This installation of the Franklin Stove Blog is a departure from the usual format.

It’s fictional, based on accounts of actual events.

It might even be considered a ghost writ post.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

Hey, it’s me, Rose, again. I’ve been catching up on stories published in the Crimson White. Thank goodness that I can find copies of the campus paper in the stadium’s Digital Media Center!

There was a story about members of the Alabama Panhellenic Association, the National Pan-Hellenic Council and the Interfraternity Council attending a meeting about “diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in APA sororities and the entire Greek system.”

What I wondered about was the claim in the article by a new member of Alpha Phi that she hadn’t been aware of how its president had been ousted from the sorority after a racist text exchange.

According to the article the newcomer had said, “They told me what had happened, and it was shocking because the girls I was surrounded by in the house did not seem anything like those girls.”

The sorority’s ousted president had texted from inside a Tuscaloosa bar: “I’m gonna yack, it smells so bad in here.” Another expelled member had responded, “cigs, weed and black girl.”

I guess that it’s possible that the newcomer hadn’t known anything about it. What makes me wonder about it all is how someone so capable of such racism could actually be president of the sorority in the first place?

I guess Estelle would be amazed, to the extent that she cared at all about any Greek matters, that the first black woman was elected to be president of the Alabama Panhellenic Association. No other black had been president in the 100 years since the APA’s founding. 

The APA has been comprised of over 7,000 women students, the vast majority of whom are lily white. The fact that a black member of Kappa Delta is now APA’s president is truly outstanding. I mean she will definitely stand out among the other blonde and brunette APA officers. Only nine years ago APA was exclusively white. There was a Crimson White article in 2013 about how APA sororities had systemically excluded at least two black women during recruitment.

My BFF Estelle never joined a black sorority, and certainly never would’ve joined a mostly white one had that been possible in the Sixties. She had lived in Tutwiler Hall with me. After I became a ghost in 1968 she didn’t even know that I was around though.

Well, I guess progress slowly marches on at Bama? Still its past doubtlessly will continue to haunt it. I’ll make sure of that!