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National convention lost as boycott retains impact

By Kevin Aldridge, kaldridge@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The nation's largest African-American
fraternity has pulled
Cincinnati from consideration as the site for its 2005
convention because of
the city's racial climate.

Leaders of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.
announced Tuesday that
they would not be coming to Cincinnati, in part
because of what they see as
the city's lack of progress and refusal to acknowledge
racial problems.

The convention would have brought between
3,000 and 5,000 people
downtown and generated about $3 million for the local
economy.

“We felt it would have been a travesty to
support Cincinnati by
having our national convention there given what our
organization stands
for,” said Darryl Jones, chairman of the fraternity's
national time and
place committee. “We just could not see supporting the
city with our dollars
knowing the types of problems that African-Americans
face there.”

The decision comes about a month after the
National Urban League
yanked its convention from downtown following the
controversial suspension
of the city's highest-ranking black police officer.
The move is also another
indicator that the year-old boycott against the city,
which some believed
was waning, continues to have a strong influence on
African-American groups.

Alpha Phi Alpha had been in contract
negotiations with the Greater
Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau since last
year, but nothing had
been finalized, according to bureau officials. The
loss, they said, is still
significant.

“It is unfortunate to no longer be under
consideration from a group
like this,” said Julie Harrison Calvert, a bureau
spokeswoman. “We're
talking about a convention that is three years out. We
are seeing a lot of
significance in that.”

Cincinnati was at the top of a short list of
cities under
consideration for the 2005 convention, which will mark
the Alpha's 99th
birthday.

Cincinnati was rejected by the Alpha's
national board of directors
at last Thursday's Economic Development Conference in
Las Vegas after local
fraternity members recommended against coming.
Fraternity leaders said
better financial incentives also were a factor in the
final decision to
locate the convention in Houston.

“Had it not been for the civil unrest in 2001
we might have been in
Cincinnati,” said Andre Ward, the group's Midwestern
Regional executive
director. “We just felt that there had not been a good
enough demonstration
of good faith on behalf of the city to solve some of
Cincinnati problems. .
. . We're not talking about image and marketing
campaigns, but solid
strategies about how to resolve those issues.”

The Alphas are no strangers to Cincinnati. The
group held its
national convention in the Queen City once during the
1960s and a regional
convention at the Hyatt Hotel downtown in 2000. The
2000 meeting, which was
to lay the groundwork for the 2005 convention,
attracted about 1,500
fraternity members from 14 states and Canada.

Akiva Freeman, a member of the fraternity
since 1999, remembers the
positive influence the 2000 regional meeting had on
the city and regrets the
loss of a chance to replicate that success on a larger
scale.

“As the local alumni chapter, it would have
been a feather in our
cap to be the host chapter for the national
convention,” said Mr. Freeman,
of Avondale. “But sometimes there has to be casualties
in order to make
progress.”

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. has about
160,000 members and 800
chapters.