There are three fraternities in the North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) that do not use Greek-letters. They are Acacia, FarmHouse and Triangle. Interestingly, the latter two celebrate Founders’ Day on the same day, April 15th. Both organizations began for students in specific majors. In FarmHouse’s case it was agriculture. For Triangle it was engineering. In the ensuing years, both organizations expanded membership eligibility criteria.
FarmHouse began on April 15, 1905 at the University of Missouri. D. Howard Doane, one of the seven founders, conceived the idea for the fraternity. The other founders are Melvin E. Sherwin, Robert F. Howard, Claude B. Hutchinson, Henry H. Krusekopf, Earl W. Rusk, and Henry P. Rusk. The young men were attending a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Bible study in the spring of 1905. They talked about organizing a club and renting a house so that they could live together. It was Doane who envisioned a “farmers club,” and developed a plan. A second chapter followed at the University of Nebraska in 1911 and a third chapter at the University of Illinois in 1914.
At the 1978 Conclave, the fraternity revised its membership criteria to include students whose subjects of study “can be applied toward a degree in agriculture or related fields, or he has a rural background, or he shares an agricultural interest; or he demonstrates qualities of character, scholarship and professional excellence to which FarmHouse men aspire.”
The Illinois Chapter of FarmHouse was the fraternity’s third chapter. It was founded in 1914.
Triangle Fraternity
In the fall of 1906, Triangle Fraternity was founded at the University of Illinois. Founders’ Day is April 15, the date in 1907 on which the Incorporation papers were granted by the state of Illinois. Sixteen civil engineering students conceived the idea to foster fellowship while in college and later as working professionals. Triangle’s founders are Edwin B. Adams, Wilbur G. Burroughs, Stanley G. Cutler, Ruby O. Harder, Theron R. Howser, Robert Emmett Keough, Thomas E. Lowry, Milton H. McCoy, Meryl S. Morgan, Ernest B. Nettleton, Raymond C. Pierce, Franklin N. Ropp, Arthur Schwerin, Charles M. Slaymaker, Charles E. Waterhouse, and Emil A. Weber.
Triangle became a national organization when similar groups at Purdue University and Ohio State were installed as Triangle Fraternity chapters in 1909 and 1911, respectively. At first, membership was limited exclusively to civil engineering students, but in 1920, architecture and all engineering majors were added by a national referendum. In 1961, science students in chemistry, mathematics, and physics became eligible for membership, and computer science was added to the list in 1981.
Triangle Fraternity Headquarters, Plainfield, Indiana. The building is a former Carnegie Library.
On April 11, 1924, one of the most unique events took place at the White House. It did not involve the President, a Phi Gamma Delta from Amherst College, and he was not a part of the festivities. It was the First Lady’s day to shine. The President did visit with some of their Massachusetts friends in the White House private quarters that day. They had socialized at Pi Beta Phi alumnae events when the couple lived in Massachusetts.
The day honored the First Lady, a charter member of the Vermont Beta Chapter of Pi Beta Phi at the University of Vermont. She had been an active member of the organization from her first days wearing the arrow. One of the women who met with the President that day was Anna Robinson Nickerson, Pi Phi’s Grand Vice President. She and the First Lady had met when they were chapter delegates at the 1901 Syracuse Convention.
The President and First Lady were the pair who were initiated into Greek-letter organizations while enrolled in college. Grace and Calvin Coolidge were both proud of their affiliations with Phi Gamma Delta and Pi Beta Phi, respectively. When his fraternity gave him a new badge, he quipped that it was fortuitous because his wife was always wearing his.
This summer’s Pi Phi Convention will be held in the same city where 95 years ago, more 1,300 Pi Phis were arriving to be a part of the Eastern Conference. The portrait of the First Lady painted by Howard Chandler Christy was paid for by her sorority sisters and was being presented to the United States. In the portrait she is wearing her Pi Beta Phi arrow.
She became First Lady on August 3, 1923 when President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly in California. The Coolidges were at the family’s homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, and the news made it to them four hours after Harding’s death. President Coolidge was sworn in by the light of a kerosene lamp in the sitting room of his father’s home; his father, a notary, administered the oath of office.
The excitement that the Fraternity members felt in having a dedicated, life-long member of Pi Beta Phi as the First Lady must have been incredible. News of the event appeared in the March 1924 Arrow. Every Pi Phi was invited to attend. The Fraternity made plans to purchase a portrait of the First Lady that was being painted by Howard Chandler Christy. Funds were sought from the membership and the financial goal was met quickly.
Mrs. Nickerson played an integral role in planning the event and acted as Toastmistress at the Banquet. She wrote to her friend asking her for permission to hold the event. The First Lady responded that she “would be deeply touched and greatly pleased to receive such a mark of affection and recognition” from Pi Beta Phi. With the help of May Brodhead Wallace, Iowa Gamma, wife of Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, plans were made to entertain the Pi Phis at the White House.
The Eastern Conference was the largest gathering of fraternity women up until that time. The Willard Hotel did not have enough room to serve all the attendees at the Saturday evening banquet. A second banquet at the Raleigh Hotel, with an identical menu and program, was arranged. After the meal, the Raleigh Hotel group adjourned to the Willard Hotel group for the speeches and ceremonies.
The Willard Hotel’s Red Room was the registration and reunion center; concerts were given there each afternoon. A tenth-floor ballroom served as the conference hall. At the ballroom’s south end, there was an exhibit of Pi Beta Phi Settlement School products. Black and white replicas of the Grace Coolidge portraits were sold for the benefit of the School’s library.
On Friday morning, the group met for a business session, but the business was mainly fun. Former Grand President Emma Harper Turner called the meeting to order. The group sang the Anthem. The Chicago Alumnae Club and Illinois Epsilon presented a special radio program featuring Kathryn Browne, Illinois Zeta. A Grand Opera star, she received special permission so that she could sing fraternity songs from a radio station in Chicago. Along with eight Illinois Epsilons as the chorus, she sang Speed Thee, My Arrow and Anthem. The banquet took place on Saturday evening. It culminated with a speech by another of the organization’s most prominent members, Carrie Chapman Catt, Iowa Gamma.
Between Friday morning’s fun session and Saturday’s trip to Mount Vernon and evening banquet was the capstone of the gathering, the presentation of the portrait. A group of Pi Phi notables processed from the Willard Hotel to the White House. An Arrow correspondent described the events:
The guests assembled in the historic East Room, forming a semi-circle about the panel on the west wall, where hung the curtains, in wine red velvet, with cords of silver blue, which covered the portrait. The presentation party was assembled in the Green Room. Promptly at four-thirty a section of the Marine Band began to play, announcing the opening the opening of the simple ceremony. The presentation group, led by Miss Onken and Mrs. Nickerson, came first from the Green Room, taking their places on the inner side of the circle, facing the portrait. On either side of the portrait stood the two active girls who were to draw the curtains.
Through the double doorway appeared the Army, Naval, and Marine Aides to the president. With the Senior Aides as escort, came Grace Coolidge, First Lady of the Land. She wore a soft grey georgette crepe afternoon dress trimmed with crystal, and, as jewels, a diamond eagle on her shoulder, a chain with a crystal pendant, a gold bracelet, her wedding ring, and the diamond studded arrow, which had been presented the day before by a group of personal friends in Pi Beta Phi. Wonderfully slim and straight, with arms at her side, she stood very still through the entire ceremony, except for a constant play of understanding appreciation, which lighted her expressive face.
The representatives of Vermont Beta and Michigan Beta drew the silver blue cords, the heavy wine-red curtains parted, and the portrait was revealed. Then, as Mrs. Nickerson put it, “to express a little of what was in their hearts,” the Anthem was sung, with Mrs. Coolidge joining in. After the portrait was presented, they moved to the Blue Room. There the guests were presented by name to the First Lady, and being her gracious self, she greeted each member.
The lower floors of the White House were open, so that the attendees had an opportunity to see the staterooms. At the conclusion of the reception, the group headed to the gardens, where a panoramic photo was taken. As the First Lady left the grounds after the picture, she spoke to the nearby Pi Phis, “This is the loveliest thing I have seen here. I should like to keep you here always, to make beautiful the White House lawn.”
The day the Pi Phis visited Mrs. Coolidge at the White House was a happy and memorable one. Three month later the Coolidge’s world was shattered. Their youngest son, Calvin Junior, died on July 7, 1924, from blood poisoning stemming from a blister that formed on his foot following a tennis game he played without socks. The day the Pi Phis visited one of its most loyal members remained one of the highlights of Grace Goodhue Coolidge’s life.
A portion of the picture taken on the White House lawn when the Pi Phis presented the official portrait of the First Lady. The only man in the picture is the artist, Howard Chandler Christy. Two of the Founders, who by then were in their 70s attended as well as Carrie Chapman Catt who was the keynote speaker at the event. The First Lady’s husband, Calvin Coolidge was a Phi Gamma Delta.Grace Coolidge signed her letter to Pi Beta Phi Grand President “From one of its most loyal members.”
Today is the day upon which Chi Omega was founded at the University of Arkansas in 1895. Ina May Boles, Jean Vincenheller, Jobelle Holcombe, and Alice Simonds, with guidance from Dr. Charles Richardson a Fayetteville dentist and a Kappa Sigma alumnus, created the organization. Dr. Richardson, with the sobriquet “Sis Doc,” was beloved by Psi Chapter members. He, too, is a founder. The Psi Chapter is the founding chapter at Arkansas.
One of my favorite ways to waste time is to peruse century old GLO magazines. I came across this in the second volume of The Eleusis of Chi Omega.
The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College was the home of Chi Omega’s Rho Chapter. Josephine Louise Newcomb established the college in 1886 as a memorial to her daughter who died in 1870 at the age of 15. It was the women’s coordinate of Tulane University. The entry for Gertrude Kerr (above) illustrates this distinction.
The second entry for Willey Denis piqued by curiosity. What an unusual name! And what a long journey for a young woman to travel from New Orleans to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, about 15 miles from Philadelphia. (In case you were wondering, “bryn mawr” means “large hill” in Welsh.)
In 1893, Pi Beta Phi chartered a chapter at Newcomb College. Alpha Omicron Pi’s second chapter debuted there on September 8, 1897. That year a local society, P.K.E.C. was formed and in 1898 it became Sigma Delta. This organization:
flourished ‘like a green bay tree,’ and finally on Friday, March 30, 1900, the members formally announced to the College that they had joined the national fraternity of Chi Omega and would be known as the Rho Chapter.
After I realized that Willey Glover Denis, Ph.D., was another among a plethora of #NotableSororityWomen, I contacted Lyn Harris, Chi Omega’s Archivist. She confirmed Denis was indeed a member in good standing.
Willey Denis is listed as a member of Sigma Delta, which would become Chi Omega’s Rho Chapter soon after this yearbook was published.
Willey Glover Denis was a native of New Orleans from an old and respected family. There was no need for her have a career. Women of her social standing typically strove to “marry well.” In 1902, she was Queen of the New Orleans Mardi Gras krewe Proteus. The third oldest parade krewe in New Orleans, the theme that year was “Flora’s Feast.” While that might have been the pinnacle of life for some of her contemporaries, it appears she merely tolerated the experience.
Denis was a pioneer among biochemists, at a time when it was difficult and rare for a woman to do so. It appears her interest in science did not begin until she arrived at Bryn Mawr. In addition to the degrees from Newcomb and Bryn Mawr, she earned a Master’s from Tulane University in 1902. Denis took additional classes at Tulane until 1905 when she entered the University of Chicago, the new institution funded by Rockefeller money. She graduated from Chicago in 1907 with a Ph.D., cum laude.
The Eleusis of Chi Omega, 1905
Denis’ dissertation was titled On the Behavior of Various Aldehydes, Ketones and Alcohols Toward Oxidizing Agents. From there she taught for a short time at Grinnell College. At the end of 1907, she joined the USDA’s Bureau of Chemistry where she spent almost two years. For the next decade she was a prolific researcher, collaborating with others and publishing many studies. She toiled at Tulane, Chicago, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 1920, Denis returned to New Orleans. That June, she joined the Tulane Medical School faculty as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology. She continued a heavy research agenda. In 1925, the Chemistry Department became the Biochemistry Department. She was the department chair and likely the first woman to chair a major department in a major medical school.
Metastatic breast cancer cut short her life and Denis died in 1929 at the age of 49. Her sister, Aimee C. Denis, died in 1943. Aimee left a bequest of $30,000 to establish the Willey Glover Denis Fellowships in Biological Chemistry at the Tulane University School of Medicine.
How does one write about loss, especially the loss of one so young? College students should not die while in college. It breaks my heart every time I read of college students whose lives are cut short. The death of Samantha Josephson was especially heartbreaking. My condolences to her family, friends and Alpha Gamma Delta sisters.
#WhatsMyName should become second nature to anyone who is waiting for a ride.
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Earlier this week while mired in all the paperwork and sorrow of my father’s passing, I had the strangest twitter contact.
@GLOhistory Hey Frandy. Could I please get a follow little sister.
Frankly, the name of the account gave no clue as to who was asking, but that nickname is one only college friends know. There were two Frans in the chapter and me being the younger of the two made me “Frandy.” And so I blindly followed the account. How fortuitous that I did. It turns out it was my Pi Phi big sister and the woman who initiated me. We spent half a day catching up on 40 years. Picking up where you left off decades ago is something that is so heartwarming and it always brings tears to my eyes when I’ve seen it happen at chapter celebrations. Having it happened to me Monday morning was just what my soul needed.
Effie Hoffman Rogers was not a founder of the P.E.O. Sisterhood, but she was a builder. Few people know the names of the builders, those who came after the founders and worked on making the organization into what it is today.
She grew up in Oskaloosa, Iowa. While at the Young Ladies Seminary in Mount Pleasant, Iowa she became a member of the second chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood, founded two years earlier at Iowa Wesleyan University. Graduating in 1872, she returned to Oskaloosa where in early 1873, she established Chapter D of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. Chapter A minutes do not mention her being given permission to do so, but at some point she let Chapter A know there was a Chapter D.
A young Effie Hoffman Rogers
She worked as a reporter until she married John Franklin Rogers on April of 1880. She relocated to Concordia, Kansas, where her husband was a bank cashier. In December 1882, the couple moved to Great Bend, Kansas where her husband organized a bank. The following March, a daughter Emily Jozelle, was born. That year, while she was pregnant with another child, Franklin Ripley, her husband died suddenly. Young Franklin lived but two months and Effie Hoffman Rogers along with her young daughter Emily returned to Oskaloosa. She became Editor of the Oskaloosa Times and then worked for the Globe.
Chapter D was dormant after Rogers left town and it reorganized in October 1884. At the 1886 Convention of Grand Chapter, Rogers seemed to take center stage. She spoke from the floor, volunteered for committee work, and moreover, when it came time to vote on small revisions to the initiation ceremony, she had made revisions to it although she was not on the committee charged with the task. She was also elected as President of the Grand Chapter and was reelected twice, serving three terms.
She wrote the P.E.O. Creed. She chose the name of the P.E.O. Record and was Editor when it debuted in 1889. She stitched the first copies together on her sewing machine and then wrote the addresses by hand. Although she resigned in 1890, she again took on the Editor title from 1913 until her death in 1918.
She won election as Mahaska County Superintendent of Schools in 1889. Other jobs which she held included being a commercial traveler for two publishing houses. She also edited an educational journal, Schoolmaster, and was owner of a pickles and preserves company.
Rogers was living with her daughter in Colorado at the time of her death on February 7, 1918, at the age of 62.
In 1909, Pessa Polasky (Kandinoff) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. She attended the University of Cincinnati where she became a member of the Lambda Chapter of Phi Sigma Sigma. She earned a Bachelor’s in 1931 and a Master’s in Pyschology a year later.
Cincinnati Enquirer, March 7, 1931
The Phi Sigma Sigma Sphinx, May 1930
In 1931, she was elected as Secretary of Tau Pi Epsilon, a professional household administration sorority. In March 1933, she spoke at the sorority’s banquet.
Cincinnati Enquirer, April 2, 1933
She headed to New York where she studied at the New York School of Social Work. In 1935 she was a caseworker for Cincinnati’s Department of Public Welfare and the Department of Aid to Dependent Children. In 1941, she worked for the Ohio State Department of Public Welfare, a job she held until 1944.
During World War II, she went to Europe where she was a welfare officer in refugee camps in Italy and Palestine. The camps were under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and they house primarily Greek and Yugoslav refugees. The Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College houses some of the case histories and personal accounts of the World War II refugees with whom she worked.
After the war she was Psychiatric social worker in Cincinnati, first at Longview State Hospital and then at Cincinnati General Hospital. In 1956, Pessa Polasky married Meir Kandinoff in New York City. The next year, she began teaching at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She retired in 1971 and moved to Israel where she died in 1994.
Etta Motten Barnett was born in Weimar, Texas on November 5, 1901. She first enrolled at Western University, a historically black college in Quindaro, Kansas. In 1918, she married Lieutenant Curtis Brooks, a former teacher. They moved to Oklahoma and had three daughters. The couple divorced in 1924 and she returned home to Kansas where her parents helped raise her daughters.
She enrolled at the University of Kansas. In 1931, she earned a Bachelor’s in voice and drama. While in Kansas, she became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. She left her daughters in Kansas and headed to New York City where she joined the Eva Jessye Choir.
In 1933, she was in two big screen musicals. In Flying Down to Rio, she sang “The Carioca.” She was also in the Busby Berkeley musical Gold Diggers of 1933.
She married Claude Albert Barnett, the founder and director of the Associated Negro Press, in 1934. It is said she sang at the White House for one of President Roosevelt’s birthday celebration. (However, I could find no definite date – they ranged from 1934 until 1944. If anyone has primary source information, please let me know and I will edit this.)
In the 1942 revival of Porgy and Bess, Barnett had the title roll and performed on Broadway and with the national touring company until 1945.
Barnett received a Citation of Merit from her Alma Mater, the University of Kansas, in 1943.
She retired from performing in 1952. She hosted a Chicago based radio show, I Remember When. The recordings still exist including one of her interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Her husband died in 1967 an she became a philanthropist in the Chicago community. Barnett was active in the National Council of Negro Women, the Field Museum, the Chicago Lyric Opera, the DuSable Museum, and the South Side Community Art Center. She served on the Board of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Five honorary degrees were awarded to her.
In 2001 Barnett was inducted into the Kansas University Emily Taylor Center for Women and Gender Equity. She died in 2004, at the age of 102.
Lillian Copeland was born Lillian Drossin on November 25, 1904, in New York City. Her parents were Polish immigrants. After her father’s death, her mother remarried and Lillian took her stepfather’s name. As a child she moved to the west coast. She graduated from Los Angeles High School and entered the University of Southern California, where she was a member of the Xi Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Phi.
Los Angles Times, February 28, 1926. In addition to track and field, she also played field hockey and is second from the let in the above picture.
It is said that she won every women’s track event in which she participated while a student at the University of Southern California.
In 1927, she had a role in Marion Davies’ film The Fair Co-ed, although she is not credited in any of the movie databases.
Daily Record, November 12, 1927
In 1926, she had National Amateur Athletic Union championships in shot put, discus throw, and javelin throw. The discus and javelin throws were world records. As per her 1930 USC yearbook entry, she was the American Champion and American and World record holder.
The first year that women were able to participate in track and field events in the Olympics was 1928. Shot put was not yet an Olympic sport, so even though Copeland was a four-time national champion in that event, she participated in discus instead. She won a silver medal for discus at the 1928 Olympics, making her one of the first women to win a medal at the Olympics. Copeland also ran on the 400 meter relay team during the Olympic trials, but did not run the relay in the Olympics.
After graduation, Copeland began studies at USC Law School. She returned to competition in 1931 in preparation for the 1932 Olympics. Teammate Ruth Osburn of Shelbyville, Missouri, broke the women’s record. Copeland broke Osburn’s record a few minutes later. Copeland won a gold medal in the discuss throw and Osburn took the silver.
Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1932
Great Falls Tribune, August 31, 1932
Although she said she was through with competition after winning the gold in 1932, she must have changed her mind. In 1935 she traveled to Tel Aviv at her own expense to participate in the World Maccabiah Games. She won in the discus throw, javelin throw, and shot put competitions. Copeland boycotted the 1936 Berlin Olympics because of Hitler and his stance on Jewish athletes.
Copeland worked for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department from 1936 until her retirement in 1960. She died on July 7, 1964.
In 1980, Copeland became a member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Netanyah, Israel. Eleven years later, she was inducted into the Southern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Los Angeles.
Opera star Madame Lillian Evanti was born Annie Lillian Evans in Washington, D.C. in 1890. Her mother, a music teacher, must have nutured Evanti’s singing talent at an early age.
Photo courtesy of the Evans-Tibbs Collection, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of the Estate of Thurlow E. Tibbs, Jr.
She graduated from Howard University in 1917 three years before the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. was founded. In 1918, she married Roy Tibbs, a Howard University music professor. She took parts of the names Evans and Tibbs to create her stage name, Madame Evanti.
When she debuted in the title role of Lakmé with the Paris Opera she became the first African American to sing with a European opera company. She toured with opera companies throughout the U.S., Europe, South America and the Caribbean. In 1934, she performed for the Roosevelts at the White House.
Madame Evanti was the first Honorary Member of Zeta Phi Beta. She often performed for her sorority sisters. Zeta Phi Beta celebrated its 15th Birthday with a Boule held at Howard University from December 27-30, 1935. One of the social events held in conjucnction with the Boule was a private recital and team at Evanti’s home. (Attorney Violette N. Anderson presided at this Boule.)
Ruth Whitehead (Whaley) was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The daughter of teachers, she attended Livingstone College in Salisbury, NC. She graduated in 1919 and worked for a few years as a teacher of the deaf.
On July 3, 1920, she married Herman S. Whaley. The couple lived in Harlem, New York, where they raised their two children. Her husband encouraged her to study law. She was the first Black woman to enroll at Fordham Law School, and she graduated in 1924 at the top of her class. In 1925, she was the third Black woman admitted to New York Bar, and in 1933, she became the first Black woman admitted to the North Carolina Bar.
Whaley was a member of Sigma Gamma Rho, and she was a frequent speaker at Sigma Gamma Rho regional meetings and Boules (conventions).
Sigma Gamma Rho’s Boule took place in Birmingham, Alabama, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 1940. “Cooperation through service” was the theme of the Boule and:
in an effort to stress the educational significance of the National meeting a special program will be given….One of Sigma’s most outstanding members in the person of Soror Ruth Whitehead Whaley of Kappa Sigma of New York City will speak at the Historic 16th Street Baptist church on Sunday morning, December 29. Soror Whaley has been a practicing attorney in NYC for the past 15 years. Actively engaged in practice in all the courts of NYS including the highest court of Appeals of Albany, NY specializing in Appeals and Civil Service. She is the first Negro woman admitted to the bar of NC. First Negro to actively engage in the practice of law in New York.
When she was Industrial Commissioner of New York, she won a case against Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor.
In 1943, she attended Sigma Gamma Rho’s southeastern regional conference. Whaley also attended the Northeast Regional meeting when she served as basileus (president) of the Kappa Sigma Chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho.
In 1944, at the 16th Boule, she served as parliamentarian and was also a guest speaker at the educational session at Quinn Chapter church on August 20, a Sunday afternoon. In 1948, she was in Cleveland for the Boule and spoke at a public meeting on August 19 at St. James AME Church.
From 1951 until her retirement in 1973, she was Secretary to the New York City Board of Estimate.
Whaley spoke in Philadelphia at the 1961 Boule and was legal counsel at the 1965 Boule. In August of 1971, she spoke at the 33rd Boule in Dallas, Texas. It appears that she attended decades worth of Sigma Gamma Rho Boules and regional events and played a role in each of them.
In addition to her service to Sigma Gamma Rho, she served as first president of the Negro Business and Professional Women’s Club and a Vice President of the National Council of Negro Women.
She died on December 23, 1977 at the age of 76. Shortly after her death, Fordham University’s Black Law Students Association named their annual award the Ruth Whitehead Whaley Award. She was elected to Fordham Law School’s Hall of Fame in 2014.
There are many posts on this blog. Use the search button to find the posts about your organization.
Welcome!
Welcome! Chances are good you found this blog by searching for something about fraternities or sororities.
I was the last person anyone would have suspected of joining a sorority in college. I am sure I would have agreed with them, too.
When I made my way to Syracuse University, I saw the houses with the Greek letters that edged Walnut Park, and wished I could tour them. My roommate suggested I sign up for rush (as it was then called, today it’s known as recruitment) and go through the house tour round and then drop out of rush. It sounded like a plan. I didn’t realize that I would end up feeling at home at one of the chapters. And that I would become a member.
In this blog I will share the history of GLOs and other topics. I wrote a dissertation on “Coeducation and the History of Women’s Fraternities 1867-1902.″ It chronicles the growth of the system and the birth of the National Panhellenic Conference.
My Master’s thesis details the history of the fraternity system at Southern Illinois University Carbondale from 1948-1960. The dates are significant ones and the thesis is available on the top menu.
I have done research at the Student Life Archives and have written several histories of University of Illinois fraternity chapters for the Society for the Preservation of Greek Housing.
