#alpha phi alpha

Consider a five part rubric:

1. Which organization's values, mission, and projects speak to me the most?

2. Which organization's history resonates with me?

3. Which organization's notable members do I most identify with?

4. Do I feel comfortable and at home in a room full of those members?

5. Do I value the more intimate experience of a smaller organization or do I like being part of a very large network?

Hope this helps!

Levi Jackson (August 22, 1926 – December 7, 2000) was the first African-American football captain at Yale University and the first African-American executive at Ford Motor Company. He was a member of the Yale Class of 1950, and captained the 1949 football team, the election taken soon after the 1948 season.

Jackson's election to the captaincy was unprecedented, given he was the first African-American to play football for Yale, but almost unremarkable in the Yale community. "The voting took only ten minutes. There was no one else. It had to be Levi," a Yale player recounted.

Jackson was elected the first black captain of any Yale sports team by his teammates in November 1948 in a landslide 49–1 election. The only vote against Jackson was his own. Jackson had lettered also for the varsity basketball team.

Jackson's squads were 3–1 versus Harvard in “The Game.” During his Yale career, Jackson broke or tied 13 Yale records.

After graduating from Yale, Jackson went to work for the Ford Motor Co. in 1950. By 1962 he was an executive, the first African-American to reach that level at Ford; he was a Vice President when he retired in 1983.

Jackson was also instrumental in creating Ford’s Minority Dealership Training Program.

Trudy Ring at The Advocate:

Alpha Phi Alpha, one of the most prominent historically Black fraternities in the country, has taken a first step toward barring transgender members. Delegates to the fraternity’s constitutional convention, held Wednesday through Sunday in Chicago, voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of a bylaw amendment limiting membership to “naturally born” males, sources told GLAAD. A spokesman for Alpha Phi Alpha, reached by The Advocate, had no comment. The amendment is still subject to approval by local chapters and the general membership before the change is final. It states that membership will be restricted to “any male defined as a human being naturally born male, who remains and continually identifies as a male,” according to a draft reviewed by GLAAD.

Leading up to the delegates’ vote, several people who spoke to GLAAD said an organization that has long been supportive of civil rights should not be endorsing discrimination. “Their decision to alienate trans and nonbinary people from membership is reactionary, asinine, and unbecoming of an organization with a professed commitment to human rights,” said Deandre Miles-Hercules, a “gender creative” Alpha who uses they/them pronouns, told GLAAD. “It’s ludicrous to be the fraternity of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. and come up with a policy that bans trans people.”