After over 30 years of absence from Emporia State, the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity has returned to campus.
Kaleb Barber, the current advisor of the Alpha Phi Alpha Xi Nu chapter, was driven to reinstate the historically Black fraternity’s ESU chapter after missing out on the experience his father had with the fraternity as an ESU student decades earlier. Barber’s initial efforts to restart the fraternity while he attended ESU were pushed back as Covid-19 spread across the country.
Even though he wouldn’t be able to be a part of the chapter as a student, Barber still wanted to help bring the sense of community offered by Alpha Phi Alpha back to students at ESU.
That sense of community and brotherhood began in 1906 with the fraternity’s seven original members—or “Jewels” as they’re called—who started Alpha Phi Alpha at Cornell University: Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle and Vertner Woodson Tandy.
Alpha Phi Alpha became the first intercollegiate fraternity for African American men due to their efforts and is currently the largest African American fraternity. The organization promotes academic excellence, brotherhood, leadership development and service to the community, as displayed in one of their statements: “Manly deeds, scholarship and love for all mankind.”
It has produced some of the biggest names in leadership and excellence, including pianist and composer Duke Ellington and civil rights leaders Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr.
“That’s kind of who we are and who we aspire to be and always develop in the next generation to be greater than these men who have been in this fraternity,” Barber said. “We’re all on the same level. So thinking that we’re on the same level as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, is just like, wow. Like that’s the standard I’m held to now.”
Now that they’ve returned to ESU, the fraternity looks to bring back a collective culture and positive community engagement. Senior Isaiah Oliver, director of student engagement for the Black Student Union and president of Alpha Phi Alpha, sees the fraternity as a corporation full of firsts and potential for everyone willing to get involved.
“It has a really, really rich history and really prominent figures,” Oliver said. “Community is something that’s very important to me, and with that, also culture. I know it’s been gone for 30 plus years, but we’ve also been lacking unity and culture on campus. With this platform, we can bring that back as well. When you join Alpha fraternity Incorporated, you don’t really join the chapter. The chapter is just the road to the fraternity, because, as (Barber) said, it’s for life.”
