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.
A little over four decades after slavery and sixteen 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, over 700 members of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. embarked
on a pilgrimage to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, home of the
Alpha Chapter, the mother seat of the fraternity, to kick off the
fraternity's Centennial Celebration. This Pilgrimage 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 Pilgrimage 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 Pilgrimage, 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/
Petrina Jackson
Assistant Archivist
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
2B Kroch Library
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
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607-255-3530
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