Alpha Phi Alpha, a prominent Black fraternity, moves to bar transgender members

Alpha Phi Alpha, one of the most prominent historically Black fraternities in the country, has taken a first step toward barring transgender members.

Delegates to the fraternity’s constitutional convention, held Wednesday through Sunday in Chicago, voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of a bylaw amendment limiting membership to “naturally born” males, sources told GLAAD. A spokesman for Alpha Phi Alpha, reached by The Advocate, had no comment.

The amendment is still subject to approval by local chapters and the general membership before the change is final. It states that membership will be restricted to “any male defined as a human being naturally born male, who remains and continually identifies as a male,” according to a draft reviewed by GLAAD.

Leading up to the delegates’ vote, several people who spoke to GLAAD said an organization that has long been supportive of civil rights should not be endorsing discrimination.

“Their decision to alienate trans and nonbinary people from membership is reactionary, asinine, and unbecoming of an organization with a professed commitment to human rights,” said Deandre Miles-Hercules, a “gender creative” Alpha who uses they/them pronouns, told GLAAD. “It’s ludicrous to be the fraternity of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. and come up with a policy that bans trans people.”

“If we allow certain discriminations, we have to allow for all of them,” said Matthew Shaw, a lifetime Alpha member who is assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School and assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt Peabody College. “If Alpha then adopts the logic that White Citizens’ Councils had against Black people desegregating schools in the 1950s and ’60, what’s to say that you couldn’t use that logic against Black people in 2024?”

Alpha Phi Alpha was founded in 1906 at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. It is one of the “Divine Nine,” prominent Black fraternities and sororities that were established when Blacks were excluded from white Greek-letter organizations. These organizations have produced many Black leaders and worked for civil rights. They now have an estimated 2 million to 4 million members, mostly but not exclusively Black.

Another of the Divine Nine, Phi Beta Sigma, has had a trans ban since 2017, a source told GLAAD. The source said Phi Beta Sigma had accepted a trans member in 2016, and that person’s membership was eventually rescinded. The fraternity’s bylaws state, “Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. is an exclusively male organization. Its membership is limited to natural-born males who identify as such.”