Dear Mr. President:
Today is the day we celebrate the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King; a day which has always had special meaning to and for me. For the twelve years that I served as the Executive Director of Phi Beta Sigma, I always worked in the office on this special day. In fact – I always worked on all holidays (derived from the term holy days), Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. However on MLK Day, I always worked extra long as a tribute to a man who gave all that he had to make America live up to the ultimate goals of its founding fathers.
On this special day, I rededicate myself to the fulfillment of the ultimate goals of our Founders – the Founders of our great fraternity. Phi Beta Sigma is not great because of what it does – because it really does not do very much of what it was created to do. Phi Beta Sigma is great because of its ultimate goal-purpose. The Founders of Phi Beta Sigma established a new fraternity on the campus of Howard University in the winter of 1914 because they did not feel that any organization existed which properly bound college trained men to the communities from which they had come. Our Founders developed a very simple and straight-forward formula. They said that the ultimate goal-purpose of college-trained men should be “Service??? to those from whom they had come – to all humanity. To be able to give the proper “Service???, our Founders believed that college-trained men should pursue the necessary “Scholarship??? – to gain the specific knowledge required to provide assistance to the community. And to be properly oriented and organized, our Founders believed that men should be bound together in a fraternal “Brotherhood???.
As I sit and write this letter to you today and over the days that it will take to complete it; any honest Sigma will have to admit that we are far from the goal-purpose of our Founders. There are specific reasons for our being off track. I wish to share those reasons with you; and to share those reasons with the general membership beyond you who, like you, may not be aware of the reasons for our being so far off track.