A Moment in Alpha History: Seven Days of Reflection (Day 7):
Today we honor The Foundation Jewel Vertner Woodson Tandy, for his inspired life of manly deeds and heroic living in spite of handicaps and physical obstacles. A son of a prominent and respected African American contractor in KY, Jewel Tandy enrolled at Cornell University in their Architect Program after attending Tuskegee Institute to study architecture and during his short stay was under the guidance of Booker T. Washington. Jewel Tandy became the architecture program’s “prize”. Jewel Tandy was intense in his desires, traditions, and love for the Fraternity idea to a national scope. He was adamant in keeping the tradition of selecting members of Alpha Phi Alpha so that the organization would not be packed with undesirables. He was the first treasurer of Alpha Chapter, designer of the “official” Alpha Pin, which has been regarded as an “outstanding design for any fraternity”, and helped charter three undergraduate chapters with other Jewels. Jewel Tandy served on the Committees of Initiation and Grip, and took the initiative for incorporation. He became New York State’s first registered African American architect and the most celebrated black architect in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. It was also reported that, as an outspoken advocate for Civil Rights, led a demonstration at Sage College to have African-American women admitted. Jewel Tandy demonstrated his patriotism and was soon the first African-American to pass the military commissioning examination and was subsequently commissioned First Lieutenant in the 15th Infantry of the New York State National Guard. He designed several civil structures with his greatest notoriety of the St. Phillips Episcopal Church, Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, Mount Zion A.M.E. Church, Small’s Paradise, Imperial Elks Lodge, Abraham Lincoln Housing Projects and several other edifices. He was also famous for his design of the 34-room mansion for Madam C.J. Walker, who was a dear friend. In 1938, Tandy was awarded the contract to design the Liberian Building for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York (attached photo). He designed the Ivey Delph Apartments in 1948, and the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory, where his military unit was stationed. He also designed many buildings in his hometown of Lexington (Webster Hall of Chandler Normal School). Jewel Tandy also was the first African-American to become a member of the American Institute of Architects. He entered the Omega Chapter in 1949.
“Negros say take all the world and give me Jesus. I want you to give that philosophy of life to the white people. In Birmingham, I was told of the many Baptist churches but wa not told about Negro business. I went through hell founding this organization and I want something done about these problems. Think of it, we have over a hundred and twenty chapter and I ask what are we doing?We have got to do something for Negroes, there is too much politics in this fraternity.”
-Jewel Vertner Woodson Tandy, 26th Convention, 1937
“So at this time, we, the Brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha… need to fortify our defenses and gird ourselves to the larger significance of our standards. We must put aside the precocity of the imitative social snob and undertake the challenge of our social responsibilities, both to ourselves and to the masses of our people of common experience and of common estate. Along these lines we must repair the damage which has been done to our struggle. In doing so we must meet the same fundamental needs which the fraternity met in the lives of seven lonely young men thirty three years ago. Recognition and remedy of defects is not only desirable but mandatory lest, we repeat, we inhabit not a shelter but a tomb. Being men we must put aside childish things and answer the challenge of qualitative worth to meet the times.”
-Jewel Vertner Woodson Tandy, 1947
“We therefore must choose, train and encourage the youths of our choice to a more authentic standard of values based upon more universal concepts…Then the ideas of our vision shall have been fulfilled. We shall continue to be and to become, in act as well as in mind, the ‘First Ethiopian Brotherhood’, the buttress of our troubled people and an outstanding force in a world of change. We shall be not a dead and imitative tradition, but a democratic living culture.”
-Jewel Vertner Woodson Tandy, 1947
This is your moment in Alpha history.
Brother Sean Hall, Historian