[Update] Chicago judge orders Alpha Kappa Alpha to bring records to court this afternoon

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A judge in Chicago this morning ordered the director of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. — one of the nation’s most influential black women’s organizations — to retrieve financial records from the group’s Stoney Island headquarters and bring them to court this afternoon.

Cook County Judge Daniel Riley’s order came after the Chicago-based organization’s Deborah Dangerfield appeared in court and told him that most of her staff is in St. Louis, including the people she needs to pull together the records.

Riley was unmoved, noting that this was the second day in a row he had ordered whoever is in charge of the group’s records to appear in court — and the second day that didn’t happen.

“They didn’t bring me the person I asked for twice,” the judge said.

On Tuesday, Riley had found the group in contempt of court for failing to have its records custodian in court, as he had ordered on Monday. Instead, the national sorority sent a human resources manager Tuesday who said she didn’t have the records.

Dangerfield, executive director of the organization since last year, returned to Chicago from St. Louis, where the group is holding its national meeting.

It’s the group’s first meeting since members filed lawsuits alleging improper spending of sorority funds by Barbara A. McKinzie, the former Chicago Housing Authority and Cook County Forest Preserve District financial executive who is AKA’s president, and the directors of the sorority directors. Among the spending they’re questioning: more than $1 million in total compensation to McKinzie for what previously has been any unpaid post.

McKinzie’s four-year term as the group’s president ends this week.

On July 1, Riley ruled that former Julia Purnell — who, at 94, is the 100-year-old organization’s oldest living former president — could inspect the records. Purnell, who sued to see the documents, planned to present what she found during the St. Louis meeting. But her lawyers said the sorority refused access to the records during several visits to the headquarters on Chicago’s South Side.

Sorority attorneys said there wasn’t enough time to compile the information requested and worried about them being disseminated over the Internet.

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