They are considered two of the most significant advocates for the rights of the disenfranchised in this country.

In 1961, LeMonte Mitchell was a student at Johnson C. Smith University looking for a fraternity experience that would last long after his days on campus.

He found it in Omega Psi Phi.

Mitchell, now 71 and recently retired as choir director at Raleigh’s Davie Street Presbyterian Church, is as active and committed a fraternity brother as ever. He swears by the organization’s core principles of volunteerism and community service. His voice bears no trace of hyperbole when he declares: “It’s God, family and Omega. That’s the way I look at it.”

Omega Psi Phi, the first black fraternity founded at a historically black university, is bringing its biennial Grand Conclave to the Raleigh Convention Center starting Thursday. The national convention is expected to draw as many as 5,000 people for a series of meetings and activities stretching for a week.

The heavy turnout isn’t an accident. Omega and other black fraternities encourage long-term involvement through graduate chapters that keep alumni as active as if they were still on campus.

Omega is one of the nation’s largest black fraternities, with more than 100,000 members. Its alumni rolls have star power, including athletes Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal, actor Bill Cosby and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

But Omegas, while proud of those members, tend to think less about individual achievement and more about total impact, said Warren Lee, the fraternity’s national president.

“That’s what gives us legs,” said Lee, whose organization and its 619 chapters donate more than $1 million a year to charities. “It’s not the individual members but what we do collectively as a group.”

The brothers of Omega Psi Phi are a proud group. They call themselves “Omega Men” and extol virtues such as manhood and scholarship. The organization is national, but it preaches local action, urging members to lift up the communities that produced them.

Omega men in action

Mitchell is still clearly entranced, 49 years after he joined in college. Since graduation, Mitchell has been active with the graduate chapter in Raleigh, where he helps raise money for scholarships to support the Red Cross, the local Boys Club and other charities. For a dozen years, he organized a talent show that sent winners to regional showcases.

Next year, when the organization celebrates its centennial, Mitchell will happily accept his 50-year pin.

“I love what it stands for,” he said.

Embracing the mandate

Just four years out of college, Chad Moore is also embracing Omega’s service mandate. He joined Omega while a UNC Chapel Hill student “to put myself in a network of positive people,” and he spends his free time these days volunteering with local Omega chapters.

He has worked on Hurricane Katrina relief, on voter registration projects, and at local food banks and retirement homes.

“Stuff like that, it needs to be done,” said Moore, 25 and living in Raleigh. “A group of people gets more done than one person.”

Abdul Cole was attending Omega events long before he even got to college. His father, also an Omega, was active through a graduate chapter and brought the whole family along to social events.

“It’s all I knew growing up,” said Cole, 29, who joined Omega while a student at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh. “I liked the camaraderie and fellowship.”

Cole graduated from St. Aug’s in 2004 and now works with members of a graduate chapter in Durham who volunteer at homeless shelters every other weekend.

For Cole and plenty of other Omegas, fraternity membership is about fiercely strong bonds and the feeling of being part of something larger than themselves. And it provides many young members with contacts in business, politics, law and other realms of working life.

“I’ve got a network of brothers in pretty much every avenue of life,” Cole said.

Friends and leaders

Omega started small, a trio of Howard University undergrads in 1911 that met in their biology professor’s office. They created Omega Psi Phi with the motto “Friendship is essential to the soul,” and the fraternity took flight.

It wasn’t an easy path at first. Howard, though a historically black institution, was led by a white president slow to embrace the fraternity’s desire to become a national enterprise.

“There was a lot of resistance at the institution at the time,” said Walter Kimbrough, author of “Black Greek 101: The Cultures, Customs and Challenges of Black Fraternities and Sororities.” “Omega had to really fight at the beginning.”

As it grew, Omega emphasized recruiting young men with leadership potential. Many played key roles in civil rights-era struggles, such as Benjamin Hooks, who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Benjamin Mays, the longtime president of Morehouse College who had taught Martin Luther King Jr. and would later deliver the civil rights titan’s eulogy.

“Some just legendary people have come through that organization,” said Kimbrough, president of Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark. “A lot of organizations say it, but they have had some truly iconic figures in terms of leadership.”

In the 1950s and ’60s, Omega’s national organization used the strength-in-numbers approach to make a difference by requiring that all chapters purchase a life membership with the NAACP, a financial show of support.

“It was a mandate,” said Burnel Coulon, a former national president of the fraternity and its unofficial historian. “And it did make a difference. Every dime counted.”

The Que Dog thing

When the Omega conclave arrives in Raleigh, there will probably be plenty of woofing. It’s an Omega calling card of sorts, a loud and boisterous way fraternity brothers greet each other.

It is also the voice of the “Que Dog,” a persona some Omegas subscribe to and others wish would go away. Pronounced like the letter Q, the Que Dog is the party-hearty alter ego to the Omega Man. Some Omegas identify as a Que Dog, woofing loudly, the life of the party.

But for an organization that relentlessly promotes a positive and professional image, the Que Dog, generally adopted by college-age members, has become something of a necessary evil. The organization’s leaders would prefer its members pattern themselves after the Omega Man behavior.

“You still have a lot of people who buy into the Que Dog thing,” said Kimbrough, the college president and member of Alpha Phi Alpha, another black fraternity. “It has its place, but it can diminish what the organization really stands for.”

Young fraternity members proudly declare themselves Que Dogs but eventually move past it when they leave college and focus more on the fraternity’s core mission, said Cole, the St. Aug’s graduate. It’s part of a maturation process, he added.

“A lot of us refer to ourselves as Que Dogs, because we like to bark and it’s one of our callings,” Cole said. “But the expectation is an Omega Man. We expect the best.”

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/07/18/1569228/omega-men-mark-99-years-of-service.html#ixzz0u32LJrVT

Congratulations to the new officers of the Mobile Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. They were installed by Yvonne Kennedy, the 19th national president of the sorority.

Leading the chapter for 2010 to 2012 is president Linda J. Dennison; first vice president, Juvonda S. Hodge; second vice president, Tonja D. Smith; recording secretary, Constance Rozier; corresponding secretary, Elizabeth S. Levins; financial secretary, Gloria A. Davis; assistant financial secretary, Michelle Parson; treasurer, Paula Spencer; assistant treasurer, Anna S. Watson; chaplain, Grace Y. Wyatt; historian, Shirley W. Colston; journalist, Sylvia Bettis; sergeant-at-arms, Grace Reese; assistant Sergeant-at-arms, Malvareen Harris; custodian, Clarica Gamble; parliamentarian, Diana McNeil; public relations director, Selicia S. Hughes-Judge; and nominating, Malvoria Pugh, L. Denise Posey, Michelle Dodson and Yolanda Altice.

The Mobile Alumnae Chapter has provided more than 68 years of community, civic, educational and cultural service to the Mobile metro area.

]]> http://progressivegreek.com/news_events/alumni/mobile-alumnae-chapter-of-delta-sigma-theta-installs-new-officers/feed/ 0 http://progressivegreek.com/news_events/alumni/usf-st-petersburg-students-award-5000-grants-to-nine-local-programs/ http://progressivegreek.com/news_events/alumni/usf-st-petersburg-students-award-5000-grants-to-nine-local-programs/#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 03:54:19 +0000 kevin1914 http://progressivegreek.com/?p=3788 Source

Students at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg have awarded nine $5,000 grants to local programs to help the homeless, victims of domestic violence, at-risk preschoolers and adolescent girls.

Money for the grants comes from a $395,000 federal Learn and Serve America grant to USF St. Petersburg.

The grant was one of 36 awarded nationwide to help students learn about leadership and philanthropy.

The university will hold a public reception at 5 p.m. today in Room 130 of Lowell E. Davis Memorial Hall, 140 Seventh Ave. S. At the reception, local nonprofit groups can learn about how to apply for the grants next semester.

This semester’s grants are going to:

• Directions for Mental Health to provide transportation assistance to homeless people who need medical and mental health services.

• ASAP Homeless Services to help unemployed and underemployed homeless adults find work.

• The Haven of RCS to provide computer access and training to survivors of domestic violence.

• A Brighter Community to provide preschool classroom supplies for at-risk children and families.

• Police Athletic League for an organic garden and educational program to encourage environmental stewardship, sustainability, healthy nutrition and wellness for youth.

• St. Petersburg Alumnae Chapter of Educational Services of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority to mentor, educate and empower at-risk adolescent girls.

• Creative Clay for an inclusionary summer youth arts camp.

• Sistah2Sistah (Golden Generation Inc.) for an academic, social and personal enrichment program for middle school girls in Midtown.

• Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless to develop a Web-based resource library to strengthen the nonprofit-based homeless system of care in Pinellas County.

In protest of the recently passed immigration law in Arizona that many believe will lead to racial profiling, Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity has moved its annual convention out of the state. The fraternity’s leadership announced this decision through an email to members, saying:

” … the Board of Directors of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity voted unanimously to rescind the location of Phoenix, Arizona as our meeting location of the 104th Anniversary/ 90th General Convention in July, and to denounce the egregious immigration act signed recently by the governor of Arizona. It was the full opinion of the board that we could not host a meeting in a state that has sanctioned a law which we believe will lead to racial profiling and discrimination, and a law that could put the civil rights and the very dignity of our members at risk during their stay in Phoenix Arizona.”

The convention will be re-located to Las Vegas. Alpha Phi Alpha’s decision comes amid increasing calls to boycott the state of Arizona and its businesses until the controversial immigration law is overturned.

Memorial and funeral services for human-rights advocate Dorothy I. Height will be held Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington. Burial is set for Thursday.

Miss Height, who served for more than 40 years as president of the National Council of Negro Women, died April 20 at Howard University Hospital. She was 98.

Services are being overseen by former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, a Height protégé, who called Miss Height “a role model for women and men of all faiths, races and perspectives.”

Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004, Miss Height worked for decades with the YWCA, championed families and quality education, and was the only woman who stood among the “Big Six” men of the civil rights era. She also was a former president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., which has chapters around the globe, including in Germany and South Korea.

Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, philanthropist Camille Cosby, a sorority sister of Miss Height’s, and poet-activist Maya Angelou are among the dignitaries and notable members of the clergy expected to participate in the funeral services.

On Tuesday, Miss Height will lie in repose from 6 p.m.-10 p.m. at NCNW headquarters, at 633 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.

Two services are scheduled for Wednesday. At 2 p.m., the Deltas will hold a special program at Howard University. At 7 p.m., the historic Shiloh Baptist Church will host “Community Celebration of Life” in Miss Height’s honor. The program is open to the public.

Funeral services are scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral, which has hosted presidential inaugural prayer services and state funerals, including the one for President Ronald Reagan in 2004.

Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves and the Cathedral Choir will offer musical selections.

Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III will deliver the homily.

“Its a distinct honor and privilege for Washington National Cathedral to host Dorothy Heights funeral. Her life of service and dedication to the cause of justice and equality for all shows what a difference one person can make in this world,” the dean said Monday.

Miss Height served on the cathedrals Martin Luther King Day 2010 Honorary Committee and participated in a number of cathedral events, including the Leadership Council on global poverty.

The service will be streamed live at www.nationalcathedral.org, and seats for the public are limited.

Burial will follow in Fort Lincoln Cemetery at Bladensburg Road and Eastern Avenue in Brentwood, Md.

With the passing of civil rights legends Benjamin Hooks and Dorothy Height within days of each other, the national landscape in the fight for equality continues to shift. Hooks, a former lawyer, judge and NAACP director, died April 15 in Memphis. Height, 98, president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, passed away on April 20 at Howard University Hospital in the nation’s capital.

While some question whether organizations like the NAACP and Urban League are still relevant, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a recent speech to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, contended that black people and other minorities are still disparately affected in myriad ways.

The nation’s first black attorney general, speaking at a conference marking SNCC’s 50th anniversary, said the civil rights movement made tremendous progress, most notably helping to create a climate in which a black American could be elected president.

But in almost everything, from the effects of the Great Recession to the criminal justice system, Holder said, disparities persist.

“It will take more than the election of the first African-American president to fully secure equality for each American,” he said.

The economic downturn has affected blacks to a greater degree than other Americans, he said, with unemployment among young black males the highest it’s been since the 1930s. And legal disparities such as stiffer sentences for people caught with crack cocaine than for powder cocaine contribute to a system in which blacks and Latinos get longer prison terms than their white counterparts, he said.

Germaine Smith-Baugh, president and CEO of the Urban League of Broward County, said her generation of leaders has the “responsibility, accountability and opportunity,” to continue the fight that leaders like Hooks and Height began. And although that fight looks different, she said, “It’s still a fight.’’

She continued: “For them, it might have been the segregation of schools and the disparities… for us we look at a drop-out rate of close to 50 percent of black boys. That’s an injustice,” said Smith-Baugh, 37, who has led the Broward organization for three and a half years.

Smith-Baugh and Height are both members of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., one of the nation’s oldest black sororities. Of the opportunity to meet her esteemed sorority sister, Smith-Baugh said, it was “truly an honor. As usual, she was dressed to the nines.”

Height’s impact on her, Smith-Baugh said, has been monumental.

“Being a woman, trying to move an organization forward in terms of addressing community issues, she was simply iconic,” Smith-Baugh said.

In his statement on Height’s death, President Barack Obama noted that a college once denied entry to Height because it had already met its quota of two African-American women.

“Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality,” the president said, and witnessed “every march and milestone along the way.”

Born in 1912, Height was a fierce orator who went on to win the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award in the United States. When King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, Height was the only woman on the stage.

She often quoted abolitionist Frederick Douglass on how best to achieve justice: “Agitate, agitate, agitate.” Determining the best approach to agitate in an era that produced the first black U.S. president has been a challenge for the country’s most prominent civil rights groups.

The national NAACP, in an attempt to reinvigorate the 100-year old institution, elected 37-year old Benjamin Jealous as president in 2008. In February, the NAACP selected Rosalyn Brock as its youngest ever and fourth female chairman of the board.

Brock replaced longtime civil rights leader Julian Bond, who was instrumental in the selection of Jealous and Brock.

But while the national NAACP is plowing ahead with new, younger leadership, another civil rights organization is suffering from internal fighting and criminal investigations. The 53-year old Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was founded by King in 1957, has splintered into two separate groups. King’s youngest daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, was elected as the group’s president in October, but it is unclear whether she will be officially installed.

Smith-Baugh said she is clear about her mission with the Urban League, likening Height’s accomplishments and death to a relay race for social justice that includes older and younger leaders. “If she was able to do it with the resources and challenges that she faced, then I definitely have to pick up the mantle and continue to run with the baton.”

A historical black college fraternity is seeking nominations for positive father role models to honor at a Father’s Day event in Mission Valley. Nominations are open to the public and must be submitted by April 30.

The Lambda Iota Sigma chapter of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. and its educational foundation are sponsoring the first “Honor Thy Father” awards celebration breakfast June 19 at the Sheraton Mission Valley Hotel, 1433 Camino del Rio South. U.S. Marine Corps Major General Anthony L. Jackson is the scheduled keynote speaker.

Organizers are seeking nominations in four father categories: single, married, elder or mentor. Nominees should not have any history of domestic violence or parental neglect and must participate in community services or activities in which their children are involved.

For more information contact Alvin Blackshear at (718) 810-1400 ablackshear@gmail.com. Go to lambdaiotasigma.org to download a nomination form.

Two weeks ago, my fraternity had its regional meeting here at the Marriott. The men of the Southeastern Region of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity convened in Knoxville from East Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

More than 300 registered for the annual meeting, which is held in alternating cities in the region. It was the ninth time it has been here in Knoxville since 1939.

The meeting this year was especially exciting because, for the first time, a member of the local graduate chapter serves as international president. Jimmy Hammock, who lives in Morristown and recently retired from Meritor Automotive there, is a longtime member of Phi Beta Sigma in Knoxville.

Hammock had served as president of the local chapter, regional director, international treasurer and international vice president before his election to the presidency at the national conclave in New Orleans last summer. In 1999, he was chairman of the Hamblen County United Way fundraising drive. He and his team exceeded their goal of $1.28 million.

Hammock is the third local person to be elected international president of one of eight traditional black fraternities and sororities. The first was Anetta G. Wallace, who served as International Basileus of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Samuel Hamilton served as grand polemarch of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity.

Founded at Howard University in 1914, the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity is celebrating its 96th anniversary and the 72nd anniversary of its Southeastern Regional meetings. The first regional meeting was held in Raleigh, N.C., in 1938. The second meeting was held here during the week of April 10-15, 1939. The graduate chapter here had been established eight years earlier in 1931.

Some of the members of that organization at the second meeting were brothers Otis and Wilbur Sims, brothers Arkless R. and John B. Wheeler, Paul Bryant, A. Charles McKnight, Varnell Ford, James H. Hardy, Theodore E. Gross and Dewey W. Roberts. The public program was held at the East Vine Avenue Methodist Church, and the business meetings were held in the chapel of the Wheeler Mortuary.

In 1937, Roberts was the first member of the region to be elected to the Distinguished Service Chapter, which was organized in 1929. He was the 24th person to be inducted. Four years later in 1941, he was elected regional director when it was known as the Central Region.

When the teachers’ salaries were equalized in 1939, national black publications including the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Alfro-American carried stories about his accomplishments. Knoxville was one of the first, if not the first, to pay black and white teachers the same salaries.

During the 2010 regional meeting, the organization pledged to strengthen its programs to boost education, Bigger Better Business projects and Social Action activities, which are the fraternity’s three main national programs.

The Hattiesburg Alumni Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. has been very active throughout the years with many charitable and civic programs. Now in honor of the chapter’s 50th year anniversary, and in conjunction with the national fraternity’s 100-year anniversary, group members want to create a legacy that will give back for 50+ years.

Jerome Brown, president of the Hattiesburg Alumni Chapter and Business Development Officer for The First, A National Banking Association and fellow fraternity brother Bernard Green, Agency Owner of Allstate Insurance, worked with The Greater PineBelt Community Foundation to create a scholarship endowment for worthy young men.

“We’ve been talking about this for awhile, but the timing was right with our 50th anniversary coming up,” said Jerome Brown, “We want this scholarship to be one of the crowning achievements of our chapter – something to hang a hat on.”

“The Hattiesburg Alumni Chapter already has many things to be proud of,” added Brown. “The group organizes many worthwhile programs, such as its Kappa League, which is a part of the Guide Right program. This is a leadership development program for young men in seventh through twelfth grades; the role of the chapter is to partner with students and serve as mentors / positive role models and to provide college preparation.”

The scholarship set up through the PineBelt Foundation will be awarded to a student entering college who has been through the Guide Right program or possibly a collegian member of Kappa Alpha Psi at Southern Miss.

Brown said fundraisers are currently planned to help grow the scholarship fund. In October 2010, the chapter will hold the 50th anniversary celebration, and net proceeds from the event will go back to the scholarship fund.

Brown believes with the hard work of the alumni chapter and the help of the Kappa Iota chapter at Southern Miss, it will only take about 2 years to have the scholarship fully endowed.

We are very excited about the perpetuity of our Kappa Scholarship Fund. We are able to affect change in the lives of many young children for many years to come,” said Bernard Green. “We appreciate the partnership with the PineBelt Foundation because it allows us to create a legacy without the challenges of establishing a stand-alone foundation.”

For more information on the Greater PineBelt Community Foundation, call 583-6180 or visitwww.PineBeltFoundation.org.