Alpha Phi Alpha Service
Brigadier General Jennings describes the Alpha Phi Alpha service requirements, and he talks about Dr. Augustus Witherspoon, one of his most important mentors.
Interview on 2015-03-27 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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I guess one of the things they talked about with Alpha Phi Alpha was the service,
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and they mentioned the type things they do. They mentioned how they would go out, like when I was-. Back then when you were pledging you were on line,
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and you had to do x number of service type events. We would go and they would sometimes recommend things and say things they had done,
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you know, just go to some person in the Raleigh area on a Saturday and clean up their yard and do stuff like that, say some elderly lady that wasn't able to do those type things.
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So you would go do things like that, which gave me another different view because back in those days the campus was all I knew from Raleigh, North Carolina.
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I didn't venture out, you know, those gates, that type thing, so that gave me a chance to see another part of it.
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And then you started learning the history. You learned about other Alphas that had been through like, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King, and you start thinking, wow; I can be a member of an organization that Dr. King was a member of,
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you know, and you think of other people of renown, and you just start appreciating what the organization's about.
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Then I met probably the other person that had the biggest influence on me, not only at NC State but probably in my life, and that was Dr. Augustus Witherspoon.
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He became like a father, mentor, brother, friend, everything. He was just that type of guy,
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and not just to me and every member of Alpha but to other African Americans on campus, and just with students in general.
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He was always interested in trying to further the experience here at NC State and encouraging people to do well.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
