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Introduction 1 1 INTRODUCTION Tamara L. Brown The year 2006 will mark the centennial anniversary of the intercollegiate black Greek-letter organization (BGLO) movement in the United States. Born at the dawn of the twentieth century, these organizations not only served to solidify bonds among African American college students but also had (and continue to have) a vision and a sense of purpose: leadership training, racial uplift, and high scholasticism. It is no accident that many of the best and brightest African American leaders came from the ranks of these organizations. Dr. Charles Drew (who discovered a way to separate red and white blood cells) and Dr. Mae Jamison (an engineer and astronaut) have charted new courses in the area of science. Men and women like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer have left an indelible mark on civil rights and women’s rights. Visionaries such as Dr. Johnetta B. Cole (former president of Spelman College ) and Hugh Price (director of the United Negro College Fund) have been towering figures in the area of education. Political leaders such as Carol Moseley Braun (the first femaleAfrican American U.S.senator) and Thurgood Marshall (the first African American Supreme Court justice) have made tremendous contributions in politics and government. These are just a few names and a few fields in which BGLO members have made their mark. Surprisingly, after almost 100 years, the general public still knows very little about BGLOs beyond their high-energy step shows and periodic hazing incidents.What is more distressing is the paucity of scholarly research that has been conducted on these groups. This book seeks to remedy these issues. The production of this book has been an arduous journey. It started in 1999, when I began my first year as assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. There I met Gregory Parks, who was a first-year graduate student in clinical psychology. Although I was not Gregory’s primary adviser, I was one of only two African American faculty members in the Psychology Department and the only faculty person of color in the clinical psychology program, and Gregory often dropped by my office to discuss any number of issues. Many of these issues pertained to psychology or race,but our conversations often turned to our membership in and dedication to our respective fraternal organizations . I am a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and Gregory is a brownintro.pmd 1/11/2005, 3:54 PM 1 2 Tamara L. Brown member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Our conversations about these organizations often focused on two topics, one ultimately leading to the other. The first was the issue of pledging and hazing, and the second was that nothing of a scholarly nature had been written about BGLOs. In terms of hazing and pledging, our respective BGLO experiences led us to believe that a great deal of good could come out of the pledge process.However , we also understood the stark reality of hazing and that it could result in injury, death, and lawsuits that could jeopardize the very existence of BGLOs. We found ourselves expressing great frustration that these competing realizations —the existence of pros and cons to the pledge process—were seldom discussed within the BGLO community. Due to the time constraints of graduate school, which were quickly followed by the publish-or-perish demands of my early career, I had not been an active member of Delta for several years. Therefore, I was surprised to learn from Gregory that the debate about pledging and hazing was a one-sided— almost propagandist—one. What became clear to me was that those who opposed the practice of pledging argued that pledging and hazing were inextricably intertwined and would spell the ruin of BGLOs. Although this is an understandable position, the problem is that the opponents of pledging had managed to squelch the dissenting voices within BGLOs. It had become a topic with two sides, but only one voice. The power brokers in these organizations had seen to that. Gregory had been fully active in Alpha Phi Alpha since being initiated and was well aware of this silent debate.He and I both knew the complexities of this issue and that the pledge process presented great challenges for BGLOs, but we also knew that it had created wonderful experiences for many members. More important, we knew that this topic was not an either-or issue—either a two-weekend membership intake process, or...

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