50 Fun Facts About The Divine Nine: Black Sororities and Fraternities

Which Alpha Kappa Alpha member rose from California attorney general to the U.S. Senate and then the vice presidency?

Kamala Harris joined Alpha Kappa Alpha as an undergraduate in Washington, D.C. In January 2021 she was sworn in as the first woman to serve as vice president.

Which percussive dance of footwork, hand claps and spoken word was popularized by Black fraternities and sororities?

Stepping turns the whole body into an instrument, and it grew partly out of military drill formations. Divine Nine chapters still battle each other in competitive shows.

Which university, nicknamed the Mecca, is the founding site of five of the nine Divine Nine fraternities and sororities?

Howard gave rise to three sororities and two fraternities between 1908 and 1920. The umbrella body that unites all nine groups was also formed on its campus, in 1930.

Which civil rights leader joined Alpha Phi Alpha in 1952 while completing his doctorate at Boston University?

Martin Luther King Jr. gave the keynote at the fraternity's 50th anniversary banquet in 1956. After his death, Alpha Phi Alpha led the drive to build his memorial in Washington.

Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest Black sorority, are known for wearing which pair of official colors?

Pink and green, officially salmon pink and apple green, are so tied to the sorority that Mattel dressed a collectible Barbie in them for its centennial.

Which singer's 2018 Coachella set honored Black Greek life and HBCU culture with a marching band and strolling pledges?

Beyoncé, the first Black woman to headline Coachella, performed in a yellow sweatshirt bearing the Greek letters of an invented group, Beta Delta Kappa.

Which 2007 film follows a Los Angeles street dancer who pledges a fraternity at a fictional Black university in Atlanta?

Stomp the Yard stars Columbus Short and gave singers Chris Brown and Ne-Yo their film debuts. It was shot on real Atlanta campuses, including Morehouse College.

Which Delta Sigma Theta member from Brooklyn became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968?

Shirley Chisholm joined the sorority at Brooklyn College. In 1972 she became the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination.

The seven women who founded Sigma Gamma Rho in 1922 all worked in which profession?

Teaching united all seven founders, and the sorority began as a professional group for Black women educators. It opened to college students at large in 1929.

Which astronaut, an honorary Alpha Kappa Alpha member, carried the sorority's banner aboard a 1992 space shuttle flight?

Mae Jemison became the first Black woman in space on that Endeavour mission. Her space suit later toured the country in the sorority's centennial exhibit.

Which historian and Omega Psi Phi member launched the 1926 Negro History Week that grew into Black History Month?

Carter G. Woodson first urged Omega Psi Phi to hold a Negro History and Literature Week in 1924. He later set the celebration in February to mark the birthdays of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Which honorary Sigma Gamma Rho member was the first Black performer to win an Academy Award, back in 1940?

Hattie McDaniel won best supporting actress for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind. She was an honorary member of the sorority through its Los Angeles branch.

Which Hall of Fame center joined Omega Psi Phi while studying business at Louisiana State University?

Shaquille O'Neal joined the fraternity's Theta Kappa chapter at LSU, where he was a two-time All-American before turning professional.

Which Harlem Renaissance novelist and folklorist, a Zeta Phi Beta member, co-founded her university's student newspaper?

Zora Neale Hurston helped start The Hilltop as a student in Washington, D.C., more than a decade before she published Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Which Alpha Phi Alpha member led the NAACP legal team that won Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court?

Thurgood Marshall had already won Murray v. Pearson in 1935, a discrimination case against a university that Alpha Phi Alpha itself initiated.

Which umbrella body, formed in 1930, coordinates the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities?

The National Pan-Hellenic Council is often confused with the National Panhellenic Conference, a separate umbrella group for other women's sororities. The Council began with five member organizations.

Delta Sigma Theta's members made their first public act in March 1913 by joining which event in Washington, D.C.?

A women's suffrage parade filled Pennsylvania Avenue the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. The sorority, then less than two months old, marched in its college section.

Alpha Kappa Alpha's official symbol, which also names the sorority's magazine, is the leaf of which plant?

Ivy has marked the sorority since its first spring, when members planted it on campus. They held their first Ivy Day celebration a year later, in 1909.

Which 1988 Spike Lee musical pits the pledges of Gamma Phi Gamma against campus activists at a Black college?

School Daze drew on Spike Lee's own student years at Morehouse College. Set over a homecoming weekend, it also takes on colorism and hazing.

Alpha Phi Alpha grew out of a 1905 literary club for Black students at which university in upstate New York?

Cornell students turned the study club into a fraternity on December 4, 1906. Fifty years later about 1,000 members rode a chartered train back to Ithaca to celebrate.

Kappa Alpha Psi and Delta Sigma Theta, founded two years apart, share which pair of official colors?

Crimson and cream stand for courage and purity in Delta Sigma Theta's symbolism. The sorority's flower, by contrast, is purple: the African violet.

Kappa Alpha Psi members are famous for twirling and tapping which accessory in their choreographed routines?

Canes joined the fraternity's performances in the 1950s and were shortened in the 1970s so brothers could twirl them faster. Its leaders only embraced the tradition in 1986.

In 1948 Zeta Phi Beta became the first Greek-letter organization to charter a chapter in Africa, in which country?

Liberia's capital, Monrovia, hosted that first chapter on the continent. The sorority has since spread to Europe, Asia and the Caribbean as well.

Which tennis champion pledged Kappa Alpha Psi at UCLA, years before winning the Wimbledon singles title in 1975?

Arthur Ashe joined the fraternity's Upsilon chapter at UCLA, the same chapter that initiated attorney Johnnie Cochran.

Which Alpha Kappa Alpha member calculated trajectories for the Mercury flights of Alan Shepard and John Glenn?

Katherine Johnson went on to plot rendezvous paths for the Apollo flights to the Moon. Taraji P. Henson played her in the 2016 film Hidden Figures.

Which Phi Beta Sigma member spoke at the 1963 March on Washington as the chairman of SNCC?

John Lewis shared the day with a fraternity brother: A. Philip Randolph, another Phi Beta Sigma member, was the march's key organizer.

Which Tuskegee agricultural scientist, a Phi Beta Sigma brother, addressed the fraternity's 1930 conclave in Alabama?

George Washington Carver gave an impassioned speech to his fraternity brothers when their 1930 conclave met in Tuskegee, the town where he ran his famous laboratory.

Many Omega Psi Phi members follow which tradition, wearing the fraternity's Greek letters on their skin with pride?

Branding of the letters, or of designs such as two linked Omegas, is shown off in public. Some prospects first learn of the fraternity by seeing a member's brand.

Which animal do many Delta Sigma Theta members adopt as an unofficial mascot, honoring a founder who collected them?

Elephant collecting was a passion of founder Florence Letcher Toms, and sisters took up the animal in her honor. The sorority's official symbol is a sculpture called Lady Fortitude.

Which Harlem Renaissance poet joined Omega Psi Phi while studying at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania?

Langston Hughes was a published poet before he left campus: his first collection, The Weary Blues, appeared in 1926, three years before he graduated.

Which basketball giant was president of his Kappa Alpha Psi pledge class at the University of Kansas in the 1950s?

Wilt Chamberlain entered Kansas in 1955 and led his pledge class there. In 1962 he scored 100 points in a single NBA game.

Which actress, later Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show, joined Alpha Kappa Alpha's first chapter as a college student?

Phylicia Rashad was initiated into the Alpha chapter before graduating in 1970. In 2004 she became the first Black actress to win the Tony for best actress in a play.

Which star of What's Love Got to Do with It became an honorary Delta Sigma Theta member in 2013?

Angela Bassett played Tina Turner in that 1993 biopic. The sorority initiated her in July 2013, during its centennial year.

Kappa Alpha Psi was founded in 1911 by ten Black students at which majority-white Big Ten university?

Indiana University's Bloomington campus had very few Black students in the Jim Crow era, so the ten founders built a brotherhood of their own there.

Iota Phi Theta, the youngest of the Divine Nine, was founded in 1963 at which historically Black college in Maryland?

Morgan State was where twelve non-traditional students, all committed to the civil rights movement, formed the fraternity. It joined the other eight groups decades later.

Which bird serves as both the official symbol of Zeta Phi Beta and the mascot of brother fraternity Phi Beta Sigma?

Dove imagery suits a pair with a unique tie: the sorority was founded with the fraternity's help in 1920, and the two are bound to each other in their constitutions.

Alpha Kappa Alpha honors its founders, early sophomore members and incorporators under the name the Twenty what?

Pearls honor three groups: the original 1908 members, the sophomores admitted weeks later and the women who incorporated the sorority in 1913.

Kappa Alpha Psi members are known by which nickname, a holdover from the fraternity's original name?

Nupes recalls Kappa Alpha Nu, the name the fraternity was incorporated under in 1911. Members voted to rename it in December 1914 after hearing the old name twisted into a slur.

Which Delta Sigma Theta national president went on to lead the National Council of Negro Women for four decades?

Dorothy Height led the sorority from 1947 to 1956 and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington. Barack Obama called her the godmother of the civil rights movement.

Sigma Gamma Rho, alone among Divine Nine sororities, began at a mostly white campus, which private Midwestern school?

Butler University is where the seven founders were taking courses in 1922. The sorority's first collegiate chapter was chartered there seven years later.

Sigma Gamma Rho, the youngest of the four Divine Nine sororities, claims which dog breed as its official mascot?

Poodle is the official mascot and the yellow tea rose the official flower. Members often shorten the sorority's name to SGRho.

Alpha Phi Alpha's seven founders, who started the fraternity in 1906, are collectively honored as the Seven what?

Jewels is the fraternity's title for each founder. The list changed in 1952, when Eugene Kinckle Jones was named a founder in place of a man who had not been enrolled at the university.

Omega Psi Phi's four cardinal principles are manhood, scholarship, perseverance and which fourth ideal?

Uplift rounds out the set. Omega Psi Phi, founded in 1911, was the first national fraternity established at a historically Black university.

Which pioneering biologist served as the faculty adviser who helped three students found Omega Psi Phi in 1911?

Ernest Everett Just backed the three students even though the university's administration at first opposed the fraternity, fearing it could become a political threat.

Iota Phi Theta's mascot, which also names the fraternity's magazine, is which half-human creature of Greek myth?

Centaur is also one of the members' nicknames, alongside Iotas and Outlaws. The fraternity's colors are charcoal brown and gilded gold.

Which author gave the title The Divine Nine to his history of Black fraternities and sororities?

Lawrence Ross made the phrase the title of his book. It only became possible in the late 1990s, when Iota Phi Theta joined as the ninth member organization.

Alpha Kappa Alpha, Zeta Phi Beta and Sigma Gamma Rho each call their national convention by which Greek-derived name?

Boulé comes from the citizens' body that ran the daily affairs of ancient Greek cities. Zeta Phi Beta held its first one in December 1920, months after its founding.

Which civil rights pioneer, an honorary Delta Sigma Theta member, helped write the sorority's oath in its first years?

Mary Church Terrell, one of the first Black women to earn a college degree, mentored the students who formed the sorority and was made an honorary member.

Which co-founder of the Black Panther Party was a Phi Beta Sigma member during his college years in Oakland?

Huey P. Newton joined the Beta Tau chapter at Merritt College, where he also helped get the school's first African American history course adopted.

Zeta Phi Beta's Stork's Nest program has promoted prenatal care since 1971 in partnership with which health charity?

March of Dimes and the sorority run the nests together, rewarding expectant mothers for healthy habits. The first nest opened in Atlanta, and the sorority made it a national project a year later.