This environment made day-to-day life for Blacks an arduous task and attempts to successfully achieve in school, nearly impossible. Vigilante lynchings of Blacks were commonplace. Their intolerance toward Blacks fueled the negative mindset of other Whites residing there. The state of Indiana became a stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan. Consequently, the few Blacks who took up residence in Bloomington in those early years were socially ostracized and encountered extreme acts of prejudice and discrimination.
This city was largely populated by settlers from below the Mason-Dixon line and therefore found many sympathizers of the Southern cause. The state of Indiana became the 19th state of the Union in 1816 and it founded Indiana University in Bloomington four years later. He was also a member of the Board of Managers of the Columbia Community Branch of the YMCA.Kappa Alpha Psi®, a college Fraternity, was born in an environment saturated in racism. For eight years, he conducted a successful catering business in Philadelphia he organized and served as Vice President and Secretary of the Mutual Emergency Union, a mutual aid company in Philadelphia. Vocationally, he was engaged in several enterprises. He helped organize, and for several years was president of, the Fairview Gold Club, the first Negro Golf Club in Pennsylvania.
His battery enjoys the unique distinction of having been the first battery of Negro Artillerymen ever to open fire upon an enemy. He enlisted in the 349th Field Artillery in March of 1918 and served overseas as a First Class Sergeant and Gunner.
He later became a student at Temple University (1915) but was compelled to leave school because of a death in the family. John Milton Lee, born in Danville, Indiana, September 7, 1890, was graduated from the Danville High School in 1910 and entered the University of Indiana and there completed three years of pre-medical work. Diggs was instrumental in having the Indiana Constitution amended to permit Negro enlistment in the Indiana National Guard. After European service with the 368th Infantry, he became a captain in the Reserve Officers Training Corps. Upon America’s entrance into World War I, Diggs resigned his principalship to enter the Nation’s first Officer’s Training Camp at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and was commissioned a lieutenant. After his death on November 8, 1947, the name of the school where he taught was changed to the Elder Diggs School in his memory. For this and other outstanding contributions to the Fraternity, he was awarded the Fraternity’s first Laurel Wreath in December, 1924.Īn educator by profession, he taught in the public schools of Indianapolis, Indiana, where he was elevated to a principalship. He served as Grand Polemarch for the first six consecutive years of the Fraternity’s existence. Elder Watson Diggs (circa 1883-1947), born in Christian County, Kentucky, was a graduate of Indiana State Normal (now Indiana State Teachers College) and Indiana University, the birthplace of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity.
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