By: Amber D. Dodd,
Special to the AFRO
On a damp morning, a gilded gold 2013 XTS Cadillac pulls into an Owings Mills shopping plaza. Out comes its driver, Donald Rainey, ready to walk with his lifelong friend, Lonnie “Butch” Spruill Jr., into a local cafe, Hans- Cafe Tsam [sic].
“He’s my double brother,” Spruill jokes, citing their 55-year brotherhood and Rainey’s 2014 initiation into Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc., the fraternity that Spruill helped found at Morgan State University on Sept. 19, 1963. Included on the list of founders are 11 others: Charles Briscoe; Charles Brown; Frank Coakley; Elias A. Dorsey Jr.; Charles Gregory; Albert Hicks Jr.; Louis Hudnell; Webster Lewis; John Slade; Michael Williams and Barron Willis.
At 82, Spruill is the last living founder of Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. — and any Divine Nine (D9) organization, for that matter. The fraternity celebrated its 60th anniversary last year.
“The most important thing about being the last living founder of a D9 organization is asking, what can we do to make it better now?” says Spruill.
Spruill was born to his father Lonnie Spruill Sr., a General Motors worker from North Carolina, and a stay at home mother, Hazel Christina Spruill, from Cambridge, Md. He left to become the first person in his family to obtain a degree at Morgan State University.
Today, he holds the fondest of memories when it comes to Iota’s founding on the campus historically Black institution. Spruill agreed to speak with the AFRO about the Black Greek letter organization (BGLO) and its founding. He notes that Morgan State University’s status as one of Baltimore’s Black educational powerhouses gave the founders space to establish the fraternity many years ago.
Both Spruill and Rainey warmly recall iconic Morgan professors such as Dr. Haywood Harris, Isley Jones and a professor they remember only as “Professor Taylor” when asked about prominent figures on the campus in the 1960s.
“We were the first generation of college graduates and we had a lot of optimism in terms of what was ahead of us, because we had the best professors of color in the world,” Rainey said. “They taught us, so we had a foundation. We only had each other– and that included faculty. They saw in us the next generation and they did a wonderful job.”
Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc.’s inception is rooted in the Civil Rights Movement, which highlighted the issues plaguing Black America. Mississippi activist Medgar Evers was assassinated at his Jackson, Miss. home three months prior. Non-violent demonstrators in Birmingham were attacked with water hoses and dogs in March of that year.
Locally, Morgan State students were banding together with other scholars in the area to desegregate Northwood Shopping Center and, on a national scale, major leaders were organizing to bring about change. Iota was founded 22 days after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
“A lot of us did attend the march,” Spruill said. “It was the most fantastic thing I had ever seen. So many Black folks saying ‘Now!,’ [and] listening to Martin, a leader. I love Martin Luther King as much as I love Malcom X.”
Spruill told the AFRO that Iota was directly tied to a need to push the case for civil and human rights forward during a time when Black people were publicly demanding equality.
“With The Civil Rights Movement, we had something that the organizations could identify with,” he said.
Spruill recalls studying the infrastructure, purpose and founders of the other three Black fraternities after revered Morgan State historian, Dr. Benjamin A. Quarles, urged Spruill and Iota’s eventual founders to learn more.
“He was one of my many mentors, and when I told him we were starting a fraternity, I asked, ‘What do I do?’ and he said, ‘Mr. Spruill, how do you know where you’re going– if you don’t know where you’ve been?’ He said to study all the founders, which I did.”
On Sept. 19, 1963, Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. was founded on the steps of Hurt Gymnasium, still today located on Morgan State’s Northeast Baltimore campus. Albert Harris was the fraternity’s first president.
Spruill was the first vice president. He was just 18 years old.
Spruill refers to Iota’s founders as average Black men in America during the 50s and 60s.
Brown, Hicks and Briscoe had recently returned from the Vietnam War. Spruill, Coakley, Dorsey, and George were married with children, and Brown Hicks and Briscoe were long-time friends.
“We were doing great mentoring to kids from one-parent families,” Spruill said. “These kids didn’t have a loving man. I thought back and said ‘How did I learn to be?’ ‘How did I learn to do the work?’ Those were important lessons. These were the things we wanted to push forward to the people we were mentoring…the founders decided on charcoal brown and gilded gold as the colors to represent masculinity.”
Spruill says Iota’s founding principles; scholarship, leadership, citizenship, fidelity and brotherhood are evergreen pillars of Black manhood.
“Those five points came before Iota,” Spruill said. “When we set on those steps, we didn’t know we needed something like a fraternity. We were just a group of guys trying to make it better in our communities.”
Antonio “Fast Eddie” Hayes, a 1967 Iota inductee was the first Iota in the National Football League. He crossed in Iota’s line of new members with 19 brothers, after resonating with the bond that Spruill shared with the founders.
“That line that pledged was special. We made a pledge— there would be nothing I couldn’t do or wouldn’t do to help every brother that crossed,” Hayes said. The Jacksonville, Fla. native played on the star-studded Morgan State football team, and pledged Spruill’s fraternity within five years of its founding.
At 82, Spruill has now spent six decades as a founding Iota, helping Black men excel on their path to greatness.
“I want to show you a photo. We just lost one of the best Iotas that ever was,” Spruill says, holding a picture. “His name was Reginald Hayesbert Sr.”
Hayesbert Sr. was president of The Forum Caterers, and known for his business acumen. Other key figures in the organization include everyone from former Congressman Bobby Rush, of the first district of Illinois, and actor Terrence ‘TC’ Carson, known for his work in the role of Kyle Barker, on the hit 90’s show “Living Single.”
Alvin West is a New Jersey native and an Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc.’s Alpha chapter member since Fall 2018.
He spoke on what it means to be an Iota in today’s time.
“I think what’s helping us [is], while we’re still young, we still do have Lonnie around to just guide us in what he envisioned for the fraternity,” West said. “And when they’re visiting us, we’re asking ‘Okay, how do we bridge what they want [with] what’s currently going on right now in the world to make sure that there is a middle ground?’”
Regardless of the current challenges, what was once a dozen of Black men eyeing change for Baltimore is now an organization 30,000 members strong and growing.
“For 12 men at that time– a very turbulent time in our country’s history– to take that leap and say, ‘Look, we have to start something new. We don’t necessarily care how people feel about it, how many times we ‘have before,’ we don’t care if we don’t have any supporters…we’re still going to keep pushing through on this. I think that’s the mindset you see now,” West said. “I definitely say thank you [to the founders].”
Though Spruill’s legacy is etched in history, he is weary of the future.
While discussing the current state of Black America, Spruill believes that the Black elite could do more to sustain Black people. That said, he also believes the nation is in a dire state as the Supreme Court revokes rights that Spruill and his generation fought hard to win over.
“What we struggled for back then, we’re struggling for now,” Spruill said. “We don’t have equality with knowledge we’ve acquired…”
Even in 1963, Spruill was weary of the inclusion of Black Americans into society without proper, equitable solutions to racism. That work, he says, did not happen, and led the world to modernize and prolong racism against Black people.
“We need to be a committed organization to our race, to our education [and] to our community, because it falls on us. We supposedly have the knowledge, [we] must put that knowledge to work. But we have competition, that competition is the internet, TikTok, all that stuff. It’s people with the IQ of the square root of pi trying to tell us what to do,” Spruill said.
When asked about the message he wants to leave every Iota with, near and far, present and future, Spruill pauses in deep reflection.
His pupils widened as he sighs deeply, and shakes his head with disbelief that the shining legacy of Iota will go on–even without him– as he and the 11 other founders planned.
“Thank you for believing in something we created,” Spruill said, as a tear slips his eye. “That’s pretty much it.”