As I’m sure you know by now, a video surfaced a few days ago of well-dressed, white University of Oklahoma fraternity members singing together on a bus about how there will never be a black person in their frat – Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE).
“There will never be a nigger at SAE,” the men sang enthusiastically. “You can hang him from a tree, but he’ll never sign with me. There will never be a nigger at SAE.”
[The video can be seen at the bottom of this post.]
While the University of Oklahoma shut down the chapter and expelled the students who led the song, the story doesn’t seem to be dying. In fact, it’s continuing to grow as others have begun to come forward with stories of songs like this one being sung by members of other SAE chapters, and share information on previous cases, which would appear to indicate a pattern of racism within the organization. From the wearing of blackface on the campus of Syracuse, to an incident on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis during which SAE members allegedly sang racial slurs at African-American students, it would appear as though there is a long tradition of white-entitlement-fueled cruelty within the organization, which has its roots in the antebellum South.
As Shaun King points out on Daily Kos, “…what we are talking about here is not some isolated, freestyle racism made up on the go by a group of hateful Mississippi rednecks. This chant has real roots in this fraternity. These are college students, in tuxedos, on their way to corporate America, declaring not only the racial segregation of their fraternity, but their outright hatred for African Americans.”
And all of this got me wondering what members of our local SAE chapter might think of all of this… especially any non-white members that might be in the organization.
Before we get into that, though, here, courtesy of Inside Higher Education, is the history of SAE, which was founded at the University of Alabama on March 9, 1856.
…Two months before the Civil War began, Noble Leslie DeVotie was boarding a steamship when he slipped, fell into the waters of Mobile Bay and drowned.
DeVotie was one of the founders of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the only national fraternity founded in the antebellum South. A chaplain at Alabama’s Fort Morgan at the time of his death, he became the fraternity’s — and some argue, the country’s — first Civil War casualty. Nearly 75 other SAE members would die before the war’s end, the vast majority of them fighting for the Confederate South. When the survivors returned home, many found their universities burned to the ground and the 15 chapters of the fraternity in ruins.
SAE spent the next three decades rebuilding its ranks, eventually establishing chapters at Northern colleges. But their presence there among the well-established Northern fraternities was an uneasy one, and so two members wrote a defiant march in which, as SAE’s manual describes it, the fraternity “entered, met and held at bay its rivals in the North.” It was the first of many songs SAE would produce, earning it the nickname “the singing fraternity.”
In the defense of the organization, some chapters do have black members. And, even the worst of chapters have had periods where things appear to have been good. This same Oklahoma chapter that we’re talking about today, for instance, had a black member ten years ago who told CNN earlier today that something like this never would have happened when he was a member. But those stories appear to be few and far between. And when you search for “black SAE members,” you’re more likely to find stories about the young Cornell student who was killed in hazing incident last year, than anything even remotely positive.
And, it was with this in mind, that I thought that I’d find a black member of the local Ann Arbor chapter to interview. Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck toward that end, as it appears as though, at least judging from the photos I’ve been able to find online, there may not be any.
For what it’s worth, I’m not the only one wondering about the local SAE chapter. Channel 7 apparently sent a reporter to check in with them today, and he got the door shut in his face. Here’s video of that incident, followed by video of the University of Oklahoma students chanting proudly about how, “there will never be a nigger at SAE.”
[note: The UM chapter of SAE was not being questioned by Channel 7 about anything race-related. They were being questioned about a hazing violation in 2011 that has kept them from being officially recognized by the University of Michigan for the past several years.]
update: From Imgur:
