Parts of an email I received earlier...
NEWS from
www.apa1906.netALPHA PHI ALPHA FRATERNITY, INC.
2313 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 410.554.0040 Fax 410.554.0054
TUESDAY, NOV. 23, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Civil rights veterans join Martin Luther King Jr.’s fraternity
Alpha Phi Alpha holds initiation ceremony in Atlanta
BALTIMORE—Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the world’s first African-American and integrated Greek-lettered organization of college men, and one of the world’s most influential, has initiated its newest members.
Among the class are world leaders in civil rights, business, education and religion.
In a secret ceremony, Sunday, in Atlanta, Ga., the fraternity inducted nine men, including: the
Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, who along with fellow Alpha member Martin Luther King Jr., founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); the
Rev. C.T. Vivian, a fellow lieutenant of King’s in the American Civil Rights Movement; King’s son,
Martin Luther King III, who now heads the SCLC;
John W. Franklin, son of the late historian and Alpha member John Hope Franklin, who is program manager at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.;
Robert M. Franklin, president of Morehouse College in Atlanta; the Very
Rev. Robert C. Wright, the 10th rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, one of the oldest black Episcopal congregations in the U.S.;
Reuben McDaniel III, president and CEO of Jackson Securities and a member of the Atlanta Board of Education;
Timothy J. King, founder, president and CEO of Urban Prep Academies, a network of public college-prep boys’ schools in Chicago; and
Leonard James III, ExxonMobil’s corporate policy advisor on diversity and community outreach.
The group’s “line name” or class was dubbed the “Divine Nine.”After the ceremony, the fraternity held a special dinner at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in downtown Atlanta. At the dinner all but one of the fraternity’s past general (national) presidents were in attendance and gave remarks. They charged the new Alpha members to live up to the aims and ideals of the fraternity of leading and serving.
“In Alpha we do not initiate honorary members,” said Herman “Skip” Mason, Jr., general president of the fraternity. “These brothers, are full-fledged Alpha men who have gone through the very same process that a freshman or sophomore on a college campus travels in order to become a member of Alpha.”
During the ceremony, Alpha member Andrew Young, another key lieutenant of King and a former ambassador to the United Nations, spoke of the new brothers coming full circle.
“Most of you have been walking in the light of Alpha all these years, and now you have finally have made it official.” Young said.
Young, like Martin Luther King Jr., joined Alpha Phi Alpha as a college student 60 years ago and worked alongside Lowery and Vivian during the heated years of the Civil Rights Movement.
Lowery, 89, the eldest of the new group, delivered remarks on behalf of the initiates. His “unbrief” remarks, as he jokingly called them, came with the same spirit and fervor he’s been known for over the past 60 years, up to his stirring benediction at the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.
In an initiation ceremony the week before, in Atlanta, longtime actor/producer Tim Reid joined the fraternity. 
Too cold!
Too cold!