On January 13, 1913, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. was founded at Howard University. All 22 founders – Winona Cargile (Alexander), Madree Penn (White), Wertie Blackwell (Weaver), Vashti Turley (Murphy), Ethel Cuff (Black), Frederica Chase (Dodd), Osceola Macarthy (Adams), Pauline Oberdorfer (Minor), Edna Brown (Coleman), Edith Mott (Young), Marguerite Young (Alexander), Naomi Sewell (Richardson), Eliza P. Shippen, Zephyr Chisom (Carter), Myra Davis (Hemmings), Mamie Reddy (Rose), Bertha Pitts (Campbell), Florence Letcher (Toms), Olive Jones, Jessie McGuire (Dent), Jimmie Bugg (Middleton), and Ethel Carr (Watson) – had been members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, which was founded at Howard University on January 16, 1908. When a disagreement about the future of the organization arose between the active chapter and the alumnae, an ultimatum was given, decisions were made, and in the end, the active members left Alpha Kappa Alpha and became Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Myra Davis went from being the president of the Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter to being president of the Delta Sigma Theta chapter. Many of the first meetings took place in Edna Brown’s living room. The 1913 Valedictorian and Class President, she married Frank Coleman, a founder of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. Florence Letcher’s hobby of collecting elephant figurines led to the animal becoming the sorority’s symbol.
Nearly two months after its founding, on March 3, 1913, the women took part in the historic suffrage march in Washington, D.C. They were the only African-American women’s group to participate. Honorary member Mary Church Terrell joined them in their march.
Frankie Muse Freeman
Frankie Muse Freeman, a 1950 initiate of the St. Louis Alumnae Chapter became the 14th National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. A civil rights attorney, she served in that role from 1967 until 1971.
Freeman was born in Danville, Virginia, in 1916. Her mother was a graduate of Hampton Institute (now University) and in 1936 Freeman earned her undergraduate degree there. According to an interview she did late in her life, Freeman said that she knew she wanted to be a civil rights attorney while she was at Hampton. She earned a law degree from Howard University in 1947 and was one of five women in her class. She was second in her class. After graduation she could not find a law firm willing to let her be a trial lawyer, so she started her own firm.
Frankie Muse Freeman
In the late 1940s, she began working for the NAACP and served as legal counsel on the 1949 suit against the St. Louis Board of Education. Freeman served as lead attorney on the 1954 case that ended racial discrimination in St. Louis, Missouri, public housing.
She interviewed for a spot on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights a week before President John F. Kennedy died. His successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed her as a Commissioner in March 1964. She was the first woman to serve in that capacity and she served until 1979.
Freeman returned to St. Louis where she continued her law practice and involvement in the community. In 2003, the Missouri Historical Society published her autobiography.
The list of honors given her by local and national organizations is quite long. And it culminated with the installation of a bronze state in St. Louis. In 2017, Freeman attended its dedication in Kiener Plaza near the courthouse where she argued that landmark 1954 case.
Freeman died on January 12, 2018, at the age of 101. On March 11, 2018, her sorority sisters performed an Omega Omega service for her in Washington, D.C.
