Established on the campus of Cornell University in the fall of 1905, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity began as an organization to meet the needs of a handful of male African American college students. Founded with ideals of civic action and community uplift, Alpha Phi Alpha was established almost 40 years after the end of the Civil War and just a few years after the end of The Nadir-the period when institutional racism was worse than at any other post-bellum period. Exemplified by its founders, known as The Jewels, the first black intercollegiate fraternity represented virtues such as brotherhood, scholarship, and social progress. Important leaders such as Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Hubert Humphrey, Paul Robeson, Cornel West, W. E. B. Dubois, Martin Luther King Jr., Edward Brook, and Duke Ellington constitute just a small number of those who have been initiated into the ranks of Alpha. Despite the fraternity's historical prominence, a question lingers: have the organization and its members remained faithful to the precepts articulated by the founding members?
In Alpha Phi Alpha: A Case Study Within Black Greekdom, Gregory S. Parks aims to answer this question through a collection of original essays, written by members of the fraternity and scholars in African American studies, education, political science, and history. Alpha Phi Alpha examines the very essence of the organization, the meaning and identity of the fraternity, and also ascertains whether and to what degree the organization has drifted from its early ideals. Drawing from Alpha's history, national magazines, and archives, as well as relying on interviews with national officers and lay members, Parks and his contributors will grapple with the growing body of empirical, critical, and historical scholarship on Black Greek-letter Organizations (BGLOs).
Gregory S. Parks is coeditor of African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision (UPK). He has edited two additional books on Black Greek-letter organizations, as well as a book on diversity within college fraternities and sororities. A life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., he received his PhD in psychology from the University of Kentucky and his JD at Cornell Law School.
