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On January 15, 2012, graduate and undergraduate Alpha Kappa Alpha women along with the men of the Jericho Lodge #20, Free and Accepted Masons, Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of PA partnered to celebrate the life Martin Luther King Jr.  The event was held at Barack Obama Academy of International Studies.

The event opened with a welcome to over 100 members and guests, followed by dinner and song by Brady and Brana Hill.  Mr. Andre’ McGee, Past Master followed by presenting the audience with a powerful video entitled “Keepers of the Dream” to the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Event co-chair Jackie Blakey led the group discussion on how the guests in attendance and young people continue to keep the dream of Martin Luther King.

In addition to paying a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., military families were honored and recognized for their service and sacrifices to our country.  With the assistance of the Students Ambassadors at Pittsburgh Dilworth PK-5^th grade, the two organizations were able to present over 50 food baskets to veterans transitioning back into civilian living through a program sponsored by the Veteran’s Affairs Hospital.  Event co-chair, Dr. Monica Lamar is the principal of Pittsburgh Dilworth PK-5^th Grade.

The Alpha Mu Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. won the 2011 Outstanding Alumni Chapter of the Year Award at its district convention in Johnson City.

The Knoxville chapter has been in existence since 1930. The criteria for the award is based on fraternity and community service, as well as developing programs and activities to promote education and awareness on several causes in the Knoxville area, including voter’s education, Go To High School Go To College and Project Alpha.

The chapter will represent the Tennessee District at the regional Alpha Phi Alpha convention in Columbia, S.C., in March.

For more information, visit http://alphamulambda.com.

Family, friends and the Cody High School community are mourning the loss of a long-time teacher.

The body of 33-year-old Dwyone Joiner was found in his Sussex Street home in Detroit Wednesday.

Detroit Police say he was killed from a gun shot wound, but investigators are not releasing any other details into the death.

A source with the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office tells Action News the case is being handled as a homicide, and no weapon was found at the scene.

Family members of Mr. Joiner say he taught English and helped with the yearbook.

He had taught at Cody for 11 years.

“We are saddened that a teacher at Cody High School has died,” said a statement from Jennifer Mrozowski from the Office of Communications at Detroit Public Schools. “We have had a crisis team to talk to students and staff.”

Read more: http://www.wxyz.com//dpp/news/region/detroit/police-investigate-cody-high-school-teachers-death#ixzz1jwX9WZM9

A classmate. A fraternity brother. A colleague in the American struggle for civil rights. A high school student. Their lives intersected with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Decades later, on the holiday celebrating King’s life and the civil rights movement he led, these contemporaries of King recall how the young preacher from Atlanta influenced them.

Herman W. Hemingway, 79, Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Attorney and retired professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Hemingway first met King in 1952 when the two were Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity pledges. King was a doctoral student at Boston University. Hemingway was an undergraduate at nearby Brandeis University.

From the moment King walked through the door, said Hemingway, he stood out — serious and erudite.

“The doorbell rang and here comes this short guy with very brown skin,” Hemingway said. “And he’s a reverend. He was older than the rest of us. We were teenagers. We wanted to have fun, joke around, tease each other. . . He kind of distinguished himself from the rest of the group.”

King became the fraternity’s chaplain and a father figure, Hemingway said. He recalled how they never called King by his first name, only “Rev” or “Brother King.”

All pledges were required to remember a poem, William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus.”

“It exemplified how to deal with struggles and challenges and how to be self-sufficient,” Hemingway said. “It seemed to be a dress rehearsal for things he was later to face.”

How King influenced him: “I feel blessed to have met and spent time with Brother King. I was inspired by him as well. This was a man who was on a different wavelength than the rest of us.

“… We learned the importance of community efforts, brotherhood, self-reliance and respect for our own people. His contributions weren’t specific but his participation with us was the message. His contribution to the group was to keep it real and to encourage us to hang in there until we accomplished our goals. The collective nature of his participation was the inspiring part.”

Samuel DuBois Cook, 82, Atlanta

Retired president of Dillard University.

Cook and King were classmates at Morehouse College, both sons of Baptist ministers.

A friendship developed on the all-male Atlanta campus. King, as Cook remembers, was popular, outgoing and stylish.

An unforgettable experience for Cook was hearing King give the senior sermon at Morehouse in 1948, where a young King displayed the oratory skill that would help transform the nation.

“I remember M.L. saying in that sermon that there are moral laws in the universe that we cannot violate with impunity any more than we can violate physical laws with impunity,” Cook said. “He was talking about the moral order of the universe and our relationship as brothers in that universe. It was the most moving experience. It was a powerful, powerful address. He soared.”

Cook and King remained friends until his death. Cook still chuckles at how during a holiday gathering — in either 1966 or 1967 — he and his wife struggled over whether to serve King eggnog with a little something extra.

“I told her don’t just give ML this eggnog, put a little bourbon in it. She said, ‘No, you can’t do that. You can’t give him any bourbon,’ ” Cook said. “But she put a little in there. When she gave it to him he tasted it and said in his unique voice, ‘Sylvia, honey, I don’t know what in the world you put in this eggnog but whatever it was put in some more.’ “

How King influenced him: “The depth of his sincerity and his commitment to the kingdom of God had a great impact on me. M.L. was serious and sincere about social justice, about equality and about God. It challenged me. It made me want to be a better individual and to make a deeper commitment to the kingdom of God.

“That’s what ML was about, really, the kingdom of God.”

Dorothy Cotton, 81, Ithaca, N.Y.

Retired Dean of Students at Cornell University.

Cotton, as education director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, traveled the country with King. She did so when the civil rights movement was at its peak. Danger lurked everywhere.

Cotton was in the traveling party that went to Memphis in April 1968. She was with King on his last plane ride.

Cotton was set to fly back to Atlanta on April 4, the day King was killed.

“I was eating breakfast in the restaurant, when he called for me,” Cotton said. “His last words to me were ‘get a later plane.’ But I had to get back to Atlanta. I got on my 1 p.m. flight, got home and took a nap and said I would go to the office later. While I was taking a nap my neighbor rang my doorbell and said, ‘I really have some bad news, Dr. King has been shot.’ ”

Cotton knew of the dangers but believed in the civil rights movement. It’s why she left Virginia and followed her pastor, Rev. Wyatt T. Walker, who was head of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality, to help King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta.

“I became director of education for SCLC,” Cotton said. “And my role was to plan the five-day sessions to help black folks un-brainwash themselves.”

How King influenced her: “After his death, I worked with Mrs. King to start the King Center … Now I spend a lot of my time speaking and teaching about Dr. King and the civil rights movement. I do a lot of work looking at the lessons we learned and helping people organize. People are doing a lot of creative things, building off of the civil rights struggle. I am also finishing my book, ‘If Your Back’s Not Bent: The Movement from Victim to Victory,’ which will be out soon. And I am always answering the question of Dr. King’s last book, ‘Where Do We Go from Here?’ ”

Lawrence Edward Carter Sr., 70, Atlanta

Dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College

As a high school student in the 1950s, Carter dreamed of attending Morehouse College, but couldn’t afford the tuition. In 1979, he finally got there.

Carter met King four times, first as a 10th grader in Columbus, Ohio when King visited his church.

“He asked my name and asked if I had considered [attending] Morehouse,” Carter said.

Carter would hear King speak again at a local high school.

“I was swept off my feet and rushed back to the school to call my mother to tell her I wanted to go to Morehouse,” Carter said. “But she was working three or four jobs and we couldn’t afford it. So I decided that I would go to Boston University and be taught by the same professors who taught him.”

Carter met King again when he was a student at Boston University, which he said pleased King. He recalls the heartbreak of hearing of King’s death.

“With tears streaming down my face I prayed out loud for the Lord to let me do something significant for Martin Luther King Jr., before I close my eyes,” Carter said. “[Former Morehouse President] Hugh Gloster invited me to be dean of Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel on July 1. 1979.”

How King influenced him: “Dr. King helped me prepare my vision for my ministry and for all of my peace work. Martin Luther King Jr. is a moral cosmopolitan. His most famous statement is proof of that — ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’

“He did not believe in putting a straightjacket around his expression of unconditional love of Christ. There was an internal consistency about what he believed and sought. That is how he impacted me. (Having not attended Morehouse as an undergraduate) King would say to me that what I am doing is a much more powerful response to his recruitment. He did not realize he was anointing me to keep his message alive. I have kept his Kingian, non-violent philosophy alive in the academy. I have been here for 33 years. I have spoken in 37 countries about him. He would be proud.”

A Little Rock Pioneer in medicine dies on New Year’s Day. Dr. Worthie R. Springer is one of the first African American graduates from UAMS and spent most of his life using his degree to help others.

Dr. Springer died at the age of 80. He practiced medicine for more than 50 years in the capital city. Family and friends remember the doctor as kind hearted and calm.
Lillian Springer sat between 2 of her 6 children while reflecting on her husband’s character. She says, “He dedicated his life to doing things that are good.”

Dr. Worthie Springer was married to Lillian for 54 years. Lillian says Springer wanted to be a doctor his whole life. She says, “At that time there were some things that were not always the best but he knew how to get to know other students and do the things he needed to do to graduate though it was a trying time.

Springer practiced medicine for more than 50 years in Little Rock and even made house calls when needed.

Reverend Hezekiah Stewart met Dr. Springer back in the 1970s and said he helped him out when he first came to Little Rock. Springer Boulevard in Little Rock is named in his honor. His friend JJ Lacey says it was a fitting switch, “That is just a small testament to his contribution to society,” says Lacey.

Dr. Springer not only helped others in his community, but he served his country. He spent four years in the United States Air Force. Springer also graduated from Philander Smith College and was involved in the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

In the wake of a college drum major’s death in Florida, a lawmaker from the state plans to introduce anti-hazing legislation when Congress returns in mid-January.

The bill would strip financial aid from anyone sanctioned by a university for hazing or witnessing hazing and failing to report it – including the victim, said Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson.

“Hazing is demeaning, dangerous and, sadly, deadly,” Wilson, a former school principal, told the Los Angeles Times, adding that the death of Florida A&M University drum major Robert Champion warrants a federal response.

Florida has toughened the penalties against hazing, but Wilson said in an interview that, under her proposal, if anyone witnesses hazing – “including the victim, they will tell because they don’t want to lose their federal aid.”

Florida officials have ruled Champion’s death in November a homicide. The incident has drawn national attention and generated soul-searching on college campuses throughout the country.

Wilson, who has yet to draft the legislation, said she also wants the U.S. attorney general to set up a commission to examine ways to stamp out hazing.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2005 signed legislation making hazing that results in serious injury or death a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, even if the victim consents. The bill, the Chad Meredith Act, was named after a University of Miami freshman who drowned in a campus lake while trying to join a fraternity in 2001.

Wilson said that, notwithstanding the new law, “we have had a plethora of hazing incidents,” but prosecutions have been difficult because “you can’t find any victims to talk.”

“We’ve got to take a tougher stance,” added Wilson, who said that she became known as the “haze buster” while serving as South Atlantic regional director for the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. “It’s time to stop it.”

Congress has been considering legislation aimed at bullying, including requiring states to report bulling incidents and expanding programs for teachers, administrators and counselors on strategies to prevent bullying and harassment.

In November 2010, I watched “HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” and saw a piece on the hazing antics at several historically black colleges and fraternities. I took to Twitter to share my thoughts on the issue.

Much of the report focused on Southern University, and man, did the floodgates open as a number of students from the university angrily tweeted me back, cussing, yelling and screaming, with some defending hazing, while others were angry at the national attention focused on their university.

For hours we went round and round, and were joined in the discussion by members of several black fraternities, including my own Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. A number of these individuals actually supported hazing, or “pledging hard” and not becoming a “paper” member who “skated” into the fraternity.

Despite the anger and vitriol, I refused to back down, making it clear that getting beaten for being in a band or fraternity was absolutely dumb.

Here was a young man who went off to college, planning to earn a college degree while leading one of the nation’s most colorful and exciting bands, only to be returned home to his parents in Georgia in a coffin.

While hazing immediately was suspected, we could only speculate about the cause of the 26-year-old’s death. That is, until Friday, when the medical examiner released details of his autopsy, concluding that Champion “collapsed and died within an hour of a hazing incident during which he suffered multiple blunt trauma blows to his body.”

News of the death has rocked the Florida A&M campus, angering its students and alumni, triggering multiple state investigations and leading Gov. Rick Scott to call for the suspension of school President James Ammons. That prompted FAMU students to march to the governor’s mansion on Friday and camp out on his lawn, demanding he rescind the resignation call.

Champion’s death isn’t the first time we have seen individuals in a band or fraternity die. It is incredible that some folks have given their lives — literally — for just being a part of a student group.

State laws have been passed, organizations have been kicked off campuses and national fraternal and sorority groups have paid millions in settlements because of hazing, but we continue to see these stories.

“Why?” is a consistent question that is asked, and at the end of the day, it boils down to power and a desire to demand others kowtow to someone else’s demands in order for them to be accepted.

A decision not to follow through means you can be ostracized, ignored and marginalized. That’s the last thing any young person wants to experience when in an organization.

Every one of these organizations is overseen by adult leaders or advisers. But in truth, fellow students run the show. Normally in a band, a drum major sits at the top of the food chain, but Champion clearly had to bend to the band’s culture to be fully accepted as a member of FAMU’s “Marching 100.”

So what you have is a bunch of students between the ages of 18 and 22 calling the shots and making it clear who is accepted and who isn’t, who gets in and who doesn’t. You aim to please them and no one else. Oftentimes they are leading based on how they were led, and it has been indoctrinated into them that this is the way of life, take it or leave it.

These are powerful forces that can only be changed by peers. Hazing will only be brought to a close when members of organizations make it clear the vile hazing traditions will not go forward. No one today can be hazed if the student leaders make it clear that it’s unacceptable. Yet because of the natural turnover in student organizations, that mindset has to be created and passed on for it to succeed.

When I was about to pledge Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. in spring 1989, I met with my four other pledge brothers and made it clear: I’m not getting hit, I will never use alcohol and I will not agree to be hazed.

Even though my older brother pledged the same fraternity at Texas A&M two years earlier without any nonsense, I was making it clear that such shenanigans were idiotic. All five of us agreed and in the four weeks, two days, 16 hours, 38 minutes and 39 seconds I was on line (yea, having to recite such specifics was a part of our process), the behavior that we often heard was associated with pledging didn’t exist.

Yet because of that, we weren’t always as accepted by other fraternity members at other campuses. Our chapter was called soft; we were criticized as not “pledging the right way” and had to constantly defend our manhood.

Me, I didn’t give a damn. I would look others in the eye and say, “In the history of our chapter, only one brother has failed to graduate, and we do nothing with him. Are you guys on the six- or seven-year plan, and can you match our graduate rate?”

From my perspective, we were supposed to be in college to graduate, not to pledge. And if my fraternity was founded as a study group at Cornell University on December 4, 1906, why would we eschew academics?

Even though we pledged the right way at Texas A&M, that peer pressure was still unbearable for some. That summer at our national convention in San Antonio, hazing was on the agenda, and I made it clear I was going to speak. Some other brothers in my chapter pulled my coattails and said, “Don’t tell the brothers you didn’t take any wood (that’s being paddled).”

I yelled, “If we pledged brothers the right way, why in the hell are we afraid to say it?”

Since those days, I’ve never wavered from my anti-hazing position. It is deplorable and shameful to think that someone would beat another person for them to prove something. Prove what? They can take a punch? No. I prefer to challenge his mind, his intellect.

Our goal as fraternity men is to take young men and mold and shape them to be better men. It is not our aim to take young men and train them to be collegiate mercenaries, hellbent on inflicting as much pain as they got onto the first person they have control over.

Is there tremendous value in fraternities, sororities, bands and student organizations? Absolutely. The leadership opportunities are tremendous, and the lifelong relationships are vital.

But what has to be preached and preached and preached to every student, whether they are white, black, Asian, Latino, male or female, is that if they love that frat, sorority, drill team or band, they shouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it for the next person.

Do we need tougher hazing laws? Yes. Do we need universities to take punitive action, including kicking students out who break the rules? Yes. Do we need national organizations to ban chapters for years for egregious behavior? Absolutely. Should fellow student leaders turn in others who break the rules and haze? Of course. There must be a zero tolerance attitude from every state official, administrator, student leader and organization member. To hell with tradition, rituals and “the way we do things.” All that must end. Now.

But we also must raise a generation of young people who have enough confidence in themselves to say, “I will not take a beating just to be accepted by you. I’d rather not have your affection or support if it means putting my life on the line.”

And if that means other students calling you out or teasing you, fine. I’d rather you talk about me like a dog today than be hazed and have my friends search to figure out what to say at my funeral.

It is time to remit dues for fiscal year (FY) 2012!  NPHC, Inc. operates on a fiscal calendar of January 1 to December 31. Annual dues are to be remitted by January 31 of a given fiscal year.

Undergraduate councils are responsible for dues in the amount of $150, Graduate councils with 1-9 Chapters in the amount of $250,  Graduate Councils with 10-19 Chapters in the amount of $300, Graduate Councils with 20-29 Chapters in the amount of  $350.00, and  Graduate Councils  with 30+ Chapters in the amount of $450.

Members remitting dues after February 15 must include a $25 late fee with annual dues. (1) If a council has not been financial in the previous fiscal year that council is responsible for remitting dues for the previous and current year, as well as a $50 reactivation fee (Ex. Undergrad councils = $350.00; Graduate Councils with 1-9 Chapters = $550.00; Graduate Councils with 10-19 Chapters = $650.00;Graduate Councils with 20-29 Chapters = $750.00;Graduate Councils  with 30+ Chapters = $850.00); and (2) if a council has not been financially active within a five year time period, that council must be re-chartered.

Again, you are advised not to wait until the last minute to remit your dues.  Should you have questions or concerns as to your council’s financial status and/or account balance, please contact NPHC National Treasurer at  treasurer@nphchq.org.

Attached is the link to the remittance form http://www.nphchq.org/docs/2012Remittanceonline.doc

Also use this link if you would like to remit payment online  http://nphccouncildues.eventbrite.com

Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate fraternity founded by African-American men, held its annual Tennessee District Conference in Johnson City for the Association of Tennessee Alphamen on Nov. 17-20.

More than 200 Alpha men were in attendance. Among them was ETSU’s Sigma Beta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha which was the host chapter for the conference and also celebrated 21 years of existence.

“I am so pleased that the brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. came to Johnson City for this conference,” said Sigma Beta President Sean Hinton.

“We were honored just to host the conference and actually bring that great of a presence of Alpha Phi Alpha to Johnson City.

This was the first time that a conference has been held in Johnson City.

“Because our chapter is so small and lack the help of a alumni chapter, a lot of people doubted that we as undergraduates could pull off such a task of hosting a district conference by ourselves,” said Daniel Ashley, a senior and immediate past president of the Sigma Beta Chapter.

Usually these conferences and conventions are held in much bigger cities, but the Sigma Beta chapter fought hard for the conference to be held in Johnson City and proved to the district that they deserved it.

“A lot of the work that we do is unseen because we are so small and so far away from the rest of the [other] chapters,” said sophomore Thomas Smith.

“I think that with us hosting districts, chapters really got to see what we are capable of now and we definitely earned even greater respect from the rest of the chapters in the district.”

The conference featured several competitions in which every Alpha chapter in Tennessee, both undergraduate and alumni chapters, competed for awards.

The competitions included Undergraduate Chapter of the Year, Alumni Chapter of the Year, Scholar’s Bowl and Oratorical Contest.

The winners of these competitions on the state district level will move on to the regional level to compete.

The winners at the regional level will then move on to the national level and will compete at the Fraternities National Convention in the summer of 2012 in Miami.

The conference also had two more competitions that were open to the public — the annual Miss Black & Gold Pageant and the Step Show competition.

The annual Miss Black & Gold Pageant was held Saturday evening, with ETSU’s Edwina Morris representing the Sigma Beta Chapter in the pageant.

Morris was not able to come out with the win.

“I regret that things didn’t turn out how we would have liked,” said Morris. “I truly enjoyed the experience and opportunity and will never forget it.”

The University of Memphis’ Kappa Eta Chapter took first place over all.

Also held Saturday night was the Step Show Competition.

Five Tennessee Alpha chapters competed with Middle Tennessee State University’s Kappa Xi Chapter.

They took home first-place honors and will compete at the Regional Conference in Columbia, S.C., in March representing the District of Tennessee.

The Alphas of ETSU felt that the conference was a success.

“Regardless of our situation, we know we’re a great chapter, said Hinton, “but after this weekend, every Alpha in Tennessee now knows we’re a great chapter.”