With Faith in God and Heart and Mind - by Maurice J Hobson & Eddie R Cole & Jim C Harper & Derrick P Alridge (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

When Edgar A. Love, Oscar J. Cooper, Frank Coleman, and Ernest Everett Just founded the historically Black fraternity Omega Psi Phi on November 17, 1911, at Howard University, they could not have known how great of an impact their organization would have on American life. Over the 110 years that followed, its members led colleges and universities; served in prominent military roles; made innumerable contributions to education, civic society, science, and medicine; and at least one campaigned for the US presidency.

This book offers a comprehensive, authoritative history of the fraternity, emphasizing its vital role through multiple eras of the Black freedom struggle. The authors address both the individual work of its membership, which has included such figures as Carter G. Woodson, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, James L. Farmer Jr., Benjamin Elijah Mays, James Clyburn, Jesse Jackson, and Benjamin Crump, and the collective efforts of the fraternity's leadership to encourage its general membership to contribute to the struggle in concrete ways over the years. The result is a book that uniquely connects the 1910s with the present, showing the ongoing power of a Black fraternal organization to channel its members toward social reform.

Review Quotes

"A highly original analysis of Omega Psi Phi's commitment to coalition building with other social organizations and individuals that traverses an international and transnational landscape, brilliantly highlighting the ways in which the organization influenced and was influenced by Pan-African movements and maintained diasporic ties."--Richard McKinley Mizelle Jr., author of Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 in the African American Imagination

"A well-crafted piece of scholarship that can only be characterized as a tour de force. . . . This well-researched book cloaked in an eye-catching purple and gold dust jacket will stand the test of time and serve as the standard bearer for similar works about Black Greek-letter organizations. I highly recommend it without qualification and in the strongest possible terms."--Judson L. Jeffries, Journal of African American Studies

About the Author

Maurice J. Hobson is associate professor of Africana studies and historian at Georgia State University.
Eddie R. Cole is professor of education and history at UCLA and fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Jim C. Harper II is associate dean of the School of Graduate Studies and professor of history at North Carolina Central University.
Derrick P. Alridge is professor of education at the University of Virginia.