AKA celebration interrupted by Old South parade
Members of a historically black sorority plan to ask University of Alabama President Robert Witt to cancel Kappa Alpha fraternity’s Old South celebration. It comes after a parade of students in Confederate army uniforms stopped in front of the sorority’s house during anniversary celebration on Saturday.
A number of UA members and alumnae of Alpha Kappa Alpha were shocked when the Old South parade, displaying Confederate flags and participants wearing Confederate uniforms, stopped in front of their sorority house during the course of the parade despite requests by the sorority to move.
Kappa Alpha, a traditionally white fraternity, held the parade on Saturday at the end of their annual Old South week. It fell on the same weekend as AKA’s 35th anniversary celebration.
The parade trucks stopped in front of the sorority house on Magnolia Drive, said Phillips Thomas, an AKA member and senior majoring in international studies and French.
At the same time, Thomas said the sorority members were outside to take pictures with Pat Whetstone, director of alumni affairs, after presenting a $4,000 check to the National Alumni Association’s scholarship fund.
Thomas said that she asked the fraternity to move the floats, but KA members told her they had to pick people up first, and no one apologized for the intrusion when they did move.
Joyce Stallworth, senior associate dean in the College of Education and a member of AKA, said she will present a letter on behalf of the sorority to UA Witt about canceling the event.
Before stepping outside to take pictures, Stallworth said the group had been talking about the rate of progress for diversity on the campus before the parade passed the house.
After seeing the flags and confederate uniforms that students were wearing, some alumnae thought that “nothing has changed at UA,” Stallworth said. “That was the sentiment.”
Stallworth said she knew that KA did not plan for the parade to occur at the same time as AKA’s anniversary weekend, but wishes that the students participating in it would explain the purpose behind their celebration so that she could explain why it offends her.
“If they’re celebrating the traditions [during Old South week], they need to understand the history behind those traditions,” Stallworth said.
Will Vandervoort, KA president and a junior majoring in biology, said he had no comment about the event and said it was ridiculous that The Crimson White would be covering it.
Janice Ross, a charter member of AKA in 1974, said the Confederate flags being displayed as part of the parade bothered her most because of the connotation the flag has for her.
“The Old South, the rebel flag, makes me think of slavery and of lynchings,” said Ross, who grew up in Birmingham during the Civil Rights movement. “The person who displays it is saying to me that they don’t care about the pain that I suffered and my parents suffered.”
Ross said that the University has made progress since she graduated in 1976, but it is displays, like those at the parade, that make her worry. The administration should be more sensitive to all groups, Ross said, when they consider what events to allow.
Even after living in Tuscaloosa for 17 years, Robbie Washington, a member of AKA and a 1986 UA graduate, said she was shocked by the parade.
She said the most bothersome part is that she thinks the UA administration is tacitly endorsing the event by allowing the parade and Old South week. In addition, she said that a public display around campus that includes Confederate flags should not be allowed.
“There’s a place for it, but I don’t think the streets of the University is that place,” Washington said.
