At a university steeped in tradition and Southern heritage, “change” is a word often used to describe growth and expansion. For some, that’s enough—maybe even too much. But for at least one man on the outside looking in, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, “change” means more than increasing student enrollment. The change young people must embrace, in his opinion, includes integrating The University of Alabama’s historically segregated greek community.
“I think it is important for greek organizations to be examples to the larger society,” Lewis said. “When you have students at an academic institution, they should be able to socialize together, live together, to move us closer to a truly multi-racial democracy. I think it should be encouraged by the colleges and universities and by the heads of the different organizations.”
Lewis, raised in Alabama and a Georgia congressman, is no stranger to civil rights. An instrumental leader in sit-ins, bus boycotts and non-violent protests for racial equality in the 60s, Lewis participated as one of the 13 original “Freedom Riders” and later suffered a skull fracture from Selma’s infamous “Bloody Sunday” march in 1965.
Despite all the conflict that plagued the the civil rights era, and the lingering racial barriers leaders in the 1960’s couldn’t bring down, Lewis is hopeful change will continue to come. As for the UA greek system, Lewis said students should take the initiative and start this change.
Headlights, not taillights
“I think students and young people have an obligation to do what they can to point the way, to lead the way, and be shakers and movers for the larger society,” Lewis said. “But we live in a different society. We live in a different world, and it’s not just desegregation between African-Americans and white Americans, but its others. It’s the Latino population, Asian Americans, that is the direction that the country is moving and members of the academic community should be leaders, they should be headlights instead of taillights.”
Administrators in the past, as recently as 2011, have argued that sororities and fraternities, as private organizations, can freely determine their membership and therefore self-segregate. Lewis said many civil rights activists were confronted with the same argument during the ’60s.
We heard it over and over again, but it came to private clubs,” he said. “People would say, ‘This is a private club.’”
Lewis said this argument, still circulating 50 years later, is unacceptable.
“You cannot hide behind that,” he said. “That cannot be something to shelter, whether it’s a sorority or a fraternity. It’s for the greater good of the society to tear down all those barriers that separate people of their race or color or even gender.”
John Gordon, a member of the Tuscaloosa County Chapter of the NAACP, said despite progress on campus and throughout the state, race will continue to play a role in campus life.
“I don’t believe that race has become less of a factor in our society and I’m not sure that it ever will,” he said. “They are segregated primarily because of individual choices people have made, not so much because of a law that requires them to be segregated.”
Facing Alumnae
In order to achieve greek integration, Lewis encourages members of the University’s sororities and fraternities to lead against any pro-segregation arguments possibly kept intact by greek alumni members.
“I think that is the case where the alumni and the donors, there’s a need for the presence of the younger students’ generation,” Lewis said. “The young men and women in the colleges and universities have to spend time helping to educate, sensitize and inform people, really. Many of us, we have problems with change.”
Lucie Enns, a recent alumna of UA’s greek system, said sorority alumni are actively involved in recruitment and the selection of members, but Enns feels the chapter should ultimately have the final decision for membership.
“I think alumnae definitely play a big part in recruitment and their opinions carry a lot of weight,” she said. “I think it’s important to have alumni influence for these decisions, but it’s really important for the chapter to decide who they want because these girls are going to be their sorority sisters.”
Enns said she doesn’t know the general consensus of sorority alumnae’s thoughts on segregation, but hopes it would be in favor of integration.
“I think that a lot of people are familiar with what they know,” Enns said. “If they were in a sorority at a time where it was acceptable to be all white, then there is a tendency to want to keep it that way.”
However, Enns wishes there was more she could have done during her time at UA to help with greek integration.
“I do wish the greek system was integrated, and I wish there was more I could have personally done,” she said.
Inspiring a movement
Former UA president Guy Bailey said in an Oct. 12 interview that while greek houses remain independent social organizations, the composition of fraternity and sorority membership will ultimately mirror national trends, and the administration would encourage that as they could.
Although not the answer some may want to hear, Lewis said the administration’s outlook is a step in the right direction.
“Well I think it is great foresight and vision on the part of the president,” Lewis said. “I’m not going to try to sit in Atlanta or Washington and try to tell the president what he should do, as a member of congress or as a citizen of Georgia. But, I think he is on the right road. He can spend some time just talking, talking to members of the alumni groups and calling people in and just helping to educate and sensitize people.”
The University continues to reign as a leader in education and athletic recruitment, Lewis said, and he believes greek integration would spur others to initiate change as well, something that is needed in the state.
“I think it would send a strong message to the rest of the state of Alabama to the nation and to the larger society if the greek organizations can move in this manner toward integrating or desegregating,” Lewis said. “I think it is so important, really. I think it would inspire other organizations, other groups not just in the South but all around America.”
