Canada.org It’s no secret that black Greek organizations are beneficial to college students but they were also instrumental in building up a community of middle-class African-Americans through the Civil Rights Movement this episode of crossing over black Greek life explains just how the divine nine helped black communities Nationwide like that it’s true
His organizations breed greatness I mean just look at the Legacy we’ve got some Detail yep that’s right Martin Luther King Jr was an alpha but it doesn’t just stop there a lot of his Entourage were black Greeks too black sororities also had their hand in shape in the future these organizations helped shape and build black society to figure out how I
Reached out to Ryan Harris hey hey all right nice to finally meet you in person yes looking forward to it all right so where are we at right now right now we’re at the Atlanta Capital foundation house uh it’s a home of the Lambda Kappa Kappa chapter of Omega Sci-Fi fraternity
Incorporated all right so what are we gonna see on the inside something exciting the frat house okay Ryan is the vice president of the greater Baton Rouge panhellenic Council and he’s an Omega what is this oh that’s our emblem the emblem of the return and then this is y’all chapter name chapter
Name Atlanta is the name of the chapter here in Baton Rouge and uh our founding date December 7th 1995. to Ryan the real value of black Greek life is the chance to chance to serve and animal connections you’ve mentioned it over and over again it’s about service and it’s about
Community how are these organizations helping the Community Helping to build up black people we all have some type of form of mentorship scholarship efforts NAACP blood drives and You Name It We Make call it different names but they’re all the same thing what about in a professional sense it’s funny you say
That because of my employment I actually did get a little help I know such and such a year it’s just a networking tool and you would do that for someone that you really called a friend what we’re doing the best we can if somebody needs a ride to go vote we
Have not just voter registration but we trying to carpool get people there just assist people where they fall short wait wait I’m gonna pause here again our expert has some great Insight on how black Greek life helped contribute to the Civil Rights Movement the Civil Rights Movement was an important time in
The history of black fraternal organizations particularly because most of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were also members of the divine nine organizations for example Jesse Jackson could really go to different places and leverage not only his membership in Omega Sci-Fi fraternity but also his relationship
With the church you have someone like Bayer Rustin who organized a March on Washington also a member of Omega sci-fi so you had many people in these groups that had the connections to their organization and to the church that were able to leverage those opportunities into a meaningful Civil Rights Movement
So nice to meet you in person I’m Karen hi I’m Barbara Carpenter how are you I’m good I’m good because I headquarters here in Baton Rouge wow I’ve got all the nice pretty blue just like your jacket oh thank you Barbara Carpenter remembers when frats were organizing during the Civil Rights Movement Barbara is a Zeta in a Louisiana state representative the opportunity to serve for a lifetime is
The main reason she joined her sorority she says that’s the major distinction between the divine nine and white Greek organizations I think the major difference between uh black Greek organizations compared to the white organizations is that of service normally typically I’ll shall say white Greek life is fun when you’re in
College it’s more social black Greek life extends beyond the College Years so once you graduate with our precepts for instance of being service Sisterhood scholarship we focus on the service and The Sisterhood side of it more than the social side why do you think that is there were not many organizations that
Really they could really belong to and focus to do what needed to be done to help people in the community and so the black Greeks came into effect some people would say that black Greek life is really responsible for building up a middle class especially you know around
Your generation’s time when you joined yeah well you have to understand in the 60s that was the height of civil rights activities as well I don’t remember learning about that in school well you had to have some people who were brave enough to step out of in front and take
The lead and oftentimes those people belong to sororities and fraternities black Greek life helped members meet the community where they were if neighborhoods didn’t have anyone to explain how to apply for a voter’s registration they organize meetings if the community was struggling with literacy tests they set up classes
And book drives and what about when you were first joining the organization in 1968 what was your sorority doing at the time to help with what was going on in the world most of the focus was on education uh teaching people how to read which was something that was
Not very common black Greeks are still focused on professional growth the small business administration announced a new partnership with the National panhellenic Council to close the wealth Gap through black entrepreneurship the goal is to teach financial literacy where African Americans seem to struggle which isn’t that far off from what these
Organizations set out to do from the start to say that we’ve been in existence a hundred plus years says a lot to the success of what black Greek organizations have I see it continuing the only thing is that we have to be sure that we pass on what skills we have
What trainings we have and what contacts we have to the younger generation so that they too can pick it up and move forward with it because that’s the only way it’s the black middle class is going to survive and grow and everyone that’s our show for this week
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