Wish I could be in Ames on Friday. It will be a day of celebrating. By the way, Dr. Jane Cox, who is performing as Carrie Chapman Catt, is an alumna initiate of Catt’s Pi Phi chapter at Iowa State.
Kudos to two Significant Sigma Chis who were honored at the Academy Awards last night.
Until the advent of social media, staying connected to the people who mattered in our lives took effort. Calling on the phone, visiting in person, or writing notes and letters usually required planning and doing.
I love to talk about Grace Goodhue Coolidge’s Round Robin letters, the ones she wrote with the Pi Phis who attended the 1915 Convention in California together. The letters lasted until the end of their lives. They told of everyday events in their lives. They shared recipes, books read, the ups and downs of life and in the process stayed connected even though they lived in different places.
This fall, the Wall Street Journal published an article about a group of Iowa State Gamma Phi Betas who vowed to stay connected. And that they have!
Jenna Bush, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Hoda Kotb, Delta Delta Delta, interviewed the women on the Today show this week. (Many of us wish they would have mentioned their own affiliations, but perhaps they did and it was cut from the final version.) The women were surprised by a group of Gamma Phis who traveled to New York, paying their own ways, to surprise the alumnae of their chapter. I hope these young women make the decision to stay connected.
The weekend was a full one, from AFLV in Indy to a Super Bowl in Miami with celebrations across Missouri and Kansas and everywhere in between.
One of my offspring texted me and the auto check changed Super Bowl to Superb Owl which immediately made me think of my owl mascot friends who belong to Chi Omega and Kappa Kappa Gamma. How could I resist this Superb Owl tweet from the Smithsonian?
And then my favorite Chi Omega, Archivist Lyn Harris, had some very special moments at the Fireside Leadership Training. Congrats, Lyn, and I love the emoji!
This weekend, members of fraternities and sororities gathered in Indianapolis for AFLV-Central. Educational, motivational, intense and incredible all rolled into one. I hope those who attended will bring the excitement and commitment of the weekend back home with them and work to improve their own communities. Kudos to those who put it all together and made it work.
Happy Friday! January has been a longgggggggggg month, but the days are getting longer.
Someone asked about reading the magazines of GLO organizations. Most current issues are available on-line. Visit the organization’s website and do some poking around. Some organizations have the full run available. And now you know one of my favorite ways to waste time.
Although her talk already happened, I was happy to see that she is a Kappa Alpha Theta.
Here’s something to put on your calendars. Edith Mayo is a Kappa Kappa Gamma. Carrie Chapman Catt was a Pi Beta Phi and Anna Howard Shaw was an honorary member of Kappa Alpha Theta.
While researching my crop of #WHM2020 profiles, I came across this snippet about Anna Howard Shaw in an Alpha Delta Pi magazine.
I took a look at the twitterverse this morning and found a few posts that warmed my heart. Here they are in no particular order.
Kappa Alpha Theta turns 150 today! In 1867, 17-year-old Bettie McReynolds Locke (Hamilton) was the first female to enroll in Indiana Asbury College (now DePauw University) in Greencastle, Indiana. Although the first decision to allow women to attend Asbury was made in 1860, it was rescinded several times with debate following each decision.
Bettie was the daughter of Dr. John Wesley Locke, a mathematics professor, and she was a formidable student. During her sophomore year, she received an invitation to wear a Phi Gamma Delta badge. The badge did not come with a dating arrangement as later tradition would have it, nor did it come with the benefits given to men who were initiated into the fraternity. When she declined the badge because it did not come with full membership rights and responsibilities, the Phi Gamma Delta chapter substituted a silver cake basket, inscribed with the Greek letters “Phi Gamma Delta.”
With encouragement and prodding from her father, a Beta Theta Pi alumnus, and her brother William, a Phi Gamma Delta, she began plans to start her own fraternity. She and Alice Allen, another female in the first coeducational Asbury class, studied Greek, parliamentary law and heraldry with an eye towards founding a fraternity for women.
On January 27, 1870, Bettie Locke stood before a mirror and repeated the words of the Kappa Alpha Theta initiation vow she had written. She then initiated Alice Olive Allen (Brant), Bettie Tipton (Lindsey), and Hannah Fitch (Shaw). Five weeks later, Mary Stevenson, a freshman, joined the group. Badges larger than the current Kappa Alpha Theta badges were painstakingly designed by the founders and made by Fred Newman, a New York jeweler. The badges were first worn to chapel services by the members of Kappa Alpha Theta on March 14, 1870.
Kappa Alpha Theta’s extension quickly took place. Locke’s father had a friend who was a trustee at Indiana University in Bloomington. The friend had a daughter, Minnie Hannamon, who was college age. In April, a letter was written to Hannamon and Locke visited Bloomington in early May. On May 18, 1870, Locke installed Kappa Alpha Theta at Indiana University with the initiation of the three charter members. It was evidence of the policy outlined in the original constitution giving the mother chapter at Indiana Asbury University the power to establish other collegiate chapters.
The next three chapters were short-lived. In December of 1870, a chapter was established at Cincinnati Wesleyan University, an experiment that only lasted six months. A chapter at Millersburg College in Kentucky lasted less than a year. The one at Moore’s Hill College in Indiana existed for five years. The latter was the first Theta chapter to feel the pressure of faculty opposition as well as a limited number of women at the institution.
Northwestern Christian College, today known as Butler University, became home to the Indiana Delta chapter of Kappa Alpha Theta on February 27, 1874. When Kappa Alpha Theta changed the naming system of chapters, it became the Gamma chapter. Two members of the chapter at Indiana University, Teresa Luzadder Gregory and Laura Henly, assisted in the formation of the chapter. The chapter was inactive from February 25, 1886 through November 3, 1906.
The Epsilon chapter at Wooster College was known as Ohio Alpha when it was chartered on May 12, 1875. The chapter ceased to exist in 1913 when the college administration ordered all the fraternities to close.
The second national convention was held in Indianapolis on May 14, 1875, with delegates from four chapters in attendance. Due to the efforts of University of Indiana Thetas, a chapter was founded in 1875, at Illinois Wesleyan College. It was known as Illinois Alpha. Twenty years later, the determination was made that there were not enough fraternity-minded students to continue at Illinois Wesleyan. The charter was transferred to the chapter at the University of Illinois which became known as the Delta chapter.
Kappa Alpha Theta, along with I.C. Sorosis (Pi Beta Phi), Kappa Kappa Gamma, and Delta Gamma expanded throughout the midwest in the 1870s and early 1880s, setting the stage to the Panhellenic system we know today. In 1881, Alpha Phi expanded to Northwestern University, quickly followed by Gamma Phi Beta’s second chapter at the University of Michigan. These six and Delta Delta Delta, founded the National Panhellenic Conference in 1902.
On January 21, 1869, the P.E.O. Sisterhood was founded by seven young women. They were among the 85 or so collegiate level students enrolled at Iowa Wesleyan University. Legend has it that some, but not all of the seven had been asked by Libbie Brook to join the new chapter of I.C. Sorosis (now known by its Greek motto, Pi Beta Phi). On that unseasonably warm January day, Franc Roads and Hattie Briggs were sitting on the steps of a wooden stile at the southeast entrance to the campus and made the decision to start a society of their own. They gathered five others, Mary Allen, Ella Stewart, Alice Bird, Alice Coffin, and Suela Pearson, and took the 35-word oath that Alice Bird had written.
Many P.E.O.s think these seven had a hand in all that is done in P.E.O. today. When someone says that they want to do things exactly as the founders did in 1869, I usually chuckle to myself. The initiation ceremony and the meeting procedures, save for those 35 words that Alice Bird wrote in 1869, have been created over the past 151 years,
Five of the seven founders graduated in June, six months after the founding. Ella Stewart did not graduate because she was needed at home. Suela Pearson, the sophomore among the seven, could have hardly kept the organization going by herself in the fall of 1869. Luckily a few others had become members. After Suela graduated, she moved to Cleveland and had little opportunity to interact with P.E.O.s. Hattie died in 1877, Alice Coffin in 1888, and Ella in 1894.
Mary Allen Stafford and Franc Roads Elliott became involved again as mature women. Alice Bird Babb was the only Founder involved in P.E.O. for decades, from its beginnings to its North American prominence.
The P.E.O. Founders were not expansionists. They did not take the organization to locations outside Mount Pleasant. From 1869 through 1885, all 17 new chapters were established by those other than the founders. It was the women who followed in the founders’ footsteps who built and nurtured the Sisterhood. These women, whom I call the Builders, worked for the organization and helped it continue on when its future was tenuous. And truth be told, PEO’s future was precarious in the 1870s.
The first PEO convention took place in January 1875. There were only 6 chapters and 3 were in collegiate institutions – Iowa Wesleyan, Mount Pleasant Female Seminary and the Jacksonville Female Seminary in Illinois. The latter two chapters would soon close.
That the organization is here today is a testament to those who came after the seven founders. While I am grateful to those seven for founding P.E.O., I also give my gratitude to those who followed in the founders’ footsteps and devoted themselves to making it what it is today, a Philanthropic Educational Organization, helping women pursue their educational goals. Few know their names and their stories are generally unknown. They, along with the founders, deserve gratitude. Let’s remember them too, today!
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. turns 100 years old today. The idea for the organization happened when Arizona Cleaver was walking with Charles Robert Samuel Taylor, a Phi Beta Sigma at Howard University. Taylor suggested that Cleaver consider starting a sister organization to Phi Beta Sigma. She, along with her four friends, Pearl Neal, Myrtle Tyler, Viola Tyler, and Fannie Pettie, are the five pearls (founders) of Zeta Phi Beta.
Although there were already two sororities on the Howard University campus, Cleaver and her four friends were interested and started the process. They sought and were granted approval from university administrators. The five met for the first time as a sanctioned organization on January 16, 1920. They named their organization Zeta Phi Beta. It is the only National Pan-Hellenic Council sorority constitutionally bound to a fraternity; that fraternity is Phi Beta Sigma.
In 1923, Zeta Phi Beta was the first of the NPHC sororities to establish a chapter in Texas. Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, was the chapter’s home. The college was founded in 1873 by the Freedman’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was the first black college west of the Mississippi River. West Texas was a challenging site for the college, given the overt racism and Jim Crow laws of the time. The 2007 film, The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington, is based on a true story about the Wiley College Debating Team which was coached by Melvin Beavnorus Tolson. In 1935, the Wiley team debated and beat the national champion team from the University of Southern California (the film changed the team to that of Harvard University).
Zeta Phi Beta made history with its 1937 Grand Boule’ (national convention). About three years earlier, Lambda Zeta, a graduate chapter based in Houston, was chartered. Violette Anderson, the 8th Grand Basileus (national president), asked Lambda Zeta to host the convention. It was the first time any black GLO held a convention below the Mason-Dixon line. The meetings took place in Houston’s black business area. The Y.W.C.A. cafeteria provided the meals because downtown Houston had no restaurants available to blacks. The delegates were housed with members and friends.
Although she had sought the locale and made the connections, Anderson was unable to preside at that Houston Boule’. An article in the January 29, 1938 Pittsburgh Courier with the subtitles “SPIRIT OF LATE BASILEUS INSPIRES SORORS TO ACTION” and “Progress Under Leadership of the Late Attorney Violette Anderson Is Recalled” offers some insight:
CHICAGO, Jan. 27—When Attorney Violette N. Anderson passed just before the 1937 Boule, the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority lost a most conscientious, industrious and outstanding Soror and Grand Basileus.
During the four years that Soror Anderson was the grand basileus it was evident that she had not only stressed and worked for the development of finer womanhood for Zeta, but had done so for all humanity.
It was Soror Attorney Anderson who made the personal contacts which made Zeta alive in some of our leading colleges, universities and cities. Her guidance as a Zeta, a Christian, a lawyer (the first race woman attorney to practice before the Supreme Court), a club woman, and a good citizen, kept all Zetas alive and living up to their ideal of ‘Finer Womanhood.’
Under her administrative leadership, the sorority carried on its wide-awake recreational project for the handicapped in Coatesville, Pa. That project was directed by Soror Gertrude Hamm, of Washington, DC , and her assistants. The project received nation-wide favorable comment.
Although at the Boule in Houston, Texas, during the holidays, all Zetas were saddened by the death of their grand basileus, Attorney Violette N. Anderson, they were happy to know that her last year for Zeta closed with over one hundred active Zeta Phi Beta Chapters, and an incomparable published book of Zeta’a accomplishments. ‘Time Marches On,’ thus a new grand basileus, Soror Nellie B. Rogers, was elected for 1938. Mrs. Rogers is a native of Indianapolis, Ind., and other than being a teacher in the public schools there, she is a singer and an active worker in religious, civic, social and educational circles. She has her A. B. degree, is working on her master’s degree, and studies with the Musical College of Indianapolis.
Congratulations, Zeta Phi Beta, as you start on your next 100 years!
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, the first Greek-letter organization for African-American women, was founded on January 15, 1908 by nine young female Howard University students. They were led by the vision of Ethel Hedgeman (Lyle); she had spent several months sharing her idea with her friends. During this time, she was dating her future husband, George Lyle, a charter member of the Beta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.
After choosing a name for their sorority, the nine women wrote a constitution and a motto. Additionally, they chose salmon pink and apple green as the sorority’s colors and ivy as its symbol. A group of seven sophomore women were invited to become members. They did not partake in an initiation ceremony and all 16 women are considered founders. The first “Ivy Week” took place in May 1909 and ivy was planted at Howard University’s Miner Hall. On January 29, 1913, Alpha Kappa Alpha was incorporated.
One of its prominent members was Anna J. Cooper, of the Xi Omega chapter. In 1884, she graduated from Oberlin College, one of the first institutions to enroll African American students. Before entering Oberlin she had been married and widowed. She taught and was principal of M Street High School in Washington, D.C. In 1924, at the age of 65, she earned a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in Paris, France, after completing many of the credits at Columbia University in New York. Xi Omega hosted a reception for her on December 29, 1925, at Howard University, on the occasion of the degree presentation, since she had been unable to return to France for the festivities.
Cooper was a feminist who worked tirelessly to advance the status of African American women. She is known as the “Mother of Black Feminism.” She was the author of A Voice from the South, published in 1892. That year, she helped found the Colored Women’s League. She has been honored in many ways. There is a United States Postal Service stamp with her portrait on it. Wake Forest University has the Anna J. Cooper Center on Gender, Race, and Politics. The Episcopal Church (USA) has a feast day in her honor on its liturgical calendar. She died in 1964 at the age of 105.
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 were held 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, an ardent suffragist and civil rights activist, joined them in their march. She inspired and mentored the women. Terrell wrote the Delta Oath in 1914.
The daughter of former slaves, Terrell was an 1884 graduate of Oberlin College. She taught high school, was a principal, and was appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education. Terrell was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and picketed at the White House. She was the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. Terrell dedicated herself to suffrage and equal rights. She signed the charter that established the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. A year later, she was one of the founders of the College Alumnae Club, which later became the National Association of University Women (NAUW). She was awarded three honorary doctorates. She died in 1954.
Focus on Fraternity History
