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233 8 Alpha Phi Alpha, the Fight for Civil Rights, and the Shaping of Public Policy Robert E. Weems Jr. This chapter examines Alpha Phi Alpha’s involvement in the twentieth-century black freedom struggle. Alpha’s role in this phenomenon consisted of two distinct (and sometimes interconnected) dynamics. First, Alpha Phi Alpha as an organization promoted important civil rights initiatives. The fraternity’s historic “Education for Citizenship” campaign (“A Voteless People Is a Hopeless People”) exemplifies this reality. In addition, Alpha Phi Alpha sought to positively influence public policy as it relates to persons of African descent. Second, individual members of Alpha Phi Alpha assumed leadership positions in the broad-based struggle for African American freedom, justice, and equality. Such persons included W. E. B. Du Bois, Rayford W. Logan, Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Belford V. Lawson, John Hope Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr., Paul Robeson, Dick Gregory, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and Whitney Young. It should be noted that, notwithstanding the fraternity’s welldocumented participation in the struggle for civil rights, some members of the organization prioritized social activity over social action. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that the majority of Alphas were conscious supporters of the campaign to end American apartheid. Alpha Phi Alpha’s interest in racial advancement and civil rights did not occur by happenstance. As Charles H. Wesley asserts in the introduction to The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in College Life, the establishment of Alpha was an important manifestation of African American institution building in the first decade of the twentieth century. Moreover, this period of “organizational activity” included not just groups concerned with economic issues (such as the National Negro Business League) but also groups concerned with civil and human rights (such as the Niagara Movement).1 Although Ithaca, New York, was (and remains) a fairly isolated locale with a limited African American presence, the young men who founded Alpha Phi Alpha on the campus of Cornell University were well aware of the problems 234 Robert E. Weems Jr. the national black community faced during this period. As Jewel Henry Arthur Callis asserted in the introduction of The History of Alpha Phi Alpha, “Society offered us [African Americans] narrowly circumscribed opportunity and no security. Out of our need, our fraternity brought social purpose and social action .”2 Moreover, Wesley amplified Callis’s observations by contending, “The later history of the fraternity reveals how this social purpose conceived by a small group of college men in a single location developed into the program of the first of the college fraternities in many locations for the fulfillment of this original purpose.”3 Roscoe C. Giles, the second general president of Alpha Phi Alpha, provided an early reinforcement of Alpha’s “original purpose” (promoting social purpose and social action). In 1915 Giles stated that the fraternity, as an organization, must do more than just “meet, eat, sleep, resolve and adjourn.” Moreover, he declared, “No more representative, no more intelligent, no more worthy men exist in fraternal bond in the world today than we boast of within our ranks. . . . We must arouse the slumbering giant, Ethiopia.”4 One prominent early member of Alpha Phi Alpha who did not need Giles to remind him of the importance of social activism was W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois, whose many distinctions included being the first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard (in 1895), had established himself as America’s leading black intellectual. Even before Du Bois’s initiation into the fraternity in 1909 as an honorary member, his life and career had attracted the favorable attention of members of the embryonic Alpha Phi Alpha.5 Among other things, Du Bois’s central role in organizing the historically significant (though shortlived ) Niagara Movement in 1905 had certified his credentials as an African American freedom fighter. Consequently, members viewed Du Bois’s 1909 entry into Alpha Phi Alpha as a real coup for the organization. One of the leading figures in the history of Alpha Phi Alpha who consciously sought to emulate the esteemed Du Bois was Rayford W. Logan. Initiated into Omicron chapter in 1913, Logan, like Du Bois, subsequently earned a PhD in history from Harvard University. Logan also actively sought to use his knowledge of history and his skills as a researcher and scholar to help uplift the larger African American community.6 At Alpha’s twenty-sixth annual convention, held in St. Louis in December 1933, delegates elected Logan the fraternity...

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