College chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a historically black service fraternity, is part of a proud tradition on campus and beyond
Dapo Akinleye ’02 is a 25-year-old research scientist and graduate student at the University at Albany. George Smith is 67 and an emeritus professor of biology at the College.
Akinleye and Smith are like bookends and between them are a group of largely African-American Union College alumni and faculty connected by their membership in the service fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. The Union chapter, Pi Pi, was founded in 1983 and is part of a network of chapters at U.S. schools stemming from the seminal chapter founded at Cornell University in 1906, which was then the first African-American fraternity in the United States.
“In November 700 Alpha men had a big celebration [at Cornell]. It was very impressive to see this army of black men marching through the university,” Smith said. “The history of Alpha sort of coincides with the history of the civil rights movement. Many of the civil rights leaders like W.E.B. DuBois were Alpha men. To me, it just felt like I was reliving history; rededicating myself to what I learned at Bethune-Cookman College and along the way.”
Smith taught biology at Union from 1973 to 2005 and, along with former Professor Twitty J. Styles, became the driving force behind forming the Pi Pi chapter. Smith joined Alpha Phi Alpha in the late 1950s as a young man at Bethune-Cookman College, a historically black college in Florida.
Both Akinleye and Smith say Alpha Phi Alpha’s focus on public service, leadership and scholarship have played a key role in their lives. The fraternity claims civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and nearly all presidents of black colleges as graduate members of the fraternity.
“It’s a legacy of excellence, leadership and social action,” Akinleye said.
The Pi Pi chapter was recognized by the College’s Intrafraternity Council in 1985 and has carried out volunteer efforts in Schenectady’s Hamilton Hill almost every year since. Na’eem Crawford-Muhammad ’08, of Queens, N.Y., is the president of Pi Pi and helped lead a voter registration effort in Hamilton Hill before the November elections in 2006. The voter registration drive is part of a fraternity campaign called “A Voteless People is a Hopeless People.”
“It’s more than just a social organization. It’s a community service organization. That’s really what I was looking for from Alpha Phi Alpha. They focused on the community of Schenectady, more specifically on Hamilton Hill,” Crawford-Muhammad said.
Recent graduates and former Pi Pi members like Akinleye and George Tiggle ’98, act as mentors to students. Tiggle works in the College Relations Department and Akinleye lives in Schenectady and works as a research scientist for the New York State Department of Health. He is also working toward a doctorate in epidemiology at the University at Albany.
Akinleye moved to New York City from Nigeria in the early 1980s at about the time that the first AIDS cases were reported in the United States. His uncle died of complications from the disease and Akinleye intends to build a doctoral research project associated with his work at the health department’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS Epidemiology. His research tracks New York State’s newly infected HIV patients and Akinleye views the disease as the “most urgent public health challenge of our generation.”
“Although the disease was first established in homosexual men, it has increasingly become a disease of color, with blacks and sub-Saharan Africans bearing the heaviest burden,” Akinleye said.
In early December Tiggle, Aikenley and Sean Washington ’06 traveled to Cornell for a second celebration of Alpha Phi Alpha’s centennial. Tiggle, who works in the College Relations Department, also organized a gala dinner in November at the New York State Museum in Albany.
Alpha Phi Alpha was founded by a cadre of black students at Cornell University in 1906, according to the Alpha Phi Alpha Web site. “[The men were] determined to bind themselves together to ensure that each would survive in the racially hostile environment. In coming together with this simple act, they preceded by decades the emergence of such on-campus programs as affirmative action,” reads to Alpha Phi Alpha Web site.
The Union College chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha was founded by James Mann ’86, John K. Johnson ’85, Winston Britton ’85, Greg Bowler ’85, Reinhard Walker ’86, Marty Glaze ’86 and Larry Romaine ’85. The Pi Pi chapter is normally comprised of eight to 12 mostly black members but does accept applicants of all races and there are number of Hispanic brothers in the chapter. Founding brother Mann is white.
“Every year we helped with Hamilton Hill groups and old folks homes. They were automatics. The service is a big part of it,” Mann said.