The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections,
Cornell University Library, is pleased to announce
the online version of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity: A
Centennial Celebration.
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/alpha/
A little over 40 years after slavery and 16
years after the first African-American students
graduated from Cornell, the nation's first
intercollegiate black Greek-letter fraternity was
founded at Cornell University in 1906. The seven
Cornell students who formed the fraternity, known as
the "Seven Jewels," launched a brotherhood that
would achieve great success in leadership and
influence in the African American community and
beyond.
In honor of the fraternity's founders and their role
in forever expanding the definition of brotherhood
for black college-educated men, on November 19,
2005, more than 700 members of Alpha Phi Alpha
Fraternity, Inc. returned to Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y., home of the Alpha
Chapter, the mother seat of the fraternity, to kick
off the fraternity's Centennial Celebration. This
was only the second time that the
fraternity has sojourned to Ithaca as a whole body.
In 1956, during the Fiftieth Anniversary celebration
in Buffalo, 700 Alpha Phi Alpha men came to Ithaca
by train. The 2005 return to Ithaca comprised many
activities, including tours, a silent march, an
academic convocation, and a reception. To
commemorate the event, Cornell University Library's
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, home to
Alpha's founding records, hosted an exhibition of
Alpha Phi Alpha materials. Now available online,
this Web site presents information, images and
full-text documents to form an electronic version
of the exhibition displayed for the return to Cornell, and
again during the fraternity's Eastern Regional
Convention, trip to Ithaca on April 1, 2006.
The featured materials are part of the records of
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity's first chapter, the
Alpha Chapter, and tell the story of the
interactions of its members with Cornell University,
the growing fraternal organization, the community at
large, and with one another. All of the records are
from the Division's collections, including the Alpha
Phi Alpha, Alpha Chapter records, the Galvin Family
papers, the Burt Green Wilder papers, the Victor R.
Daly papers, and the Cornell University Archives.
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity: A Centennial Celebration
was curated by Petrina Jackson, Assistant Archivist,
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell
University Library.
A special introduction to the exhibit is written by
Robert L. Harris, Jr., Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity,
Inc. National Historian.
http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/alpha/
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