About the
NDAA ...
The National Dunbar Alumni Association of Little Rock,
AR, Inc. is a tax-exempt, nonprofit federation of former students,
administrators to students, graduates, teachers, and staff of the former Dunbar
High School and Junior College of Little Rock, Arkansas. Local chapters of the
national association are located in Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle, and Washington,
DC. Members who reside outside
the metropolitan areas of a local chapter and find it difficult to become
active with that chapter may affiliate with the NDAA through the national
satellite chapter. The satellite chapter operates under the auspices of the national
organization and encompasses the world, less the local chapter areas.
NDAA members are dedicated to perpetuating the "Dunbar Spirit" of
excellence in their own lives, the lives of others and preserving Dunbar's history for future generations. The NDAA
sponsors numerous programs to support its mission. They include: scholarships
given to graduates of Little Rock high schools; publications such as the
Arkansas African American Hall of Fame by Dr. Leroy M. Christophe, former
principal of Dunbar, with editorial contributions by Drs. Faustine Childress
Wilson and Erma Glasco Davis; mentoring activities by the alumni groups
"Men of Dunbar" and "Women of Dunbar" for male and female
students at the Dunbar Magnet Middle School; the Adopt-A-Family program in which
each NDAA chapter adopts a family and provides help and guidance for that
family to become excellent in some way; the Memorabilia Room constituting a
mini museum housed at Dunbar; and the Dunbar History Project, a museum-quality
traveling exhibit about the history of the school and its distinguished alumni.
Reunions
The NDAA meets biennially for "all-classes" reunions at the
invitation of local host chapters. The reunion site generally rotates among the
chapters on a competitive basis but automatically returns to Little Rock every 10 years.
The first Reunion of the Classes was held in Detroit, MI
in 1973. Prior to that year, individual classes met exclusively with their
class members. Most notable was the class of 1936, which has met every 5 years
since the sixties. Several members of that class and other alumni residing in Detroit organized the first Dunbar
High School Alumni Club of Little Rock Arkansas.
The Detroit
club and the class of 1936 acted as catalysts to bring all of the alumni
classes together for that memorable first reunion. Two years later, the second
reunion was held in Chicago followed by the
third in Los Angeles, California in 1977. By that time the NDAA
had reached a level of 10 chapters, which was maintained until Philadelphia joined the national organization
in 1993. The NDAA has experienced a steady membership growth from several
hundred alumni that attended the first reunion in 1973, to a peak of over 1,000
at the 1999 reunion in Little Rock,
but since then a declining membership due to the advancing age and transitions of
its members. The next reunion is scheduled to convene in Chicago, IL
on 11 July 2007.