Giovanni Nikki - The divine nine: the history of African American fraternities and sororities

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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No work of this nature can be completed without the help of generous, kind, and patient people. I would like to thank my wife, April Lampkins Ross, who was the most supportive, encouraging Delta woman that a man could ever wish for. My own future Alphaman, Langston Ashanti Ross, a son whom I wish to only give the world. I would also like to thank my literary agent, Deidre Knight of The Knight Agency, who believed in this young writer, and gave me the opportunity to put my dreams into a book. Also, I would like to thank my editor, Karen Thomas, of Kensington Publishing Corp. (and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha), who saw the potential of my book and kept it faithful to my vision. And Selena James, who did this update.

I would like also to thank all of my family including Shana Ross, Lawrence Ross, Sr., Mildred Lampkins, Alvin Lampkins, Jr., Marie Lampkins, and Gregory Daniel. And special thanks to both my mother Eveline Ross, and my father-in-law Alvin Lampkins, two people whove always believed in my ideas and vision, no matter how crazy it may have seemed to others.

From the NPHC organizations, I would like to thank the nine Executive Directors for all of their cooperation and help in providing their resources and time. I would like to especially thank Dwayne Dixon (Iota Phi Theta), Dr. Walter Kimbrough (Alpha Phi Alpha), Ron Carter (Phi Beta Sigma), Spencer Bruce (Kappa Alpha Psi), Jo Ellen El-Bashir of the Moorland-Spingarn Museum at Howard University, and everyone else whom I may have missed.

I would like to thank everyone whom I interviewed for the chapter spotlights and all of the celebrities who agreed to take time out of their busy schedules to speak with me. This is also the time to apologize to all of the personal assistants whom I badgered in order to get that time!

Last but not least, I would like to thank all of my best friends, who have persevered with me through this process, and have given me encouragement whenever I was tired: Dr. Robert Lyons (Alpha) and his wife Stacy (AKA), Sean Carter (Alpha), Antonio, Lisa and Avery Jordan (who I will convince to pledge Alpha in the year 2008), Michael Datcher (thanks for all of the mentoring), the past and present brothers of the Alpha Epsilon chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity at the University of California at Berkeley, the brothers of Mu Sigma Lambda chapter, and everyone else who has touched my life.

THREE TRADITIONAL POEMS OF THE FRATERNAL MOVEMENT

IF

Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about dont deal in lies,
Or, being hated, dont give way to hating,
And yet dont look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dreamand not make dreams your master,
If you can thinkand not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same,
If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build em up with worn out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so bold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: Hold on;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kingsnor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything thats in it,
Andwhich is moreyoull be a Man, my son!

INVICTUS

William E. Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

DONT QUIT

Author unknown

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road youre trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you mustbut dont you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Dont give up, though the pace seems slow
You might succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victors cup.
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when youre hardest hit
Its when things seem worst that you mustnt quit.

Alpha Phi Alpha Sphinxmen pledges.

(Courtesy of Sean Carter)

Alpha Phi Alpha Brothers at Wilberforce University.

(Courtesy of John Darden, Sr.)

Alpha Phi Alpha Sphinxmen pledges at Wilberforce University.

(Courtesy of John Darden, Sr.)

Martin Luther King, Jr., prominent member of Alpha Phi Alpha, addresses New York City officials, 1964.

(Courtesy of United Press International)

W.E.B. Du Bois, cofounder of the NAACP and prominent member of Alpha Phi Alpha, 1960.

(Courtesy of the Associated Press)

Tony Brown (right) , national bestselling author, television host, and prominent member of Alpha Phi Alpha, 1996.

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