality and teaches the duty of service to mankind. It fosters the participation of its members in social action and philanthropic programs, and teaches the principals of democracy and the duties inherent to good citizenship.

The ambition of the Lampados is to cross the burning sands into dear ol’ Omega Land, where the hand of brotherhood awaits them.”

“The first weary but determined men who crossed the burning sands to the fruitful plain of fraternal brotherhood.

These four are humbly striving to cross the burning sands and if they can just make it, how their faces will change.� ~ Alabama A&M yearbook, 1950

Let there be NO complaints about brutality.

The emphasis should be upon history and purposes of the fraternity rather than upon physical punishment.

For over seven hundred years in higher education, and over two hundred years in American higher education, some form of hazing has existed as a systematic means of indoctrinating new members to the university community through a rite of passage.

It is within this culture of hazing that fraternities and sororities were born.

Between 1906 and 1922, when the first eight Black Greek-lettered organizations were being founded, higher education perpetuated a culture of hazing.

At some of the institutions, the hazing of freshmen by the upperclassman had been a standing tradition that preceded fraternity involvement in the practice.

From freshman hazing to pledging During the 1920s, students began to challenge the process of hazing. At Howard and Fisk, they sought to end the process, especially in light of lynchings occurring in the South. The parallel was fairly accurate.

Freshman hazing at Lincoln included nightly paddlings which lasted from the day classes started until the holidays. As a part of freshman hazing, they were called “dogs,” were made to roll pens with their noses, were responsible for cleaning the rooms of sophomores, and even had to shave their heads prior to the Thanksgiving football game.

With opposition to freshman hazing proving effective in ending the practice, the culture of hazing which had grown for over 200 years in American higher education needed a new vehicle for its manifestation.

That vehicle came to be known as pledging. In fact, there were some signs in the years prior to the end of freshman hazing that some principles of hazing were visible in the Greek-lettered organizations. The 1914 Howard yearbook introduced Greek life in a section entitled “Secrets,” which implied a clandestine initiation process. In the 1916 Howard yearbook, the sectional divider for fraternities featured a student on his knees in front of a log with two beasts behind the log. The log has arms that are extended toward the student, who is shrieking in fear as his hat flies off his head. Etched on the log are the Greek letters of the five PanHellenic Council organizations (fraternities and sororities) present on the campus at that time.

This mysterious and scary image of Greek life was continued into the 1920s as sororities were introduced through skulls similarly engraved, but with DST and AKA. However, the skulls were pictured in front of a witch riding a broom. These pictures show a link in the practices used to scare freshmen, and those used in the 1920s to intimidate new initiates.

As indicated, before the movement to end freshman hazing began during this time as well. At Howard, freshman hazing was officially “tabooed” by 1924. And at the same time, the idea of pledging emerged.

In fact, in 1922 three organizations at Wilberforce organized pledge clubs. The Wilberforce yearbook in 1924 went further to attempt a historical listing of the creation of pledge clubs as the information listed included a date of founding, location, and colors of the pledge club, several of the dates in question but nonetheless an interesting attempt to document this aspect of Black Greek life. In less than twelve years from the beginnings of pledging in Black fraternities and sororities, signs of hazing began to emerge. By 1925 the Howard newspaper chronicled a period known as “Hell Week” when pledges marched around campus in odd attire while singing. And this practice also produced many painful results. In an article for the 1928 Lincoln University newspaper, a fraternity member challenged the brutal hazing he witnessed, a hazing that left wounds he described as raw as “fresh beef steak.”

The challenges of pledging and hazing were also evident in the mid to late 1920s, and continued into the 1930s. By 1930 it was clear that pledge classes were second-class citizens in their pursuit of membership.

By 1934, fraternity pledging and sorority pledging were challenged much like freshman hazing, and for the same reasons being that the process was too violent and abusive. Fraternities would pass resolutions to make future initiations less severe, while condemnations of the groups would be sprouted across the nation. During that year a group of former pledges from the various fraternities formed the Gamma Tau Fraternity at Howard. This was developed as an alternative to Hell Week that included a week of lectures and informal discussions, but there was little evidence that Gamma Tau had any lasting impact on Greek life at Howard or elsewhere.

By the end of the 1930s, some of the documented pledging activities were as brutal if not more so than freshman-sophomore class rushes. At Lincoln University, paddling of pledges could be heard throughout the dormitories and pledges were often seen limping around campus. Those pledging were called probates because the period was seen as probation from the rest of campus. They were forced to clean the rooms of “big brothers,” wash their clothes, and run errands. And due to sheer exhaustion, probates often fell asleep in class. These activities served as continued proof that freshman hazing was alive and well through the guise of fraternity and sorority pledging, although at this time most accounts of hazing were in the fraternities. The 1940s then became, in a sense, a decade of acknowledgment by the Greekletter organizations that hazing was a problem. This acknowledgment came in the form of actions by the colleges, the specific hazing acts on the campuses, and by the implementation of policies by the various organizations. In 1942, Lincoln University instituted a “no hitting” law in effort to end the violence being perpetrated on students pledging the fraternities. University officials met with fraternity representatives in an effort to set guidelines for probation activities that were free of brutality.

The student media at various campuses captured the dominant characteristic of Greek activities through their college annuals. The irony of the sectional dividers was that each chapter was normally pictured in formal attire, clean cut or made up, and giving out an air of culture and sophistication. But the reality was that these same students were in many cases perpetuating brutal acts of hazing. Accordingly, the national organizations began to create policies that specifically outlawed brutality and in the 1940, three national fraternities passed laws forbidding hazing and brutality. The 1940s also became a time of expansion for Greek-lettered organizations. Much of the expansion took place in the South at historically Black colleges and universities. But some schools were skeptical and moved cautiously to establish chapters.

But the brutality witnessed in the 1940s was still a major point of contention for campuses and national organizations. By 1948, Lincoln University, an institution that battled hazing from activities with freshmen to more secretive hazing of pledges, suspended all probation and initiation activities. Both universities and organizations sought ways to change this behavior. One initial effort made by the organizations was to change the period known as “Hell Week” since the late 1920s with “Help Week,” but this was no small task, as Hell Week had become a major component in the culture of pledging. The rest of the 1950s thus became a time for the new culture of pledging to become more refined and defined. Pledge classes now were seen dressed alike in specific uniforms with men often in nice suits, accessorized with matching ties or hats. The more extravagant pledge classes, and in some cases now called “lines,” wore flashy capes, turbans, or carried nice walking canes. One of the most creative pledge uniforms was worn by members of an Omega Psi Phi line at Clark College in the 1950s, who held lamps in their left hands while wearing Scottish kilts and regalia. Sorority pledges wore identical dresses or skirt and blouse combinations, and in some cases, matching hair bows, hats, handbags, or other items. All of these lines also carried objects that held some type of significance for their specific organization. A prominent item was the paddle and some lines carried decorated shields that normally had the Greek letters of the group on them along with maybe some other symbol for the organization.

While pledging entered a creative phase during the late 1950s, most of the organizations struggled to remain relevant during the early 1960s. The Civil Rights movement had reached America’s colleges and universities, and students were turning their attentions away from Greek life and toward the goals of the movement. During the turbulent ‘60s, they often were viewed as irrelevant social clubs. Black fraternities and sororities, despite a history of support for scholarship and community service, seemed out of touch with the times, times when many Black students were more eager to sign up for the front lines of campus activism. Enthusiasm was for picket lines, not for pledge lines. Yet, it was also acknowledged during the 1960s that many of the key figures in Civil Rights were members of Black Greek-lettered organizations.

A famous Associated Press photo shows, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis prior to the assassination of Dr. King, four Black Greek men, all who were key figures in the Civil Rights movement: Martin Luther King Jr. (Alpha Phi Alpha), Jesse Jackson (Omega Psi Phi), Hosea Williams (Phi Beta Sigma), and Ralph Abernathy (Kappa Alpha Psi). Many of those leaders indicated that their experience pledging made it easier for them to handle the brutal treatment that they received while fighting for equal rights.

Andrew Young, in a 1997 acceptance speech after being given an award at the Alpha Phi Alpha General Convention in Washington, DC, joked that after the hazing he endured as a pledge at the Beta chapter on the campus of Howard University, the beatings the Klan gave him were nothing.

So pledging continued to evolve during the 1960s. The dressing alike became even more sophisticated, along with a strategic placement of pledges that arranged them in height generally from the shortest to the tallest, although sometimes done in reverse. Some male pledges had their heads shaved, or they may have had their hair cut into a Mohawk. The more formal dress of the 1950s started to subside as lines now wore shorts or other casual clothes. But the criticism of pledging on the respective campuses intensified during the 1960s. The aura of the Civil Rights era cast a big shadow on the importance of pledging, and with the sophistication of campus media, more students openly criticized the Greeks and their activities.

In an article filled with hard sarcasm, the Central State College newspaper asked the question “Hell Week or Plain Hell?” in regard to pledging. In describing what students would witness during a “probate show” the article indicated:

“When the spectators witness the tired, lifeless beings going through their daily routines during Hell Week like mechanized elements, their hearts will go out to the pledges. They will think of how terrible these persons have been treated, but they will never know for certain until they have pledged in an attempt to seek membership into the realm of the sisterhood or brotherhood. It is true that pledges do things they do not particularly care to do. Of course, everyone knows that Ivies, Lampadoes, Pyramids, Scrollers, and Sphinx are never on restrictions. It is just that they prefer talking to their Greek and Greek-tobe sisters and brothers.”

The 1970s did not offer much new in terms of the development of pledging. This period is most notable for having a mass expansion of Greek-letter organizations across the country. For example, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority never added more than five new undergraduate chapters in any given year prior to 1969.

Yet, with the rapid integration of Black students on predominantly White college campuses, chapters of Greek organizations were soon springing up. So much of the look of pledging continued the trend set in the 1960s, with lines dressed alike, carrying objects that had significance to the organization, and moving together in a single file line. Pledges also began to wear a form of lavaliere that may have been a symbol that represented their group, such as the Phi Beta Sigma pledges, called Crescents, who may have worn a lavaliere shaped like a crescent moon.

An Ebony magazine article on Greek life in 1983 emphasized that interest in these organizations, despite elaborate pledge programs that subjected students “to a variety of embarrassing sometimes belittling situations,” was on the rise. The article pictured a Phi Beta Sigma line marching across campus wearing dark coats and pants with combat boots that appear to be linked together all while carrying numbered bricks in their right hands. One national president interviewed said that many worthy applicants came forward, but there were too many to be accommodated.

For the remainder of the decade, pledge programs continued to thrive as more affluent Black students, many who were second generation college students, put more money into the process so that the look of pledging became even more contemporary. The uniforms of the pledges became nicer, having every accessory now matching. Fraternity pledges, in many instances, could be seen wearing khaki pants and blazers, while wearing matching shirts, ties, and even socks. They might even carry with them matching book bags or briefcases. Others adopted a more rugged look, as they might wear fatigues and boots, or maybe jeans and jerseys that would be in the fraternity colors, but without the letters. Variations of the jersey appeared as early as the 1950s as pledges wore caps that had two Greek letters, but missed the middle letter of the fraternity name. Sorority pledges wore matching skirts and blouses, with emphasis for the hair to be made plain, with no makeup. The sorority pledges in the 1950s and 1960s as pictured in the yearbooks always were neatly made up, but that may have been for the purposes of the photo only.

The 1970s and 1980s were also years when pledging was intellectualized. The elaborate practices were given newfound meanings, especially since chapters were now on predominantly White campuses that were confused by the actions of the pledges. Paula Giddings indicated:

“There is a special emphasis on the line of initiates acting in unison, whether through the dance steps that they perform, dressing alike, or even walking across campus in a kind of lockstep. As in many such organizations where group action must supercede that of individual ones, many of the pledging activities were of conscious design. The stripping away of individuality is achieved through a series of activities designed to humble a pledgee (some would, accurately, characterize it as humiliation). A “one for all, and all for one” mentality is further developed through the knowledge that if one pledgee does something “wrong,” the whole line is punished and if one is unable to perform a certain task, someone on the line will have to perform it twice.”

The mid 1980s were almost a repeat of the 1940s in terms of national organizations trying to address the renewed emergence of hazing issues. Since organizations banned brutality and hazing in the 1940s, the next step was to fully modify the pledging process. Much of this had been occurring since the 1960s as pledge periods were shortened over time. Programs that lasted a semester or more became shortened to eight to twelve-week periods, and into the 1980s were whittled down to a standard six-week pledge program. Along with this change in time, organizations attempted to change the whole idea of pledging.

In 1984, Delta Sigma Theta officially adopted the term “membership intake” to describe pledging. And in 1985, Omega Psi Phi changed their pledge program to move away from the brutality associated with pledging which had plagued the reputation of their organization.

This movement continued in 1986 as Alpha Phi Alpha instituted a risk management program. Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity instituted the most radical change in 1987 when it announced that it banned pledging.

An article in the Atlanta Constitution described the new process, and how the Georgia State University chapter of Phi Beta Sigma was executing it. The initiates did not walk in a line, participate in stepping, or participate in any other activities that had come to be known as a part of pledging. Instead, potential members had to meet rigid academic standards, demonstrate leadership ability and complete a series of civic projects while learning the history of the organization.

Many undergraduates did not approve of these new processes. They feared getting the same reactions that the members of Phi Beta Sigma at Georgia State received: a lack of acceptance and ostracism for not pledging. In the process a new term emerged in the pledging culture. “Paper” became the term for persons who were initiated into an organization without pledging, or simply by completing the necessary paperwork for membership. Most undergraduates, in response to this program and shortened pledge programs in all of the other organizations, began to institute a counterculture by beginning to pledge “underground” a semi-secret process designed to be invisible to administrators and to the fraternity or sorority officials while known to undergraduates on campus. This concept, emerging in the late 1980s, became much more dominant by the early 1990s.

“Nighttime, daytime, anytime. Mainly at night, mainly on weekends. Three whacks ain’t that bad after about ten of them. After you get your first ten in life, you can take three good ones... It gets to a point where you can’t sleep on your back because your butt gets surprisingly hard. It gets swollen and black.”

Mark it on your calendars. Pledging is dead.

While Gerald Smith of Phi Beta Sigma communicated that pledging was officially dead to undergraduate members of his fraternity in the late 1980s, the final straw actually came in October 1989. At Morehouse College, members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity were preparing to begin another line, the next group of men to enter the fraternity through that chapter. Joel Harris and other young men had begun pledging “underground,” which meant that the process had not been sanctioned by any fraternity officials nor any officials from the college. In an off-campus apartment, 30 students, both brothers and would-be brothers, participated in a pledge session, sometimes referred to as a “set.” The pledges were being quizzed on fraternity history, not of the national fraternity, but of the Morehouse chapter.

Informal accounts of the evening revealed that a great amount of hazing occurred at the apartment, as brothers punched and slapped prospective members as means to correct behavior or to prevent future mistakes. The hazing was described as extremely violent by the medical examiner who had interviewed several of the students. Joel Harris, a Morehouse sophomore, was in the apartment. The brothers knew that he had a congenital heart defect that required surgery when Joel was two. So Joel was spared any of the physical abuses while his line brothers absorbed his share. Yet the intensity of the session caused Joel to go into cardiac dysrhythmia, and despite ten minutes of attempted resuscitation, he died.

Members of the chapter interviewed by the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper expressed disbelief that they, honor students without any disciplinary record, were being charged with violating school policy and the law. They also noted that Joel had won a wrestling match with a brother a few weeks prior to his October 17th death (an activity that was common in pledging and hazing), and that he was a karate red belt. Succinctly, student Randy Richardson said, “We really didn’t expect this to happen to us.” And while the brothers interviewed indicated that the October 17th meeting was only an informal meeting, giving aspirants the opportunity to learn more about the fraternity, the evidence clearly pointed to some type of underground pledging that ironically caused the death of the one person who was not even physically hazed that evening, a sign that the mental toll of hazing could be just as deadly.

But the interview revealed that the culture of pledging was still strong, and that those who perpetuated it honestly felt that it was a beneficial process. The brothers defined pledging as a time when pledges shaved their heads, dressed alike, and remained on a period of probation where they could not speak to anyone except the other pledges, the fraternity members, and professors. The pledges in effect took on childlike qualities, but by the end of the process, the brothers indicated that the pledges’ hair grows back, and they are able to talk again that they have returned to manhood. Student Merion Stewart also described it as “a humbling process... There’s a breaking down and building-up process, and by the time you become an Alpha Phi Alpha, you become a man of distinction.”

“The question Alpha must address is we intend to do about the question our fraternity? Each of you can see t The time is here that Alpha must pro that we are of value to higher educa to make a unique contribution to the However, the traditions which sustain found in the rigours and rituals of ple eating away at the marrow of Alpha. the idealism and commitment of our mentality of members long ago outla

s a relatively simple one: What do mark which has been attached to the crisis, the impending disaster. ove, conclusively and for all time, ation, that we can and will continue e modern college and university... n us are not those destructive ones edging. Pledging, like a cancer, is . Its tradition is not connected to r founders, but instead, to the tribal awed by our General Organization.�

THE MEMBERSHIP INTAKE MOVEMENT In February 1990, the eight presidents who represented the groups holding membership in the National Pan Hellenic Council met in St. Louis to discuss the state of pledging. All had experienced a numerous amount of hazing incidents, and started to notice increases in lawsuits as well. They decided that, at that time, the only logical way to protect their organizations was to officially ban the process of pledging, the event viewed as the source of all their problems. They agreed that by fall 1990, no one would be allowed to continue the practice of pledging. The death of Joel Harris at Morehouse College in October 1989 did prove to be the final straw, as some national officers acknowledged. After that highly publicized death, it appeared as if these organizations reached a point of dissonance where they could not justify continuing pledging while students were being injured and even killed. Critics accused nationals of even looking the other way while hazing went on, even after the media indicated, based on the Harris case, that pledges endured “a gamut of pledging sessions in which they are screamed at, taunted, paddled, punched, etc.”

After that death, the call became clear in 1989 for each group to reorganize the way new members were “welcomed” into their organization.

The accounts of pledging during this time all painted a new and insightful view of the experience. While little was written about pledging as a whole prior to the mid 1980s, with most of the writings attempting to describe the process and intellectualize its worth, more accurate accounts provided a different picture.

These new accounts of pledging seemed to support the radical change from the pledging that existed prior to that time, to a membership intake process thought to focus more on educating new members.

But once the change to membership intake was announced, the history written in the papers painted a picture that should have prompted those unfamiliar with pledging to ask why the process hadn’t changed years ago. The atrocities associated with pledging were now described as “rituals that have ranged from practical jokes and minor humiliations to forced intoxication and beatings.” Another article declared:

“On college campuses, black fraternities have a reputation for distinctively violent hazing.

Other accounts indicated that the major Black fraternities and sororities have developed a reputation for permitting their pledge practices to become peculiarly abusive, crossing a line into what is commonly referred to as hazing. For decades, violence and humiliation have been a part of pledging, for fraternities and sororities of all colors... But in the last 20 years, pledging for thousands of black college students has come to mean voluntarily being slapped or struck with oversized wooden paddles painted in the fraternity’s colors and coat of arms. Along the way, there have been broken bones and teeth, torn flesh and bruises of body and spirit. For weeks, sometimes almost an entire semester, black pledge periods have required that prospective members shave their heads, eat dog food, walk through campuses in tight lines and carry painted bricks, boxes and wooden shields.”

Some were concerned that the media would use the opportunity to bash the Black Greek organizations.

The numerous articles written about the end of pledging graphically described the process unlike before.

But the entrance into the membership intake era also was also an opportunity for some Black Greeks to express a sense of sorrow for participating in hazing. In a very candid interview with the Washington Post in June 1990, a fraternity man who pledged in 1986 at a southern, predominantly White university spoke of the horrors of his process. Speaking under the guarantee of anonymity, he acknowledged that he had been hazed, and had hazed, noting that he had a three-inch scar on his buttocks. His pledge process was one like those described in other accounts of dressing alike in fatigues, not speaking to anyone outside of class, marching in line, and memorization of special greetings for big brothers (his favorite being a 35-wd greeting for the chapter president.) This anonymous member then gave a detailed account of pledging, one that fully described the hazing he endured. He explained that the chapter imposed harsh discipline when pledges, for example, incorrectly presented the greetings, with their preferred method of beating being paddling. The man indicated that paddling (also called swinging the wood) occurred all the time.

“Nighttime, daytime, anytime. Mainly at night, mainly on weekends. Three whacks ain’t that bad after about ten of them. After you get your first ten in life, you can take three good ones... It gets to a point where you can’t sleep on your back anymore because your butt gets surprisingly hard. It gets swollen and black.”

His story of paddling ends when he discovered blood in his underwear, readily acknowledging that he did not feel any pain because of his numb buttocks. Fortunately, the violence ended then as well. Based on incidents such as this one, the decision in February 1990 was viewed as the logical means to protect the organizations. The national officials began to disclose openly that the organizations had been subject to numerous lawsuits due to hazing, and also indicated that they had been placed on notice by many college presidents, especially those on historically Black campuses (and many, ironically, were also members of these organizations), that if they did not address the issues associated with hazing, their chapters would no longer be recognized. But organization presidents also knew that a great segment of their members, both undergraduate and graduate, were skeptical of the proposed process. They also tried to ease their fears by indicating that membership intake would not just be a walk into the organizations. Prospective members would have to interview and then attend educational seminars, and in some cases, pass tests.

So after the February meeting, each national president began the process of lobbying for a new process.

Most returned to national meetings that summer and have the new membership intake policy adopted.

In essence, many presidents began politicking for the new process as a means of saving the organizations from themselves and preserving their legacy for the future.

SORORITY HAZING IN THIS ERA Up until this point, Black Greek hazing almost solely meant fraternities. There had been isolated cases of sorority hazing that made the news, but most of the incidents did not. It was not that sororities were not hazing, but most sorority members had not inflicted the kind of punishment that normally landed pledges in the hospital. But it has been duly noted that Black sororities did experience their share of hazing in the 1970s and 1980s, which caused them to reform their pledge programs.

UNDERGROUND PLEDGING: THE BEAT GOES ON

During this time of transition the opposition was very vocal. Many indicated that pledging was a tradition that had to be continued, and one that students (and alumni) were committed to continuing. Some in the inter-fraternal world questioned, “Does taking away the pledging process eliminate hazing or

put it at another level? If we assume that we’re going to pass policy and it’s going away, we’re kidding ourselves.” Just as that was happening, students began to endorse a new concept that was informally implemented in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As a result of shortened pledging periods, students created ways to extend pledging, a phenomenon soon to be known as “underground pledging.”

With the advent of membership intake, underground pledging became viewed as a legitimate means to continue the culture of pledging. Members threatened openly that the end of pledging would cause the underground pledging movement to emerge as a vehicle to keep pledging alive. But more interestingly, potential members wanted pledging to continue underground. One student at Clark Atlanta University, interviewed in 1990 after the ban on pledging was in effect, indicated, “I hope it goes underground. It’s unfortunate it has to be done, but at the same time I want to do the same things the people before me did to create that bond.” In a Washington Post article, “The Wrongs of the Rites of Brotherhood,” Marlow Martin, the former Omega Psi Phi president at the University of Maryland, commented on the need for a rigorous process to ensure bonding. Martin told the paper, “The physical aspect makes you want

it more... And without that physically and mentally challenging aspect, I don’t see how you could put the pressure on people where they would have to lean on each other and develop that bond.” Ironically, the first highly publicized hazing case of the membership intake era involved Omega Psi Phi at the University of Maryland, where Martin once was president.

So first, a “pre-pledge” phase was instituted, an unofficial start to the pledge period not sanctioned by the national organization. Essentially, though the national organization sanctioned a two-week pledge program, any local chapter could continue a six to eight-week program through pre-pledging. Once the new intake process was instituted, pre-pledging was augmented with the concept of “post-pledging.”

In this instance the chapter could give the appearance of following all of the national guidelines as given for membership intake, and after all official ceremonies were conducted, and the chapter advisers, state, or regional directors had returned to their domains, then underground pledging began. In essence, fully initiated members, with all rights and privileges thereto, subjected themselves to pledging and hazing in order to be fully “respected” as a member, a term that took on a new meaning in Black Greek lingo after 1990. The decision to end pledging in 1990 and replace it with the membership intake process would have consequences unforeseen, inaugurating a turbulent decade.

... AND THE BEAT GOES ON

As the first decade of the membership intake movement came to an end, it was clear that the new process did not replace pledging but rather gave it a new look. The new version of pledging was a semi-secret, underground process almost virtually invisible to national, regional, and graduate level officials as well as college and university staff members. But students who paid attention to Black fraternities and sororities knew when people were pledging. As noted by numerous students, underground pledging was done to gain respect; therefore their peers must know that they have participated in the process. Balancing who should know and who shouldn’t made and continues to make underground pledging a risky proposition for those who perpetuate it.

And, based on news reports of the late 1990s, many students chose to take the risk. In an alleged hazing incident at Georgia State University, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity was suspended after a non-Georgia State student’s mother contacted the national organization because her son was hospitalized. The injured boy attended Emory University, as did the three other pledges. Another casualty was the student government president at Georgia State, who resigned from office and from his reelection bid, as he was a member of the fraternity. He later attempted to return to office, but was not allowed by the university administration.

As incidents continued to pile up, more began to weigh in on hazing in Black fraternities and sororities.

Black Issues in Higher Education began to take lead in this regard. Two substantial articles were printed, one in the summer of 1997 and another in the summer of 1998 to address hazing. What may have seemed like overkill to some was just a reflection of the times. Between the two articles, more hazing cases were reported at the University of Maryland, Kansas State University, and Southern Illinois University.

While the 1997 piece talked about “Broken Pledges,” the next year the realization was that underground pledging and hazing were continuing without reason. The magazine sought out psychologists to try and understand what they called “The Persistent Madness of Greek Hazing” through a range of theories from homoeroticism, to a simple need to belong. That year the electronic media would again focus on Black Greek pledging in the membership intake era.

The plethora of hazing cases toward the end of the decade punctuated the fact that many students and alumni fully supported underground pledging, which includes brutal hazing. In February 1999 at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, a 21-year-old student was beaten while attempting to join Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. He suffered internal injuries that required at least two operations, including a colostomy and numerous weeks of recovery. Seven Alpha Phi Alpha members were suspended from school, but police investigations determined that two Delaware men, both 28-years of age, used paddles on the aspirants, and both were then charged under the state’s anti-hazing law. As the Chester County district attorney explained, “These two defendants were out of college. You can’t dismiss it as some I-didn’t-know-better college prank.”

As membership intake enters its second decade now, it appears that the historically BGLOs have begun to retreat from the earlier mandate of membership intake. Modifications in the programs over the past few years signify that there is recognition that the current undergraduate culture is much stronger than legislative efforts by graduate members. The task, then, will be to find a common ground of acceptance for a program that both graduate and undergraduate members can endorse before these organizations face monumental lawsuits that will jeopardize their existence.

Double-Consciousness

The interaction between black men within their group and U.S. society brings us to the core question of violence and how it relates to black male identity. This is the area where the most cogent answers to our questions concerning violence in Black Greek-lettered fraternities are found. As with the historic and contemporary reasons for viewing this study through political lenses, the issue of violence within the organizations does not exist within a void. The socio-political acclimation of blacks in the United States is woven into the very fabric of the fraternal system. This acclimation has most certainly been violent and, at some points, brutally inhuman. Black fraternity hazing is but another manifestation of violence and sacrifice regardless of whether it is realized. This violence and sacrifice is also solidly political because it connects processes of interpersonal and societal socialization to the predicaments arising from cultural and political power discrepancies between ruling blocks and marginalized groups and ultimately, issues of construction of the black male Self.

Our engagement of violence in black fraternities forces us to face the brute possibility that hazing would end immediately if potential members simply refused to be hazed. This process, as with all hegemonic interactions, involves both coercion and consent. Without obtaining the actual consent of the violated subject, this particular type of victimage could not occur. The fact of the matter is many black men want to be hazed. This, as we shall see, is because the construction of a Self has much to do with a societal and personal dialectic. In short, this type of struggle is seen as a way to prove one’s manhood. Attaining masculinity in the United States speaks to a lifelong perennial quest among American men to possess certain abilities on the capitalist landscape. The Anglo-American definition of what a viable man constitutes is to be a “responsible, good provider for self and family.� This definition in itself has historically put African American men only on the margins of manhood since outlets for achieving male dignity and identity in the political, economic, and social circles have been more readily available to white men than to black men. Restrictions placed on black men have naturally hampered their ability to achieve in family systems, take care of a wife and children, or to be an effective father according to traditional standards.

Noel Cazenave asks an important question in his book, Black Men in America, “What happens to black men who accept society’s idea of what means is to be a man but are denied the resources to ‘earn’ their masculinity through traditional channels?”

Black men often try to alleviate this type of pressure through various avenues such as fraternities. Many who pledge Black Greek fraternities claim they do not only for the social outlets they afford, but also for access to a network of fiercely loyal alumni who can be counted on for introductions, jobs, favors and contracts. These benefits create a mechanism that enable black men to help one another survive within economic, social, and political structures that have largely oppressed and thus ignored them. Understanding the issue of disenfranchisement, the double-consciousness of black men, and the ways in which these men seek to remedy these problems cogently helps us to understand black male identity. Our current national ideas surrounding goodness and propriety must also be considered here. Modern America has constructed a culture that places an inordinate value on prestige, personal power, and wealth. The dominance of these values intensifies the black man’s identity problems. In the modern environment of greed, conspicuous consumption, and envy, the very core of who we are as people and Americans, black and white, has changed. An unvirtueous, racist, classist, sexist post-modern America inevitably brings a different, brutal, selfish, greedy, non-civil, American Self into existence. And since we are all products of this society, no one can be a Self on one’s own. We can only be who we are as we relate to others. Therefore, we are always conscious of others in the affirmative (those who we wish to accept us) and in the negative (by those who are not themselves accepted by those we wish to accept us, and subsequently those who we do not wish to join or become).

Problems regarding recognition or nonrecognition by others are integrally connected to issues of self-recognition, because identity turns on the interrelated problems of self-recognition and recognition by others. One must always then deal with the intersubjectivity of the “I” and “me” when forming identity in that we all ask the question, “What do I think of myself and what do others think of me?”

Identity and recognition then are intimately tied to multilevel social and political interactions because “discourses regarding who it is possible or valuable to be inevitably shape the way we look at and constitute ourselves, with varying degrees of tension.” That this subjectivity is not uniquely modern does not stop it from being distinctively modern. The discourse of self is distinctively modern, and modernity is also distinctively linked to the discourse of self, not just because of the moral and cognitive weight attached to selves and self-identity.

Modern concerns with identity stem also from ways in which modernity has made identity distinctively problematic. It is not simply or even clearly the case that it matters more to us than to our fore-bearers to be who we are. Rather, it is much harder for us to establish who we are and maintain this own identity satisfactorily in our lives along with the recognition of others. The identity problems brought on then by modernity are not simple to resolve. “The sheer scope and complexity of recognizable identities and competing social projects and identity schemes makes recognition problematic and in need of specific establishment of various interactional settings.”

Considering this discussion, let us return to the case of hazing.

Black Greek fraternities serve as a setting to help solve the identity problem and hazing is an avenue toward recognition in this setting. Most potential BGF initiates are probably not sadomasochists, but consent to hazing because they do not want to be considered the negative “other.” But beyond the fraternal association, what do these black men really want?

Their core desire is likely not simply to just to join a fraternity, and this is where historic societal disenfranchisement comes to bear. It may be that black men constantly seek alternative zones of power denied to them in the larger life world.

In the book, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America, author Mark Carnes makes a case that many men are attracted to ritualistic processes that mandate ordeal and provide the symbolic threat of death. He then rejects the hypothesis that men are biologically impelled to take part in initiation rituals and asserts the reasons for this are very much external to the individual. He hypothesizes that the fraternity initiation ritual is the product of Victorian social structures because capitalism mandated the familial interaction in which fathers were away earning a living and mothers were left to rear their sons.

This eventually caused an identity crisis in men, and thus they sought avenues to affirm their masculinity. By resolving these emotional conflicts, rituals then promoted the well-being of these young men and presumably, of society itself. In the case of modern black men, the father may also be away from home in the workplace, but he is also often absent from the life of the young man altogether. This phenomenon is largely a result of the historical attack on black family structures.

Whether the trend of recovery still exists in the contemporary United States is questionable. Considering the absent father still exists in many instances in the black case, and even if he is not absent, rarely does he control the economic resources of that of his white male counterpart, the crisis of identity is, once again, intensified more in the black man. Clearly related to DuBois’s “double-consciousness” is the assertion that the black man’s unavoidable search for manhood is often “lined with pitfalls of racism and discrimination, negative self image, guilt, shame, and fear.”

He then struggles toward manhood with a sense that he lacks something; he is manque. His schools place him in the lower achievement groups; his teachers speak of language deficits; economists call him disadvantaged; and psychologists refer to him as disordered. Having then been denied the natural way to develop his sense of manliness, he must constantly prove to himself that he is a man. This “masculine protest” can become the constant thread woven throughout the black male’s daily interaction:

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The humiliating double bind of having to prove manhood while being denied access to the legitimate tools with which to do so creates emotional drudgery for black males. Like so many other men, black males do want to be productive and responsible citizens but can they? Do they have real choices?

Sitting on the margins of American society often makes those choices distressingly narrow. Thus the quest for affirmation of black manhood is obviously challenging because of the ever present DuBoisian double-consciousness brought on by the black man’s marginalized existence.

Practically speaking, neither fraternities nor any other organizational construct seem to be capable of cleansing the black man of deeply encoded social debris. To be fair, this is not the fault of the groups. The expectations of potential and active members are simply too high. Admittedly, we all wear masks and necessarily have different “selves.” Although many selves exist, the two of concern with respect to Black Greeks are the authentic (the “Self’ in contrast to a “self”) and the fraternal.

The authentic self speaks to who we are at our core, and our interpersonal and societal socializations construct it over long periods of time and through diverse situations. The authentic self is over-arching and all other selves become nothing more than subsidiaries or tributaries. Although the fraternal self is nothing more than a tributary, many members of fraternities mistakenly see it as the authentic. No organization can create an authentic self on its own, and if this is not realized and the fraternal is seen as the authentic, insidious behaviors from the larger life world are transferred to the fraternal. Hazing is the result of the illusion that power of the authentic self is brought into being and reaffirmed through the dehumanization of the other (in this case, the pledge).

This is why the continuity of the Self that these groups seem to construct is inconsistent over time. In reality, these BGFs are not autonomous builders of the Self at all, but the black male Self to date is a de-centered, fragmented, sociopolitical construct societal forces act on. It seems all too appropriate at this juncture to once again look to DuBois who, possibly more than any other thinker, had his finger on the true pulse of black America.

He [the black man] felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, wi

rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a po

weight of his ignorance, not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of

of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his bu centuries of systemic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped

also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adultere

thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rat

But alas! While sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitu

shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly

against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the “lower

of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, cu

obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this

a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-dis

and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and

dying, cried the dark hosts; We cannot write, our voting is vain; What ne

echoed and enforced this self-criticism saying: Be content to be servan

with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud, and behold the suicide of

ithout land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with the

oor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the

f the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness

urden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but

ers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home. A people

ther allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems.

utes, the very soil of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the

y explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning

r� races. To which the Negro cries “Amen!� and swears that to so much

ulture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does

s he stands helpless, dismayed, and speechless. But the facing of so vast

sparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression

d portents came borne upon the four winds: Lo! We are diseased and

eed of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation

nts, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? Away

f a race!

Violence is not the root problem that must be remedied.

Neither is violence a victory for the “I,� but a victory for consent with respect to the violator and the violated.

For the black man, violence and struggle have become reified as tools for acquiring critical social rewards. They have become achievements in and of themselves because everything else seems to have failed. So, here he stands the black man, a man who often lacks or perceives there is a great possibility of him lacking the means to attain his position as the traditional head of his family, acquire a “good” education, get or move up in a “good” job, or have the respect of his fellows as well as the ever watchful “man.” He subsequently seeks to maintain some semblance of these proper, manly achievements by traveling alternate paths. These paths often include using physical force because the “language of violence is one way to write a more dominative script.”

The case of fraternities and black male identity raises several intriguing questions. To begin with, as we have just seen, the special attraction of the fraternity can be found in its historic implementation of ritualized ordeal and initiation. The loss of memory and depoliticalization of the organizations, however, have replaced the historic purpose of ordeal and of initiation with the pursuit of a rather different, almost unrecognizable, sort of manhood.

JIGABOOS vs. the WANNABEES

School Daze and the Social Construction of Femininity

Spike Lee’s 1988 film School Daze is the only major motion picture where black Greek-letter organizations (BGLOs) are the central subject. The film operates almost entirely alone in representing African American college students and their Greek-letter organizations.

Lee presents two diametrically opposed views on culture and perceptions of self in School Daze: the haves and the have-nots.

The haves are the Wannabee characters, beige to light-brown hued men and women who are members of two fictional organizations: Gammites (fraternity) and the Gamma Rays (little sister sorority). The Gammites and Gamma Rays flaunt crass materialism, are politically apathetic, are shown as a mimicry of white fraternal members, and spend the majority of their time engaging in unproductive hazing and pledging rituals. Lee calls the have-nots Jigaboos. These dark-brown hued college students are Afrocentric and politically focused; they commit their energy to demanding that their college, the fictitious and historically black Mission College, in Atlanta, GA, financially divest from South Africa.

It seems that School Daze is a textual representation of African American sororities that begs for analysis. Lee does not disclose that his Wannabee characters, the women’s sororal group the Gamma Rays, depict an actual African American sorority. Yet in production notes, commentary suggests that the film’s characters parallel two existing sororities: Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) and Delta Sigma Theta (DST).

It is not too much of an interpretive leap to say that the text is suggestive of the perceived aesthetics of AKA and DST. School Daze, and therefore, creates a cinematic lens to view these two organizations in terms of this popular representation.

Although Lee’s film is not entirely about African American sororities per se, he expresses his ideas about African American fraternal organizations most viciously through his female characters. He uses key moments in the movie to illustrate how these sororities stand as symbols of the ongoing problems facing African American college communities.

The beginning of the film uses a montage shot: black and white still photos of Mission College appear on the screen while the old Negro spiritual “I’m Gonna Find Me a Home” plays in the background. Each photograph shows the growth of the institution with ceremonies, dignitaries, commencement provocations, and 1960s sit ins and protest marches. The music fades, the photographs dissolve and slowly fade to black, and the spectator sees the today’s Mission College with a letter overlay that reads, “Mission College, founded in 1883, to Uplift the Race.”

The viewer is then thrust into a modern day protest, where one of the main protagonists, the brown-skinned Slice, leads a rally in support of Mission College’s divestiture of its interests in South Africa. Interrupting the speech is a line of pledges, with identical clothing and shaved heads, walking in a lockstep. This is the Gammite pledge group who enter the scene shouting, “GPhi G’ GPhi G’ GPhi G!” School Daze’s beginning, then, sets the stage for the inane cultural politics of the film: fair-skinned African Americans are all “bad” and deeply desire to be white, while dark-skinned African Americans are all “good,” authentic black folk. The Wannabee sorority women and their brown-skinned counterparts the Jigaboos, are central examples of this dichotomous ideology. The Wannabee sorority women, led by Jane, and their aesthetic opposites the Jigaboos led by Rachel, meet in the cafeteria hallway and exchange words.

The Jigaboos accuse the Wannabees of having weaves and colored contact lenses, and the Wannabees reply that the Jigaboos are jealous of them.

The women’s appearance in this scene present an important iconic message.

The Wannabee women wear the colors gray and white and taunt the other women with Hattie McDaniel masks; the Jigaboos wear red and white and taunt the Wannabee women with Vivien Leigh masks. Their clothing seems strikingly similar to the colors for AKA and DST (intense pastels and bold colors), and the animosity between the women is suspiciously dose to the long-standing feud rumored to exist between the two sororities.

The Hattie McDaniel masks suggest Wannabees associate dark-skinned women with mammies, and the Vivien Leigh masks imply that the lightskinned women are mirror images of hyper-feminine, and refined white womanhood. According to the film’s iconography, Wannabees are seen as mistresses of Jigaboos, just as in the film Gone with the Wind where Vivien Leigh plays the mistress while Hattie McDaniel plays the servant.

These two camps thus represent the extremes of cinematic caricature in a film of southern loss and redemption.

Spike Lee’s take on politics of skin color and hair texture begs questions that the film seems incapable of answering with nuance and complexity: Are lighter-skinned African American women really the sole perpetuators of the pathological discrimination he visualizes? And in what ways do men and dominant society project and perpetuate those rigid, Anglocentric beauty aesthetics onto African American women?

Unfortunately, hairstyle politics as it affects men and masculinity is absent in the film, other than a brief moment when the male Jigaboos denigrate a group of “local yokel” African American men for their curly hair processes.

At a neighborhood fast food joint the two groups have a verbal altercation where locals accuse the Jigaboos of not being black enough because they are college students. And when one of the locals asks Slice if he is black, he responds with anger: “Don’t you ever question whether I’m Black. In fact, I was gonna ask your countrs ass, why do you put those Jheri curl, drip drip chemicals in your black nappy hair? And, on top of that, come out in public with those plastic shower caps on your head just like a bitch.”

This scene supports the film’s position that men are political subjects and that deviation from this essentialist position is feminine. Black male identity here is stable and strong, and when it is questionable, it is seen as sign of femininity. The color complex in African American communities is women’s domain, and the political struggle over blackness is men’s terrain.

“The pathological consciousness hav black men so dee outrageous to ima which a light skinn finds herself chose who, she later di out some subcon possess the once u woman.�

al effects of color ve affected some eply that it is not agine a scenario in ned black woman en by a black man iscovers, is acting nscious desire to unobtainable white ~ Sociologist Margo Okazawa Rey

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l effects of color ve affected some eply that it is not agine a scenario in ned black woman en by a black man iscovers, is acting nscious desire to unobtainable white

The film’s denial of this larger cultural context is crucial, because it shifts the issue of colorism onto African American women. The process by which male-centered discourses and dominant cultural attitudes create, fuel, and foster the aesthetic insecurities and beauty standards that the two groups of women represent is concealed in the film. When placed in intra-cultural context, Lee’s take on color and political divisions in African America holds different meanings School Daze is a post-modern production of the house versus field slave narrative often espoused by black nationalists in the 1960s, which held that skin color influenced the insurgency of African slaves. Of course, colorism among African Americans exists within all color spectrums; skin color often becomes an aesthetic cultural wager in a basically racially intolerant and color conscious world.

In the U.S., prejudice based on skin color can be traced back to slavery and its aftermath. The color of an enslaved or free African’s skin often brought temporary inroads into America’s white world, and the advantages with it, for the lighter hued, and exclusion for the darker hued. It is no accident that, during slavery, large numbers of free people of African descent had lighter brown skin color. Social, political, and economic advantages with access to education, land rights, and for those born enslaved, emancipation, were the by-products of skin color advantage. However, even though skin color was and is an unfair resource and advantage, it did not place people of African descent in an equal position with whites or shield them from racism.

Wake up.

An Imitation of Life

Gamma Ray women, according to Tisha Campbell who played the lead role, “Jane,” were just talking heads for African American male anxiety and confusion about African American women’s hairstyling, skin color prejudice, and beauty. That the male actors actually wrote the Gamma Rays’ line in the “Straight and Nappy” song is telling.

This ventriloquism places the issue within a male-dominated discourse about African American women, which disenables the African American female subjectivity and agency in the film. Certainly the entire film is from the director’s male-centered perspective, but that Lee encouraged the men to write the lines for the women illustrates his bold presentation of African American sorority women through the eyes of men, and not as a true depiction of the everyday lives of the objects of his caricature.

Most of the actresses admitted as much and felt that, unlike the male actors, they were not agents or innovators in the film process. Indeed, the African American actresses in School Daze were very uncomfortable and upset before and after the “Straight and Nappy” and Greek show scenes. As Joie Lee, who played one of the Jigaboo characters explains: “The verses we said at the Greek show blew the Gamma Rays away; they took it very, very personally... the Gamma Rays were looking at us like, ‘Are you playing a character or not?’ Some of them were so upset, even in tears.”

The behind-the-scene problems inform the film’s actual presentation in other ways as well. The women who played Jigaboo characters stayed at inexpensive hotels during the filming of School Daze with no wardrobe people or beauticians to style their hair while Wannabee men and women and the Jigaboo male characters stayed at more expensive hotel, were given wardrobes, ate catered meals, and had their hair done by stylists.

It was Spike Lee’s policy for the groups to remain separate and unequal, so that they could stay in character. The actresses playing the Jigaboos were conditioned to harbor anger and resentment toward the rest of the actors and crew. Lee’s separation of the actors facilitated their character development but caused issues among the women both on and offstage.

School Daze’s narrative leaves little doubt about which group Spike Lee thinks are cultural imitators (i.e., African American sorority women) and which are political initiators (African American men). Jigaboo women, or, as Lee writes in his production notes, “da natural sistahs,” lack cultural vitality too and become tools to chastise the Gamma Ray characters.

As critic Michelle Wallace writes, Lee uses “Black female humiliation for plot resolution in most of his films, and School Daze is in accord with his apparent quest to construct an essentially good, black male cinematic subject at the expense of myriad African American representations.”

The Story Continues...

In 1998, Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority made national headlines when an alumni chapter in Raleigh, North Carolina insisted that a brown-skinned African American teenager pin up her African locks during its cotillion ceremony. The young woman, Michelle Barskile, refused and skipped the cotillion. Barskile’s hairstyle, the cotillion organizers felt, would be a distraction. AKAs hair discrimination was more upsetting to Barskile because she was looking forward to the sorority’s acknowledgment of her academic achievements at the cotillion.

Barskile’s mother had been an AKA debutante, and Michelle wanted to continue the legacy but did not want her to compromise her ethics to conform to the local chapter’s rules. When the story made national headlines, AKA headquarters responded to the incident by saying that it was “local chapter business” and that the sorority had “no policy on hairstyles.” In the press, AKA members, pointed to writer Toni Morrison, a well known member of the sorority who has African locks, as proof of the absence of a hairstyle policy. Allegedly, Barskile’s locks did not disqualify her, and cotillion organizers merely requested that she wear her hair in what the chapter considered a suitable style.

The problem with School Daze is not the revelation of situations like this but it is the historicism and cultural essentialism and the way in which Lee projects these lopsided politics and problems onto women. School Daze begins the important cinematic conversation, but issues as they pertain to BGLOs cannot be covered by a simplistic analogy to dark and light skin.

BGLOs operate within multiple and highly complex cultural and historically formed contexts which are not fully represented by economic and color determinism of School Daze’s haves and have-nots.

BGLOs arose out of a diverse set of circumstances and encompass all of these formative parts, not to mention the variables of gender, race, class, sexuality,and color. School Daze’s monological argument then lacks this historical and cultural contextualization. Instead, it focuses on simplistic and parochial views of African American culture, life, and politics and as a result, creates a masculinist perception of African American sororities, rather than representing it in a context where African American women exist as subjects with some type of agency. In critiquing School Daze and Lee;s dismissal of black womanhood, cultural critic Houston Baker writes that the film could reflexively be directed at Lee himself: “Please wake up.”

Proud to Be.

Imagine a carefully fashioned coat hanger, slow-roasted over the bluegreen flame of a Magic Chef range, and heading for the fleshy expanse of your upper arm, your chest or the side of your behind.

For a fraction of a second, you can feel the heat before it touches your skin. Your heart races and you want to draw back. But you don't because you want your brand to be sweet.

Or if you think you'll move, you brace yourself, holding onto a sink or table; or perhaps you get somebody else to hold you down.

Then comes the “hit”

a quick “psssssssssst”

They say it doesn't really hurt. But the smell of burning flesh can be weird...

Especially when it's yours.

Imagine being branded.

Skin Deep

“Branding has become an expression of machismo.

While not sanctioned by any of the Greek-letter organizations, it is offered only after initiation. It can make for a special kind of party – after all, hot irons can sometimes melt the steeliest resolve.”

Till the Day I Die As Myyucca Sherman strolls across the campus of Howard University he stops occasionally to slap hands or trade barks with another “Que dog” who spots his bright purple sweat shirt emblazoned with gold Greek letters. The 19-yr old Sherman, has been a “Que,” a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, since the spring of 2000, and has gotten three brands – double, interlocking Omegas on his chest, and another large Omega with a Greek “A” inside, for Alpha chapter, in the middle of his left arm. Of his initiation class of nine men, all chose to get branded.

It was the second time a group made such a permanent impression on him.

Sherman was reluctant to show the three-inch, five-point star that rides high on his left hip. He got that one at age 13 to mark his membership in the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, a gang in his home town. “The way our sect ran, you either could get prayed in or beat in. I got beat in. Then there was the celebrating with drink and I was branded the day after with thick paper clips.”

Sherman credits Upward Bound, a pre-college program, and the rites of passage activities in high school with turning him from his gangster ways. He entered the University of Akron at age 16 and transferred to Howard a year later. After joining the Ques at Howard, he says: “Initially,

I was not going to get a brand, but when I thought about it, I equated the fraternity life as another rite of passage, but more ritualistic and traditional than juvenile self-mutilation.

This brand wouldn't be like it was in a gang. It had deeper meaning, more history.”

Equal Opportunity Depending on how she sits, you may be able to make out the Delta Sigma Theta greek initials on Pam Dickinson's right outer thigh. The 21-yr-old, psychology and human services counseling major at Old Dominion University, says that of her initiation class of thirteen, only two got branded.

“I always wanted to get a brand. In my case, other than the fact that I think some of them look nice, for me it's a certain rush that you get...

It kind of excited me” She says, “A lot of people were like, Are you crazy? But once it healed, a lot of people told me it looked nice. I think the frats think it's sexy, especially where I got it. It's not like it's on my arm and it's a big keloid.

In fact, I think it's kind of ladylike in a sense.”

While the majority of Black Greeks who get branded are men, it seems that women emerged in the 1990s as active participants in branding as well. In an article for the Indiana University campus paper, a member of Zeta Phi Beta indicated she was branded on her initiation night as a permanent symbol of a precious period in her life.

The story done by the paper caught the attention of a granddaughter of one of the founders of Delta Sigma Theta, who was herself a member of the sorority and touched off debate within the organization regarding the appropriateness of branding for the sorority members. But the fact still remained that the practice gained popularity with women by the end of the twentieth century.

Brand Appeal Duane Filey, 27 a 4th-grade teacher and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, acknowledges wryly that, for some reason, women seem to find his scar compelling. Still, Filey, who has a diamond with a K inside branded on the left side of his chest, now says he regrets having it done.

“I was young and thought it was a cool thing to do,” Filey says. “I was like, I can have my shirt off and the babes will look at it. Women are into that. The brand, the frat... it was a conversation piece, they wanted to touch it.” He now calls the practice barbaric.

“As I got older, I began to think about slavery and that sort of thing. I can't even find the words to describe how ill it was to get a brand that identified you as a slave. This clearly isn't for that purpose, but now I think people have just gotten out of control.

It's a big fad right now.”

When Suitland High math teacher and basketball coach Eric Jeter, 31, first came home with his Phi Beta Sigma brands, he says, “My parents were like, ‘What, do you think you are a piece of meat or something?

We fought hard to get away from slavery and branding and you go ahead and brand yourself.’”

Jeter says he understood why they were concerned,but disagreed with their sentiments: “It’s not about

slavery, it’s a pride thing. You want people to know which organization you belong to without asking. When they see the brand, they know.”

I’m Just Pretty Just down the hall, Suitland's vice principal, Mark Fossett, 30, who has Kappa brands on his chest and arm, says, “The first question everybody always asks is, ‘Did it hurt?’ When I first got branded, it didn't really hurt.

But when it was healing, then it hurt.

The actual brand was a quick ‘pssssst.’ It was like an instant of pain.”

He got branded in a hotel during an annual summer Greek picnic in Philly.

“There was a Kappa brother hitting other brothers and there were about 15 of us. He hit me – straight from the fire to my arm – then he heated the brand back up and hit the next guy behind me. Then he went from his arm to my chest. The iron could not be as hot, it's not like you have all that meat there so you don't want it to be

too deep.”

Both Jeter and Filey have also seen students at their school who have burned initials in their arms or tried to brand themselves with cigarettes or super-heated erasers, but they say it’s not the same thing.

“Kids nowadays carve out their names with an eraser and call it a brand when it’s not. It’s more of a fad now, like tattoos.”

Although Fossett pledged a fraternity that plays on a national reputation for having good-looking guys, he sees his brand as keeping with that. He says,

“Basically, I’m just pretty, and the K on my arm is pretty too.”

Everybody Knows a Nut Usually each chapter has somebody to turn to for branding. At Howard, most folks call him the “Nut” for his willingness to go to extremes. But the brothers of Omega Psi Phi also know the 6-foot-3 graduating senior who is majoring in sculpture and psychology by another name.

Nut, has perfected his craft; he can fashion a wire coat hanger into a plain Omega, make it asymmetrical for the “stepping Que” effect, or customize it with a dramatic thunderbolt.

Though there is a certain artistry in the design, the skill is all in the hit.

After his 1995 initiation, he learned by carefully watching another man.

And by being branded. Repeatedly.

Now, he usually can make his brands on the spot, but he happens to have a few on hand in his kitchen cabinet.

Big ones.

“If you really want to show you are a Que, I'm not going to use some little circle,” he says. “If your arm isn't big enough, I'm going to have to use your chest, but something is going to be big enough.”

“One of the things, that solidified branding as something to do was looking at the ideals that our frat was based on – manhood, scholarship – It seemed to signify the ‘til the day I die’ness of it all, because you can’t remove it.”

The Future of Black Greek Life

“FIRST OF ALL, SERVANTS OF ALL, WE SHALL TRANSCEND ALL” Alpha Phi Alpha (ΑΦΑ) is the first intercollegiate fraternity established by African Americans. Founded on December 4, 1906, on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Alpha Phi Alpha has initiated over 175,000 members in the organization and has been open to men of all races since 1940. The fraternity utilizes motifs and artifacts from Ancient Egypt to represent the organization and preserves its archives at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

The founders, Henry Callis, Charles Chapman, Eugene Jones, George Kelley, Nathaniel Murray, Robert Ogle, and Vertner Tandy, are collectively known as the "Seven Jewels." The fraternity expanded when a second chapter was chartered at Howard University in 1907. Beginning in 1908, Alpha Phi Alpha became the prototype for other Black Greek-Letter Organizations (BGLOs). Today, there are over 680 active Alpha chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, the West Indies, and the Virgin Islands.

Alpha Phi Alpha evolved into a primarily service organization and has provided leadership and service during the Great Depression, World Wars, Civil Rights Movements, and addresses social issues such as apartheid, AIDS, urban housing, and other economic, cultural, and political issues affecting people of color. The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial and World Policy Council are programs of Alpha Phi Alpha, and the fraternity jointly leads philanthropic programming initiatives with March of Dimes, Head Start, Boy Scouts of America and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

“BY CULTURE AND BY MERIT” Alpha Kappa Alpha (AΚA) is the first Greek-lettered sorority established and incorporated by African American college women. The sorority was founded on January 15, 1908, at Howard University in Washington, D.C. by a group of nine students, led by Ethel Hedgeman Lyle. Forming a sorority broke barriers for African-American women in areas where little power or authority existed due to a lack of opportunities for minorities and women in the early twentieth century. Alpha Kappa Alpha was incorporated on January 29, 1913.

Consisting of college-educated women of African, Caucasian, Asian, and Hispanic descent, the sorority serves through a membership of more than 200,000 women in over 975 chapters in the United States and several other countries. Women may join in undergraduate chapters at a college or university, or through a graduate chapter after acquiring a degree.

Since being founded over a century ago, Alpha Kappa Alpha has helped to improve social and economic conditions through community service programs. Members have improved education through independent initiatives, contributed to community-building by creating programs and associations – such as the Mississippi Health Clinic – and influenced federal legislation by Congressional lobbying through the National Non-Partisan Lobby on Civil and Democratic Rights.

The sorority works with communities through service initiatives and progressive programs relating to education, family, health, and business.

“ACHIEVEMENT IN EVERY FIELD OF HUMAN ENDEAVOR” Kappa Alpha Psi (KAΨ) is a collegiate Greek-letter fraternity with a predominantly African American membership. Since the fraternity’s founding on January 5, 1911 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Illinois, the fraternity has never limited membership based on color, creed or national origin. The fraternity has over 150,000 members with 700 undergraduate and alumni chapters in every state of the United States, and international chapters in the United Kingdom, Germany, Korea, Japan, the Caribbean, Saint Thomas, Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands and South Africa.

The president of the national fraternity is known as the Grand Polemarch, who assigns a Province Polemarch for each of the twelve provinces (districts/regions) of the nation. The fraternity has many notable members recognized as leaders in the arts, athletics, business, civil rights, education, government, and science sectors at the local, national and international level. The Kappa Alpha Psi Journal is the official magazine of the fraternity since 1914. The Journal is published four times a year in February, April, October and December.

Kappa Alpha Psi is a major contributor in the fields of political, social, cultural and scholastic achievement. The fraternity sponsors programs providing community service, social welfare and academic scholarship through the Kappa Alpha Psi Foundation and is a supporter of the United Negro College Fund and Habitat for Humanity. Kappa Alpha Psi is a member of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) and the North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC).

The fraternity is the first predominantly African American Greek-letter society founded west of the Appalachian Mountains still in existence, and is known for its “cane stepping” in NPHC organized step shows.

“FRIENDSHIP IS ESSENTIAL TO THE SOUL” Omega Psi Phi (ΩΨΦ) is an international fraternity and was the first African-American national fraternal organization to be founded at a historically black college. Omega Psi Phi was founded on November 17, 1911, at Howard University in Washington, D.C. by three undergraduate students and one faculty advisor. The founders were Howard University juniors Edgar Amos Love, Oscar James Cooper and Frank Coleman.

The first faculty advisor of the fraternity was Dr. Ernest Everett Just, who early on was accorded the status of founder by the three undergraduates. Each of the founders also had distinguished careers in their chosen fields: Bishop Edgar Love, became Bishop of the United Methodist Church; Dr. Oscar Cooper, was a prominent physician in Philadelphia for over 50 years; Professor Frank Coleman, was the Chairman of the Department of Physics at Howard University for many years; and Dr. Ernest E. Just, was a world-renowned biologist.

From its inception, the fraternity has worked to build a strong, effective force of men dedicated to its Cardinal Principles of manhood, scholarship, perseverance, and uplift. In 1927, at the urging of fraternity member Carter G. Woodson, the fraternity made National Negro Achievement Week an annual observance, and it continues today as Black History Month.

Since 1945, the fraternity has undertaken a National Social Action Program to meet the needs of African Americans in the areas of health, housing, civil rights, and education. Omega Psi Phi has been a patron of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) since 1955, providing an annual gift of $50,000 to the program.

“INTELLIGENCE IS THE TORCH OF WISDOM” Delta Sigma Theta (ΔΣΘ) Sorority is a non-profit Greek-letter organization of college educated women who perform public service initiatives, placing emphasis on the African-American community. Membership in Delta Sigma Theta is open to any woman who meets the membership requirements, regardless of race, nationality, or religion.

Delta Sigma Theta was founded on January 13, 1913, on the campus of Howard University by twenty-two brave women: Osceola McCarthy, Marguerite Young, Winona Cargile, Ethel Cuff, Bertha Pitts, Zephyr Chisom, Edna Brown, Jessie McGuire, Frederica Chase, Myra Davis, Olive C. Jones, Jimmie Bugg, Pauline Oberdorfer, Vashti Turley, Naomi Sewell, Mamie Reddy, Eliza P. Shippen, Florence Lechter, Ethel Carr, Wertie Blackwell, Madree Penn, and Edith Motte.

These women had been members of the already existent Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Howard University, but decided to start their own organization in order to to adopt a more service-oriented focus and to address the social concerns of the day, particularly those that impacted the rights of women. Today, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority is the largest AfricanAmerican Greek-lettered sorority in the world.

The Grand Chapter has a membership of over 250,000 predominantly African-American, college-educated women. The sorority currently has 950-plus alumnae and collegiate chapters located in the United States, England, Japan (Tokyo and Okinawa), Germany, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Seoul, Saint Thomas and Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands; Haiti and Jamaica.

[1] Delta Sigma Theta is a member of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) — an organization of nine international Greek-letter sororities and fraternities — the NAACP and National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). The organization’s president is Cynthia M. A. Butler McIntyre.

“CULTURE FOR SERVICE AND SERVICE FOR HUMANITY” Phi Beta Sigma (ΦΒΣ) is a predominately African-American fraternity which was founded at Howard University on January 9, 1914, by three young African-American male students.

The founders A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F. Morse, and Charles I. Brown, wanted to organize a Greek letter fraternity that would exemplify the ideals of brotherhood, scholarship, and service. They deeply wished to create an organization that was “a part of” the general community rather than “apart from” the general community. They believed that each potential member should be judged by his own merits rather than family background or affluence... without regard of race, nationality, skin tone or texture of hair. They wanted their fraternity to exist as part of greater brotherhood which would be devoted to the “inclusive we” rather than the “exclusive we.”

Today, Phi Beta Sigma has blossomed into an international organization of leaders, while experiencing unprecedented growth and continues to be a leader among issues of social justice as well as proponent of the African American community. No longer a single entity, the Fraternity has now established the Phi Beta Sigma Educational Foundation, the Phi Beta Sigma Housing Foundation, the Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union a notable youth auxiliary program, “The Sigma Beta Club” and the Phi Beta Sigma Charitable Outreach Foundation. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, founded in 1920 is the fraternity’s sister organization. The fraternity is a member of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), a coordinating organization of nine (historically-Black) international Greek letter sororities and fraternities.

“A COMMUNITY-CONSCIOUS, ACTION-ORIENTED ORGANIZATION” Zeta Phi Beta (ΖΦΒ) is an international, historically black Greek-lettered sorority and member of NPHC, the National PanHellenic Council. Zeta Phi Beta was founded January 16, 1920, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C. The sorority was founded on the precepts that elitism and socializing had overshadowed the real mission of sororities“to address and correct the problems of society, particularly, those plaguing the African-American community.”

The sorority was founded on the principles of Scholarship, Service, Sisterly Love, and Finer Womanhood. Zeta Phi Beta is the only NPHC sorority that is constitutionally bound to a brother fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma Two of its members, A. Langston Taylor and Charles Taylor, were instrumental in helping Zeta Phi Beta become established. The Sorority was incorporated on March 30, 1923 in Washington D.C. and also incorporated in the state of in Illinois in 1939.

Zeta Phi Beta is the first sorority to charter chapters in Africa, establish auxiliary groups, and have a paid international headquarters.[citation needed] Today there are also chapters in U.S. Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Bahamas, Japan, Korea, Barbados, and Haiti.

“GREATER SERVICE, GREATER PROGRESS” Sigma Gamma Rho (ΣΓΡ) was founded on the campus of Butler University, November 12, 1922, by seven school teachers in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was incorporated within the state of Indiana in December of 1922 and as a national collegiate sorority on December 30, 1929, at which time a charter was granted and the Alpha chapter was established. The sorority is a non-profit whose aim is to enhance the quality of life within the community. Public service, leadership development and the education of youth are the hallmark of the organization’s programs and activities.

Founded in the midst of segregation, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, is the only sorority of the other four African-American sororities which comprise the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), to be established at a predominantly white campus.

Sigma Gamma Rho also supports two affiliates: the RHOERS, a group of young women, and PHILOS, women, friends of the sorority.

Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, has over 90,000 members with more than 500 undergraduate and alumnae chapters throughout the United States, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Africa and Korea.

“BUILDING A TRADITION, NOT RESTING ON ONE” Iota Phi Theta Fraternity (ΙΦΘ) a nationally incorporated, and predominantly African-American fraternity was founded on September 19, 1963 at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland.

For almost fifty years, four organizations: Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, and Phi Beta Sigma held the ground for the black Greek-letter fraternity experience in America. With the founding of Iota Phi Theta, this select cadre grew to five. On the campus of Morgan State College, a historically black institution in Baltimore, Maryland, twelve men endeavored to form an organization whose purpose was “the development and perpetuation of scholarship, leadership, citizenship, fidelity, and brotherhood among men.”

The founders of the fraternity included Charles Briscoe, Charles Brown, Frank Coakley, Elias A. Dorsey, Charles Gregory, Albert Hicks, Louis Hudnell, Webster Lewis, John Slade, Lonnie Spruill Jr., Michael Williams, and Barron Willis. John Slade indicated that making the American dream a reality was the main motivating factor behind the fraternity’s establishment wanting to form a national fraternity that would impact America on the whole, not just African America.

Iota Phi Theta presently consists of 35,000 members. There are currently around 270 undergraduate and alumni chapters, as well as colonies located in over 40 US states, the District of Columbia, the Bahamas and South Korea.

Without question, black Greek-letter organizations have made substantia upon the principle of racial uplift, BGLOs, for nearly a century, have lent progress for African Americans in the face of unimaginable racism, discri BGLOs have not escaped the structural racism in this country unscath struggled with the problems of elitism, colorism, and violence; with how to and images of a savage and uncivilized African continent; and with many

Just six decades ago, most blacks could not work, live, shop, eat, seek were founded on the platform of racial uplift, and there are countless exa situation is very different. Although the gulf between whites and blacks i have graduated from universities that previously excluded them and ho been elected to political office. Indeed, many blacks have achieved midd their social activist agendas in light of these monumental changes in t community as they were in the past? Are they continuing to engage in ra why not? These questions need answers, and our hope is that scholars w need for, and function of these organizations.

al contributions to African American history and advancement. Founded their collective muscle to the fight for economic, educational, and social imination, and oppression. Yet, for all the good they have accomplished, hed. Like other African American individuals and institutions, they have o develop an identity that affirms their African heritage despite messages y other problems endemic to having been formed in a racist U.S. society.

entertainment, or travel where they wanted. Without question, BGLOs amples of how they have acted in accord with that mission. But today, the in this country is far from being closed, the fact remains that many blacks old jobs in desegregated workplaces. Most blacks vote, and many have dle-class status and are quite comfortable. How have BGLOs redesigned the U.S. landscape for blacks? Are BGLOs as “in touch� with the black acial uplift to the same degree that they did historically? If so, how? If not, will undertake this level of contemporary, critical analysis of the ongoing

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