Members of Greek organizations in the National Pan-Hellenic Council are celebrating Black History Month by focusing on African-American leaders from the past, present and future.

The last weekend of the month, the Southeastern African-American Student Leadership Conference is meeting at the University to teach students skills like networking and leadership to make them more successful after they graduate college. NPHC is sponsoring the conference and hosting a party afterward.

Tunji Adebayo, a senior dietetics major from Lagos, Nigeria, is the president of NPHC and the vice president of the Beta Zeta chapter of Omega Psi Phi.

“We’re throwing a party that Saturday to keep the kids from going downtown and possibly getting themselves in trouble or distracting from what they’re trying to gain from this weekend,” Adebayo said.

The eight organizations within NPHC are hosting their own events addressing specific issues affecting the black community.

Whitney Judson, a senior international affairs major from Fayetteville, and Alpha Kappa Alpha’s former president, said her chapter is taking a look at the similarities and differences between the black and the gay civil rights movements in a program called, “Is Gay the New Black?”

“What we’re going to do is provide an exploration of the black civil rights movement and compare it to the gay civil rights movement and see how people feel about the similarities between the two, see if people think they’re parallel, or see if people think they are extremely different,” Judson said.

David Mapp, president of the Zeta Pi chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, said they are doing a month-long Twitter program called Know Your History.

“It’s kind of like Anonym_us,” said the junior political science major from Greensboro. “We tweet a question and you have to find the answer, but you have to find a brother on campus and you win money.”
Alpha Phi Alpha is also collaborating with the Zeta Psi chapter of Delta Sigma Theta to host a program on Feb. 23 called “In His Memory, In Her Honor,” which honors Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who were the first black students at a desegregated University and who were members of those Greek organizations, respectively.

“To know that you actually have a bond with those people means a lot to you and it internalizes black history month,” Mapp said.

But Holmes and Hunter-Gault aren’t the only historically significant NPHC alumni. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson were also Alpha Phi Alphas.

Donald Hollowell, who brought the original lawsuit against the University that began the process of desegregation, was a brother of Kappa Alpha Psi.

Carter G. Woodson, who is known as the father of black history, is an Omega Psi Phi brother.

Because of that, Adebayo feels a special bond with Woodson.

“He’s a member of Omega Psi Phi, so all of us all over the country feel an obligation to Black History Month,” he said. “That’s something that really touches our heart.”

Nekabari Goka, senior economics and international affairs major from Doraville and president of the Zeta Iota chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi, said education on Black History Month often overlooks otherwise significant figures in black history in favor of household names such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X.

“We kind of neglect the fact that black history is not just about those important figures,” Goka said. “Black history is about those unsung heroes that were there with Malcom X marching for civil rights and that were there with MLK advocating for those that were disadvantaged by the system.”

That’s not the only qualm some members have about Black History Month.

Nate Thompson, a senior digital media and broadcast journalism major from Jonesboro and second vice president of the Zeta Nu chapter of Phi Beta Sigma, expressed his discomfort with the idea of Black History Month.

“While I do understand why it was established and I understand the meaning of it,” Thompson said. “I don’t necessarily agree with Black History Month because I feel like it trivializes the work that the pioneers in the African American community do.”

Adebayo said Thompson’s opinion is shared widely throughout the African American community.

“That’s the dissenting opinion,” he said.

Adebayo said at its founding in 1926, Black History Month aimed to showcase the black community’s achievements, which were often disregarded in public education.

“If they were even in textbooks, that chapter would be skipped,” he said.

Adebayo said he appreciates Black History Month’s importance now, but he hopes it won’t be necessary in the future.

“Hopefully 50 or 100 years from now, black history and all history will be together to a point where people don’t have to think, ‘OK this is Black History Month,’” he said. “It’s not necessarily that we don’t like Black History Month, but that we hope that one day, there will be no need for it.”