11-02-2025
In searching for community, Renaldo Blocker helped establish a new alumni chapter of Black fraternity
Feb. 11—ROCHESTER — When Renaldo Blocker moved to Rochester from Los Angeles 12 years ago to accept a position at Mayo Clinic, he felt like he was on his own as a Black man navigating a mostly white city.
"I knew absolutely no one," said Blocker, a faculty member and researcher in health systems delivery with Mayo Clinic.
Unlike Blocker's home city of Atlanta, Rochester doesn't have predominantly Black neighborhoods where Blocker could expect to find a place to get his hair cut and his favorite familiar foods.
"There's no place to go where the Black community is in this area," he said. "That may be good, it may be bad depending on how you look at it."
Blocker reached out to a member of his college fraternity he knew lived in the Twin Cities. Unlike Atlanta, L.A. and Madison, Wisconsin, where he earned his doctorate, Rochester didn't have an alumni chapter of the fraternity. Founded in 1911 at Indiana University, Bloomington, Kappa Alpha Psi, is the second oldest collegiate historically Black, Greek-letter fraternity. That friend introduced him to a fraternity member who was living in Rochester.
"He was able to help me out, help me look for housing, let me know which barbershops to go to," Blocker said. "Having a navigator here for you is huge."
Later, Blocker recognized another brother who was wearing a fraternity lapel pin.
Since then, the handful of KAP fraternity brothers living in Rochester would head to the Twin Cities for fraternity alumni balls, gatherings, fundraisers and service events.
Now, enough members call Rochester home that Blocker is launching a Rochester alumni chapter. He and the chapter founders held a launch event on Saturday in downtown Rochester.
Blocker said members plan to continue to be active in the Twin Cities as well, but for people with demanding residency schedules, that can be difficult. Serving the community through the fraternity's literacy programs and financial literacy for youth initiatives is also appealing to members, he added.
The chapter will be easier to find for new arrivals in Rochester who are members and want to learn about the community.
"It's not about looking up one person anymore," he said.
Nationwide, fraternity alumni include Hakeem Jeffries, U.S. House Minority Leader, and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. About a dozen alumni live in Rochester now, Blocker said.
"I think now is the right time, given the number of brothers that are here, and the potential of brothers who may be here," he said.
Blocker said the number of alumni in the city will likely rise thanks to a combination of people studying, researching or working at Mayo Clinic and its partner organizations or people coming to Rochester for treatment. It's already starting to happen, he said.
"Even going out shopping here, I'll run into a brother who I have not met," he said.
Blocker added he would like to see an undergraduate chapter of the fraternity in Southeast Minnesota. That would likely need to include students from multiple schools, he said.
However, for the first year of the chapter, aspiring members will have to wait.
"We probably won't be doing member intake for the first year," Blocker said. The group will focus on building the chapter, ways to serve the community and finding partners to work with on service events.
