In 1961, LeMonte Mitchell was a student at Johnson C. Smith University looking for a fraternity experience that would last long after his days on campus. He found it in Omega Psi Phi.
Mitchell, now 71 and recently retired as choir director at Raleigh's Davie Street Presbyterian Church, is as active and committed a fraternity brother as ever. He swears by the organization's core principles of volunteerism and community service. His voice bears no trace of hyperbole when he declares: "It's God, family and Omega. That's the way I look at it."
If you're in downtown Raleigh later this week, you might get a better idea of what Mitchell is talking about. Omega Psi Phi, the first black fraternity founded at a historically black university, is bringing its biennial Grand Conclave to the Raleigh Convention Center starting Thursday. The national convention is expected to draw as many as 5,000 people for a series of meetings and activities stretching for a week.
...Omega is one of the nation's largest black fraternities, with more than 100,000 members. Its alumni rolls have star power, including athletes Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal, actor Bill Cosby and political activist Rev. Jesse Jackson. But it has also produced plenty of leaders in politics, civil rights and higher education. Carter G. Woodson, considered the founder of Black History Month, was an Omega. So is Vernon Jordan, a close adviser to former President Bill Clinton and former head of the National Urban League.
But Omegas, while proud of those members, tend to think less about individual achievement and more about total impact, said Warren G. Lee, the fraternity's national president. "That's what gives us legs," said Lee, whose organization and its 619 chapters donate more than $1 million a year to charities. "It's not the individual members but what we do collectively as a group."
The brothers of Omega Psi Phi are a proud group. They call themselves "Omega Men" and extol virtues such as manhood and scholarship. The organization is national, but it preaches local action, urging members to lift up the communities that produced them.
Mitchell is still clearly entranced, 49 years after he joined in college. Since graduation, Mitchell has been active with the graduate chapter in Raleigh, where he helps raise money for scholarships to support the Red Cross, the local Boys Club and other charities. For a dozen years, he organized a Raleigh talent show that sent winners to regional showcases....
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