Gregory S. Parks - Alpha Phi Alpha: A Legacy of Greatness, the Demands of Transcendence

Acknowledgments

Of the various books we, the editors of this volume, have written and edited, this one filled us with the most angst. We are both deeply committed to and active in our beloved fraternityAlpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. As such, on the one hand, we wanted to be accurate and fair and guard the fraternity's actual secrets. Even more, we wanted to do no actual harm to the fraternity. On the other hand, we wanted this book to push beyond the bounds of what would be safe to a place where the fraternity and our brothers would have to do some soul-searching. In the end, our goal is to make the House of Alpha the best it can be and for it to live up to the high ideals present at its founding.

We are grateful, first and foremost, to our brothers who contributed to this volume, particularly those who stuck it out and saw the process through to its completion. Those brothers are Kelso Anderson, Felix L. Armfield, Y. Sekou Bermiss, Kenneth I. Clarke Sr., Terrence L. Frazier, Jeremy M. Harp, Oscar Holmes IV, Derrick Jenkins, Ralph E. Johnson, Andre M. McKenzie, Michael J. Myers II, Rashawn Ray, Richard J. Reddick, Kevin Walter Spragling, and Robert E. Weems Jr. Many of these brothers traveled at their own expense to do the most thorough research possible, made personal and family sacrifices to do this work, and made significant changes or additions to their chapters at the request of readers or to accommodate the fact that other authors left the project prematurely. Indeed, this was a labor of love for the brothers who contributed to this volume, and we appreciate their balance of passion and objectivity.

Thank you to Crystal Chambers, Marybeth Gasman, Joanna S. Hunter, and Mary Beth Walpole for lending their time and talents, sometimes on last-minute notice and under considerable pressure, to this project. Their unbiased insights made this book that much stronger.

To our research assistantsPaul Derohannesian, Soror Brittany-Rae Gregory, Kattie M. Smith, and Brother Dorsey Spencerwe owe a huge debt of gratitude. So much of their effort went into this book and helped make it the work it is.

To Brother Willard Hall, a towering figure in the history of the fraternity, thank you for the insights and materials. His insights helped reduce much of the angst we felt in the latter stages of this book. And a lot of this work could not have been completed if Brother William D. Lyle had not graciously given the contributing authors access to the public documents of the fraternity.

On a personal note, we would like to thank several people. We are grateful to Brother Malik Simmonds for his early suggestion that although the book might be a bitter pill for Alphas to swallow, if the fraternity can embrace what the book reveals, Alpha will be much better in the long run. Of course, in typical Brother Simmonds fashion, he did note that he hopes we do not intend to run for national office within the fraternity anytime soon. We would also like to thank Brothers Keener A. Tippin Sr. and John Hope Franklin, who have passed into the Omega chapter, for inspiring us and modeling the true spirit of brotherhood. Thank you also to our families and friends, who may not be members of the fraternity but understand our mission.

We thank the good people at the University Press of Kentucky for their continued support of research on black Greek-letter organizations (BGLOs). Publishing yet another book on the topic was a risk, and we appreciate their faith in us. To our acquisitions editor, Anne Dean Watkins, we appreciate her dedication and expeditiousness when it came to this project. To Steve Wrinn, director of the Press, we appreciate his willingness to take a chance on this book. To all the other staff, we are grateful for their hard work and dedication in bringing this project to fruition.

Finally, thank you to the readers. We especially appreciate our Alpha brothers who will pick this book up, read it, analyze it on its own merits, and use it to make the fraternity better. We realize that any critique of something one holds dear may be challenging. Like Brother Charles H. Wesley once noted, it took a small group of thinkers to ultimately leaven the whole fraternity; we certainly count our open-minded brothers in that number in the modern context. We also thank those members of other BGLOs who will engage this book and use it to better all our organizations, for they grasp the fact that this book speaks to all our identities and our collective identity and to what it means to be a BGLO or a BGLO member in the twenty-first century.

Appendix A

Alpha Phi Alpha General Secretaries
and Executive Directors

Simeon S. Booker, 1909-1911

Charles H. Garvin, 1911-1912

Joseph R. Fugett, 1912-1913

Henry L. Dickason, 1913-1914

Roscoe W. Ross, 1914-1915

Howard H. Long, 1915-1916

George P. Henton, 1916-1918

Simeon S. Booker, 1918-1919

Numa P. G. Adams, 1919-1920

Norman L. McGhee, 1920-1926

Joseph H. B. Evans, 1926-1946

Burt A. Mayberry, 1946-1948

Bennie D. Brown, 1948-1952

James E. Huger, 1952-1958

Sidney A. Jones, 1958

Lawrence T. Young, 1958-1974

William H. Walker, 1974-1977

James B. Blanton III, 1977-1994

Darryl R. Matthews Sr., 1994-1996

Ralph E. Johnson, 1996-1997

Hebrew L. Dixon III, 1997-1998

Ronald L. Anderson, 1998-2000

Seaton J. White III, 2000

Zollie Stevenson, 2000-2001

Gregory Phillips, 2001-2005

Willard C. Hall Jr., 2005-2009

William Douglas Lyle, 2009-present

Appendix B

Editors in Chief ofThe Sphinx

Raymond W. Cannon, 1914

Lucius L. McGee, 1915

William A. Pollard, 1916

V. D. Johnston, 1917

V. E. Daniel, 1917

Carl J. Murphy, 1918-1922

Oscar C. Brown, 1923-1929

P. Bernard Young Jr., 1930-1933

Arnett G. Lindsay, 1934-1935, 1948

Lewis O. Swingler, 1936-1943, 1946-1947, 1949-1950

Meredith G. Ferguson, 1943-1944

Reid E. Jackson, 1945

W. Barton Beatty Jr., 1951-1961

C. Anderson Davis, 1962-1965

George M. Daniels, 1966-1968

J. Herbert King, 1969-1972, 1973-1974

Laurence T. Young Sr., 1973

Michael J. Price, 1974-1990

Charles F. Robinson III, 1991-1993

John J. Johnson III, 1993-1996

Seaton J. White III, 1997-2000, 2006-2008

John I. Harris III, 2000-2001

William Douglass Lyle, 2001-2006

Rick Blalock, 2009-present

Appendix C

Prominent Alpha Phi Alpha Members

Editors Note: We made every effort to use reliable sources to build and crosscheck this list of prominent Alpha Phi Alpha members. In addition to consulting Alpha's national website, we reviewed written biographies of men alleged to be Alpha members to confirm their membership. The final list was reviewed by several Alpha brothers who are knowledgeable about Alpha's history.

John Hurst Adams: president of Congress of Black Churches

Cannonball Adderley: jazz saxophonist

Orison Rudolph Aggrey: ambassador to Republic of Gambia, Republic of Senegal, and Romania

Na'im Akbar: psychologist

Gerald Albright: American jazz saxophonist

Dave Albritton: 1936 Olympian, high jump; 1980 U.S. Track and Field Hall of Fame inductee

Ron Allen: news correspondent for NBC and ABC

Vinton R. Anderson: ninety-second bishop of African Methodist Episcopal Church; president of World Council of Churches

William T. Andrews: New York State assemblyman

Dennis Archer: justice of Michigan Supreme Court; mayor of Detroit, Michigan; first black president of American Bar Association

Nate Archibald: NBA player; Basketball Hall of Fame inductee

Richard Arrington Jr.: first black mayor of Birmingham, Alabama

Don Barksdale: 1948 Olympian and first African American to play with U.S. Olympic basketball team; first African American consensus All-American college basketball player; NBA player; first African American to play in NBA All-Star game