Angela Fisher Hall's Lecture on Fraternal, Social, and Civic Organizations
This lecture, like the one by Dr. Abrams, was optional for this semester's course, but I am interested in seeing what you have to say about either one, if you attended. Please add your response by using the link below to "add a comment."
Ms. Hall took a personal approach to a community topic, explaining how her parents had been involved in what were then called "social and savings clubs" in the 1950s in Birmingham, and explaining how she herself was involved in the Art Students League, the Black Student Union, and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority when she was a student at Birmingham-Southern in the 1970s. In decades when either the white community purposely excluded African Americans from social organizations, or individual black students didn't find much in common with their white classmates here at the college, these organizations served an important function. They gave young African Americans a chance to develop leadership skills, and they provided a network of support for those going into business or other areas of public life.
I was interested to hear how, in Ms. Hall's life, her sorority was a true sisterhood--not just a social club or an alternative to a predominantly white social scene on campus, but a group of women who would continue to be supportive of each other beyond graduation. This seems to me to be both a noble and practical purpose of Greek organizations. The thing is, many members of the white community, particularly the affluent white community, already have a network of support built up over years of relationships between families and businesses. I've never understood the need for Greek organizations on a small campus such as ours, one where students shouldn't feel at all isolated as they might at a large state university. In fact, the Greek system here has had the unfortunate effect of isolating those who don't pledge--the Independents. There is great merit to band together in an effort to include others in a support group. There is also an accompanying danger of banding together to exclude outsiders.
All of this comes around, for me, to our discussion in class about "In the American Society" where we saw both the differences and the similarities between American Country Club Society and Mr. Chang's Pancake House society. In both, there was a tension between an effort to include and an effort to exclude. What is perhaps most interesting to me is that, when we create clubs or societies, we concentrate on the good we do for the insiders. How often do we think about the negative effects on those we exclude?