Looking Toward The Future
New research helps Black sororities and fraternities consider new governing structures for the next 100 years
 
By Paul Ruffins

America's Black college-based fraternity and sorority movement is rapidly approaching two historic milestones. Next year will mark the 75th anniversary of the National Pan-Hellenic Council Inc. (NPHC), and 2006 marks a full century since Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. was founded at Cornell University. And just last month, May 15, 2004, marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of Sigma Pi Phi (The Boulé), the first Black social fraternity of college-educated professional men. Like the NAACP, the Urban League and other groups that emerged in the early 20th century as African Americans battled legal segregation and overt racism, Black Greeks are struggling to define a relevant, positive role in a society where African Americans' problems are multi-dimensional and many other organizations are competing for their loyalties.
"A majority of the Black Greek community believes our organizations inherently have a ready-made structure and network to help mobilize the larger Black community, with a collective membership of over a million college-educated African Americans and chapters in virtually every city and town in the country," says Virginia LeBlanc, executive director and CEO of the NPHC. "But if that's true, we're just not living up to our potential for being a force for change in the society."
From a historical perspective, it's interesting to note that at their 100-year mark Black fraternities and sororities are facing some of the very same political criticisms encountered half a century ago. In his 1957 classic Black Bourgeoisie, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier excoriated Black fraternities and sororities for their snobbery, materialism and disengagement from the problems of the Black masses. In a major address to the Boulé in 1948, W.E.B. Du Bois expressed concern that it was an "old, timid conservative group," more concerned with congratulating itself as a Black elite than mounting a political challenge to White America.
"The mission and significance of the Black Greeks will be meaningless to Black life overall until the BGLOs (Black Greek-Letter Organizations) collectively work to establish a progressive, social, political and economic agenda," says Dr. Ricky Jones, chair of Pan-African studies at the University of Louisville, author of the recently released Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. "In the last decade can you think of a single local, state or national issue where the Black Greeks took a strong stand?"
Darryl R. Matthews Sr., executive director and chief operating officer of the National Association of Black Accountants Inc., who is an active candidate for president of Alpha Phi Alpha Inc., has a different opinion.
"The people who think that the leaders of our organizations should be out there making statements on political positions don't understand that we may have as many members who are registered Republican or Independent as Democrats," Matthews says. "Politically we're not even monolithic on the things we may all agree on such as the need for better educational opportunities. If I became president of the Alphas and endorsed school vouchers as an option for poor Black children, I would instantly get a storm of protest from thousands of our members working in public education."
The Black Greeks' ability to be a greater force for social change is also constrained by the basic internal structures of the organizations themselves.
"In one sense our political actions are limited because the NPHC and its member organizations are non-partisan," LeBlanc says. "Our major political push will not be to support any specific candidate or party but to be part of the Unity '04 effort to increase Black voter registration and turnout for the 2004 election." Adding, "I believe that we can only reinvigorate the influence of the BGLOs by working closer together and combining resources. But the NPHC's political and social role is limited because we are not a regulatory body that can require our members to take any action."
Fortunately, the BGLO's struggle comes at a time when they can draw on an unprecedented burst of writing and research. It is fair to say that in the last 15 years more academic and journalistic attention has been focused on BGLOs than in the past 90 years combined. Before 1990, the major books written on these groups largely consisted of uncritical "in-house" histories of single organizations. The more exceptional and influential works include Charles Wesley's The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in Negro College Life (1st edition, 1929) and feminist historian Paula Giddings' In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement (1988). However, these works were largely historical and shed very little light on the contemporary issues facing BGLOs as a whole.