Black Fraternity Pulls Convention From AZ

"Late Thursday, April 29, our national Board of Directors voted unanimously to rescind the location of Phoenix, Arizona as our meeting location of the 104th Anniversary/90th General Convention in July, and to denounce the egregious immigration act signed recently by the governor of Arizona," said Herman "Skip" Mason, Jr., the fraternity's national general president.

"It was the full opinion of the board that we could not host a meeting in a state that has sanctioned a law which we believe will lead to racial profiling and discrimination, and a law that could put the civil rights and the very dignity of our members at risk during their stay in Phoenix Arizona."

The event, which was scheduled to take place from July 21 to 25, will be moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. The convention, and the fraternity's special Summit on the African-American Male, was expected to draw up to 10,000 visitors to Arizona - adding hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to the Phoenix economy.

The fraternity, formed in 1906, at the Ivy-League Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., is considered one of the most influential groups in the United States. It includes among its membership: civil rights leader and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Andrew Young; McDonald's President and COO Don Thompson; National Urban League President and former mayor of New Orleans Marc H. Morial; CNN Political Analyst Roland Martin; White House Deputy Associate Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Michael Blake; and several high-ranking members of the U.S. House and Senate.

It is also the fraternity of the late Martin Luther King Jr. and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. President Ronald Reagan named several members to key posts during his presidency as did former Presidents George Bush, Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama.

"Our late Alpha brother the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, in a letter he wrote while sitting in the Birmingham Jail, ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' Alpha Phi Alpha's decision to boycott Arizona continues that same fight, fought during the Civil Rights era."

"We will not only speak with our voices and our feet, we will speak with our economic clout; and we will not spend our money in Arizona and urge other organizations and people who believe in equality under the law, to do the same," said Mason.

About Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Founded on December 4, 1906, at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., has continued to supply voice and vision to the struggle of African Americans and people of color around the world. The fraternity has long stood at the forefront of the African-American community's fight for civil rights through Alpha men such as Martin Luther King Jr., Adam Clayton Powell, Thurgood Marshall, Andrew Young, Edward Brooke and Cornel West. The fraternity, through its college and alumni chapters, serves the community through more than 600 chapters in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. Visit www.apa1906.net and follow on Twitter @apa1906network.

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