Sorority Catfight Heats Up Cook County Court

By Kase Wickman on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 1:29 pm

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"I didn't get a wax statue!"

Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation's oldest historically black sorority, is in St. Louis for their national convention this week. However, it's not all love and sisterhood. As so often happens when huge groups of women are put in the same place, a catfight has broken out.

It doesn't appear that any actual, physical slaps have been exchanged--that we know of--but former sorority president Julia Purnell and Cook County Judge Daniel Riley have slapped AKA with a summons to court and an order to open the organization's financial records.

Purnell requested the books in March, and last year filed another suit, concerned that the sorority's current president, Barbara McKinzie, was mismanaging the organization's money. McKinzie had received more than $1 million in salary and benefits for the position of president, which Purnell said is traditionally unpaid. McKinzie also appears to have charged expensive meals, limo rides, lingerie, jewelry and a $900,000 wax figure of herself for display in a museum to cards belonging to Alpha Kappa Alpha, and bought herself an HDTV using rewards points from those cards.

AKA's executive director and the sorority's lawyer left the convention last night to appear in court today.