KAPPA NEWS
A14 TH ANNUALNATIONALFOUNDERS' DAYOBSERVATION
By Earl T. Tildon, Chairman, Publicity and Publications Commission
W ere you among the brothers that gathered in Tampa, Florida to celebrate the National 14 th Annual Founders’ Day? Were you among the 738 brothers who heard our keynote speaker, Brother Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III, pastor of the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, New York? Did you see this prolific brother stand without notes and say to us that Black men are on trial and the devil is the prosecut- ing attorney? You won’t get his keynote address here, but I assure you that the message was relevant to Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity. It was particularly important for the undergraduates who were present, because it highlighted the oxymoron of our initiation process where some brothers would somehow want to convince initiates that they should be unlawfully abused and then become our brothers. Brother Butts raised this oxymoron, reminding us that it doesn’t make sense to abuse the persons that you love, or young men who we want
to be faithful members of our beloved fraternity.
disdain as the Ku Klux Klan treated other non-whites throughout the State of Indi- ana and elsewhere. You will have learned that there were times when our Founders were not permitted into certain classrooms and other inconveniences were constantly a part of their university experience. But yet, our Founders recognized that they needed to form an alliance among them- selves, joining hands to countermand the blatant segregation and racism that overtly impacted their experiences as college students. Our Founders, recognizing the disparity of treatment and their desire to obtain higher education at Indiana Univer- sity, decided in 1911 to found a fraternity, initially called Kappa Alpha Nu, a name that was changed as a result of racist re- marks calling the fraternity “Kappa Alpha N----r”. The name was changed to Kappa Alpha Psi and subsequently incorporated as such.
This keynote address touched my heart, because in almost 64 years since I’ve been a Kappa, I have never mistreated an initi- ate or suggested to him that I was better than him or that he was less than a man. I’m convinced that the trial that Brother Butts alluded to is crowded in the court- room, because none of us, because of the color of our skin is exempt from the trial. The prosecutor is waiting for each of us to be put on the witness stand. They are waiting for us to prove to them that we are innocent of the crimes (real or imagined) for which we’re being charged. If you have taken time to learn the history of our fraternity, you know that the Uni- versity of Indiana at Bloomington, Indiana in 1909 was a location of hypocrisy, an institution that admitted our Founders to enroll, but treated them with the same
If you have taken time to learn the his-
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