I feel an absolute responsibility to advocate for the position of our Founders. I recognize that you and others may take my letter as confrontational but I wish to clearly state that that is not the purpose for my writing. Because my membership predates yours, and that of many current members and officers, I intend this letter to be instructive – not confrontational.
I joined Phi Beta Sigma almost forty years ago – about a decade before you became a brother in this great experiment in fraternity life. I wish to share those reasons with you and to share those reasons with the general membership beyond you who, like you, may not be aware of the reasons for our being so far off track. There are specific reasons for our being off track. And to be properly oriented and organized, our Founders believed that men should be bound together in a fraternal “Brotherhood?.Īs I sit and write this letter to you today and over the days that it will take to complete it any honest Sigma will have to admit that we are far from the goal-purpose of our Founders.
To be able to give the proper “Service?, our Founders believed that college-trained men should pursue the necessary “Scholarship? – to gain the specific knowledge required to provide assistance to the community. They said that the ultimate goal-purpose of college-trained men should be “Service? to those from whom they had come – to all humanity. Our Founders developed a very simple and straight-forward formula. The Founders of Phi Beta Sigma established a new fraternity on the campus of Howard University in the winter of 1914 because they did not feel that any organization existed which properly bound college trained men to the communities from which they had come. Phi Beta Sigma is great because of its ultimate goal-purpose. Phi Beta Sigma is not great because of what it does – because it really does not do very much of what it was created to do. On this special day, I rededicate myself to the fulfillment of the ultimate goals of our Founders – the Founders of our great fraternity. However on MLK Day, I always worked extra long as a tribute to a man who gave all that he had to make America live up to the ultimate goals of its founding fathers. In fact – I always worked on all holidays (derived from the term holy days), Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. For the twelve years that I served as the Executive Director of Phi Beta Sigma, I always worked in the office on this special day. Martin Luther King a day which has always had special meaning to and for me. Today is the day we celebrate the life and work of the Rev.
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