By the end of the process only four remained.

Now looking back on it, I knew I’d join a fraternity sometime next the end of my first year. My father–an Omega–talked to me about fraternities. I vividly recall him saying to me that given the racism at Michigan’s campus I needed to have a group of people that I could count on, a group of people that I could trust no matter what. I didn’t have to join Omega Psi Phi, he said, because Omega wasn’t for everybody. But I should consider joining one of them–Michigan also had chapters of Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, and Phi Beta Sigma on campus.

(I say “vividly” in part because my father’s memory of this discussion was very very different. He explicitly remembers telling me that if I didn’t become a “Que”, I couldn’t come home. He remembers this as clearly as I remember what I am telling you. It is possible our stories are somehow both correct, but I’m pretty hardheaded, and if I heard my father tell me what he thought he told me I’d have joined another fraternity.)

My first year I had a chance to see friends of mine pledge two other fraternities (Kappa Alpha Psi, Alpha Phi Alpha). Each with histories going back almost 100 years (Michigan’s chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha just celebrated their 100 year anniversary last week) over time each had garnered its own niche among black men. Over the years I was there as an undergrad Kappa Alpha Psi garnered a reputation as entertainers and event promoters. Phi Beta Sigma during my first few years was known as giving the best step shows. Perhaps because they were the oldest chapter–no, the oldest black organization–on the yard I think that Alpha Phi Alpha probably was the organization that probably best represented the average middle to upper class black man on campus.

There were only two undergraduate Omegas on the yard at that time. They may have held a party during my first year, but I don’t recall it. I do remember thinking that they were aloof. I didn’t see them at any of the other fraternity parties I went to. And they didn’t speak much when I saw them around.

My first year on campus coincided with Spike Lee’s movie School Daze. Now School Daze was about the black college experience…but for me Lee nailed the black experience at Michigan. What I knew about pledging I knew from School Daze. I knew it was hard. I knew it was brutal. I knew it was physical. I didn’t think he got the politics of fraternities right necessarily, but I knew that pledging wasn’t a cakewalk.

But that was the point. I didn’t want something that would be easy. I wanted something that would be difficult. Something that would test me. Something that would take me outside of myself.

So I spent those first two semesters getting the lay of the land. A few of my friends pledged Alpha, one of my closest friends pledged Kappa. For several weeks they dressed the same (the Alphas “Sphinxmen” wore black jackets, black jeans, and black boots, the Kappas “Scrollers” wore blue jeans, blue coats, black sunglasses, and either blue or red berets). Whenever there was more than one of them they walked/ran/marched in single line formation. They didn’t speak to anyone outside of their Big Brothers. When they spoke to each other, they whispered, passing messages up and down the line. Every day at noon they would perform skits for the Big Brothers and for the rest of the campus. Although they had study hours, most of us thought they’d used their study time for sleep…they looked so gaunt and exhausted we figured they didn’t really have much time to sleep.

My close friend who’d become a Scroller? He looked a bit like JR Reid from the North Carolina Tarheels only shorter. About 6’5 or so. Maybe around 250 lbs. I’m guessing he lost about 50-75 lbs while pledging. Each group of pledges has to come up with a line name….a name that describes the group. My friend’s line name was originally “The Octagon” because there were eight of them. After two quit (“dropped line”) their line name became “Six the Hard Way”.

I’d started running with a group of other freshman. My first campus girlfriend used to jokingly call us “The Magnificent Five.” To that extent we’d already had a line name. Already had a bond. It was just about figuring out which group we’d join, together. The Sigmas were tossed out because they weren’t popular enough. The Omegas were tossed out because they were brash and brutal. The first time we saw the Omegas was at the end of the year stepshow. Gold military boots, freshly painted. Royal purple diapers. And nothing else. They looked like something out of a science fiction movie. They scared the shit out of everyone who saw them. They called themselves dogs. And I saw why. They looked and behaved as if they’d rip someone’s throat out in a fight rather than throw a punch. And vulgar as hell. If the Kappas were the Navy, and the Alphas the Army, the Omegas were the Marines. The shock troops. Michael Bowen–an Alpha with around ten more years in the game than I–said the Omegas were “sheer, blunt force trauma.”

Yes sir.

Seeing the Omegas at that moment probably sealed the deal me for my friends. We talked about it later that summer. The ques were wayyy too hard, too scary. The Sigmas didn’t have a high enough profile. The Kappas weren’t scary but one of the most challenging aspects of the pledge life is figuring out how to make a process as hard as possible without compromising academic excellence. From the outside looking in we didn’t think the Kappas on campus had that figured out, at least not in the late eighties. My friend for instance had to spend a few extra semesters in school because the semester he pledged his grades fell off the face of the earth. The Alphas were good men. They pledged hard enough. They had good character. They had a prestigious history.

It was all rational. Made a great deal of sense.

Later that summer my friends and I had a falling out. Pretty severe as far as those things go at least from my perspective. The details aren’t important here, but what I can say is that none of us were all that developed in the art of friendship.

This falling out pretty much removed the Alphas from my calculus.

So that summer I’d made the decision to pledge Omega. One of the first parties on campus made the difference between the Omegas and the other fraternities crystal clear. Another fraternity had a party, and had a step show. During the show they made fun of the others. In making fun of the Omegas–who had a party the following week–they noted that there were too few of them to joke about.

The two Omegas on the campus (plus one) were there. When they heard what the performers said about them, they walked into the center of the party, disrupted the show, and began handing out fliers advertising their party.

Of course a fight broke out.

There were literally two to three dozen members of the other fraternity, and only three Omegas. The Omegas didn’t run or leave each other. And the following, while important was not crucial. They didn’t lose.

That was the type of friendship the type of bond I wanted. The brashness I wanted. I wanted to be with a group of men who would literally go to the ends of the earth for one another, and were willing to disrupt anything and everything in the effort to be.

I was still scared shitless–I weighed barely 145 with clothes on–and didn’t think I had it in me. But it was at that moment I knew I’d made the right decision. The Ques continued to frighten, to intimidate. The first seven weeks of pledging I thought I would quit every single minute of every single day, in fear of what they would do that night, in fear of what they’d do the next day. But I moved through my fear, with my fear. And when i didn’t think I could go on, my line brothers picked me up, urging me not to give up, not to quit. I did the same for them.

I want to say we changed the campus irrevocably when we crossed. Of course that isn’t totally true. But what we provided in my time as an undergrad was a space for black men who wanted to be in a fraternity, but didn’t want to be Greek. Because our numbers were still low we were not really known for what WE did as Omegas. Rather we became known for what we did in the Black Student Union. What we did in the Office of Minority Affairs. What we did when students were maced by police on campus.

More than any single experience I have ever had, pledging Omega Psi Phi prepared me for life. Prepared me for those moments I didn’t think I’d finish my PhD. Prepared me for fatherhood, for how to raise, care for, and discipline children. And most importantly it prepared me for now–when it seems as if the bills don’t stop coming, the challenges of raising a family of seven in a Depression never cease, when every day a new hurdle appears, a new obstacle looms large.

Twenty years and one day later I wonder where I would be without the Ques. And I turn to the poem “Invictus” by Ernest Henley, a poem I learned while pledging. The second stanza:

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud

Under the bludgeoning of Chance

My head is bloodied but Unbowed

Twenty years and one day later, my head is bloodied.

I remain unbowed.

Deadly Sirius 4/18/89

1. Samuel D. Kirkland

2. Lester K. Spence

3. Darius V. McKinney

4. Glenn B. Eden

DP Selvan Manthiram

ADP Lee Rudolph

Long live the Sons of Blood and Thunder. Long live Omega Psi Phi Fraternity.

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Black History, originally uploaded by Unbowed.

Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter was murdered here. 

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Phi Chapter 1922

Originally uploaded by Unbowed.
I received this picture from one of my younger Chapter Brothers.

What stands out about this picture are three things.

The first is that I’m pretty sure that the Brother in the bottom right corner was my Uncle Kay. Komuria Harden went to medical school at Michigan in the early twenties. Was one of the first black medical school deans of Howard University Medical School. He died four years before I was born I believe, in 1965.

My father (who is also a member, inducted at Lambda Chapter while in Los Angeles) tells people to this day that he told me to either join Omega Psi Phi or not to come home. This isn’t what really happened. What REALLY happened was that he told me that because I was going to a school like Michigan I needed to be part of a group whose members would have my back. Black fraternities better served that purpose in his estimation than any other institutional vehicle (he was and is right about this). He suggested that I join ONE of them…but while he had preferences, it was up to ME to decide.

So I took a look around. One of my best friends at the time pledged another fraternity. But his experience was particularly brutal and while he graduated he did so some years after he was supposed to. I liked (and still like) the members of that Chapter a great deal…but I felt that at the time they weren’t serious about education, and were more interested in serving the campus population through entertainment than through education. Another group of friends I had were interested in another fraternity…but while I liked the members of that organization well enough, the reasons my friends (and others) gave for wanting to join had more to do with wanting prestige while not wanting to pledge hard. Further they didn’t have the same class affinity (working class) I did.

So what I wanted was an organization that would be about brotherhood, about working class black people (and about the nationalist education of black people). And I wanted an organization that pledged hard…not brutally hard, but hard enough. These values are values I received from my father. So even though he never said “pledge this or don’t come home” I ended up going that route anyway because of the values I received from him.

Years later after becoming a member I was browsing through the books at the Shrine of the Black Madonna’s book store, and I found a book detailing the lives of the first black Michigan med school graduates. I picked up the book knowing that my uncle (who I didn’t know much about) would be in it. And he was.

Among his organizational affiliations? Omega Psi Phi.

So the first thing that stands out is deeply personal. Even though I explicitly joined the organization of my father because the chapter represented the values that I received through my father…I also ended up joining the organization of my MATERNAL uncle, without even knowing it.

The second thing that stands out is the skin variation. By now many of us are familiar with the way that class is reproduced in black communities through skin tone. Light skinned American blacks tend to get more “stuff” than those who are darker in hue. Before large numbers of African and Caribbean blacks entered into prestigious American institutions it was uncommon to see darker skinned blacks at schools like Michigan. Anecdotal data suggests that some of the fraternities and sororities replicated this dynamic. We don’t see that here. There are some light skinned Brothers, some brown skinned Brothers, and some dark skinned Brothers as well. In 2007 this is common place. In 1922? Not so much.

The final thing? I still keep up with what is going on at Michigan. Although many graduates black and white come and go…I made sure I left my mark. People still know my name 20 years later. Phi chapter hasn’t been this big since the seventies. But even more important, with a couple of exceptions, NO black fraternity has.

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In 1933, when America was mired deeply in the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt came into office and launched federal policies to revive the economy. Many now remember well his New Deal policies. But, there were some at the time — particularly well-heeled leaders in the American business community — who adamantly opposed the federal government involving itself in the private sector. Based on research in the national archives, the BBC investigation suggests that titans of the industrial and financial world, including Prescott Bush (the grandfather of our sitting president), were linked to, if not directly backing, a plot that would have Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, a highly decorated Marine, lead a 500,000 private army and push Roosevelt out of power.

Want to know more? Listen. (Thanks to Open Culture for the link…)

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