Alumni chapters pride themselves on their volunteerism, and on being a network for black professionals.īut on college campuses, black fraternities have a reputation for distinctively violent hazing. Douglas Wilder, Tom Bradley, David Dinkins and Walter Fauntroy. The four national Greek-letter fraternities for African Americans - Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi and Phi Beta Sigma - can claim many illustrious members, among them Thurgood Marshall, Jesse Jackson, L. 'It's just amazing what you can do to other people.' 'That is what scared me the most,' he says.

'I'm still not a violent person.' Yet as a 'big brother' he would slap pledges hard across the face, sometimes for no reason, fully confident that none of them would dare lift a hand against him.Īnd he would feel no remorse. 'I've never been a violent person,' says this 23-year-old graduate of a mid-sized Southern university. When his turn came to carry on the chap- ter's secret tradition of hazing, he did it with gusto. What he now regrets, he says, more than the blows he took, is the punishment he laid on the next batch of pledges. He endured almost seven weeks of rigorous hazing - paddling, face-slapping, body-punching and worse - and he became a respected brother for it.

The scar on his buttocks is a permanent reminder of how important it was to him, just four years ago, to get into a fraternity.

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