[Update] Judge lifts contempt ruling against Alpha Kappa Alpha

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A Cook County judge Thursday morning removed a contempt of court ruling against Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. and gave the organization until later this month to provide financial records.

The move came after the group sent its top finance staffer — who’d been at the AKA national meeting wrapping up in St. Louis — to its Chicago headquarters Thursday morning to provide some records for the sorority’s past president, 94-year-old Julia Purnell.

Purnell had filed to have access to the group’s financial records after members unsuccessfully sued the sorority and its leadership, including President Barbara A. McKinzie, a former Chicago Housing Authority and Cook County Forest Reserve financial manager. The lawsuit alleged that over her four-year term, McKinzie directed the spending of millions of the sorority’s funds for personal use and pet projects, including a salary and retirement for the traditionally unpaid post and a wax statue in her likeness on display at a Baltimore museum.

“If the organization had given the plaintiff the respect she deserves from the beginning, we wouldn’t have had this bruhaha,” Judge Daniel Riley said on Thursday. “She had legitimate access in light of evidence and her rights were not respected.”

Purnell’s attorney said the documents she was allowed to view briefly Thursday morning were missing details and accounted for only a small portion of sorority funds.

On July 1, Riley agreed to the inspection of records, but at an emergency hearing Monday, lawyer Ruth Major said the sorority refused to provide them upon after several visits to its Stoney Island Avenue headquarters.

On Tuesday, the judge found the group in contempt after a human resources manager had appeared in a hearing without the proper documents.

AKA’s executive director was pulled from the St. Louis meeting, during which the group honored hip-hop mogul Jay-Z and inducted BET co-founder Sheila Johnson as an honorary member, and Wednesday testified she couldn’t access all documents because most of the staff was at the convention and the group was in the process of changing computer systems.

AKA attorneys had argued there was not enough time or staff available to provide the information as the convention approached, and it would disrupt the biennial meeting to pull top officers and staff from the event.

Purnell, the sorority’s oldest living president, had planned to report to the St. Louis gathering, which concludes today and marks the end of McKinzie’s term.

The next meeting is in 2012.

The judge set a hearing for July 27, after sorority leaders return from a post-meeting group trip to Australia.

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