50 Fun Facts About National Pan-Hellenic Council (Divine Nine)

Five of the Divine Nine, and the council that unites them, were all founded on which historically Black campus?

Howard University gave rise to Alpha Kappa Alpha, Omega Psi Phi, Delta Sigma Theta, Phi Beta Sigma and Zeta Phi Beta between 1908 and 1920. The council itself was formed there on May 10, 1930.

Which politician joined Alpha Kappa Alpha as a college student before starting her career as a prosecutor?

Kamala Harris became an AKA as an undergraduate in Washington, D.C., and graduated in 1986. Lynch, Demings and Fudge all belong to Delta Sigma Theta instead.

Alpha Phi Alpha led the decades-long drive to build a memorial in Washington to which of its own members?

Martin Luther King Jr. was initiated into Alpha Phi Alpha in 1952 while finishing his doctorate at Boston University. Congress authorized the fraternity to build the memorial in 1996, and it opened in 2011.

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

Crimson and cream stand for courage and purity in Delta Sigma Theta. Kappa Alpha Psi brothers go as far as wrapping their step-show props in the same two shades.

Which pair of colors identifies Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first sorority founded by Black college women?

Salmon pink and apple green even reached the toy aisle when Mattel designed a collectible Barbie in an AKA-colored evening gown. The doll marked the sorority's centennial.

Which 1988 Spike Lee musical follows fraternity pledges and a campus step show during homecoming at a Black college?

School Daze drew on Spike Lee's own student years at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Its fictional fraternity, Gamma Phi Gamma, calls its pledge class the Gammites.

Which 2007 dance film follows a student who pledges a fraternity at Truth University and competes in stepping contests?

Stomp the Yard pits the Theta Nu Theta fraternity against rivals Mu Gamma Xi, seven-time national champions. Singers Ne-Yo and Chris Brown both made their film debuts in it.

Sigma Gamma Rho honorary member Hattie McDaniel won a historic Academy Award for which 1939 film?

Gone with the Wind made McDaniel the first African American to win an Oscar, for her supporting role as Mammy. She was an honorary member of Sigma Gamma Rho through its Los Angeles branch.

Phi Beta Sigma member Huey P. Newton co-founded which revolutionary group in Oakland in 1966?

The Black Panther Party first set out to protect African-American neighborhoods from police brutality. Newton served as its minister of defense, with co-founder Bobby Seale as chairman.

Omega Psi Phi member Carter G. Woodson created the 1926 week of study that grew into which annual observance?

Black History Month grew out of Negro History Week, which Woodson launched in 1926. Two years earlier he had urged Omega Psi Phi to hold its own Negro History and Literature Week.

Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest of the Divine Nine, grew out of a 1905 study club on which New York campus?

Cornell University is where a literary and social club became the first Black intercollegiate fraternity on December 4, 1906. The club had formed to support students facing racial prejudice on campus.

Kappa Alpha Psi brothers are famous for twirling and tapping which accessory in their step show routines?

Canes joined Kappa step shows in the 1950s and were shortened in the 1970s so brothers could twirl them with more dexterity. The national fraternity only embraced the tradition in 1986.

Omega Psi Phi member Ronald McNair, a physicist and astronaut, died in the 1986 loss of which Space Shuttle?

Challenger was lost on mission STS-51-L, McNair's second spaceflight after STS-41-B. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Jesse Owens was one of seven Alpha Phi Alpha men on the U.S. team at the 1936 Olympics in which city?

Berlin was where Owens won four gold medals. Fellow Alphas on the team included Ralph Metcalfe, Archie Williams and John Woodruff.

Which Delta Sigma Theta member, who joined at Brooklyn College, became the first Black woman elected to Congress?

Shirley Chisholm won her New York seat in 1968 and held it for seven terms. As a student she had won prizes for her debating skills.

Which Harlem Renaissance novelist and folklorist joined Zeta Phi Beta during her college years in Washington, D.C.?

Zora Neale Hurston was the first in her family to attend college. While there she also co-founded the student newspaper, The Hilltop.

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

Langston Hughes earned his degree at Lincoln in 1929 and made Harlem his home for the rest of his life. He is remembered as an early innovator of jazz poetry.

Which basketball legend belongs to Omega Psi Phi, the fraternity of fellow NBA stars Shaquille O'Neal and Vince Carter?

Michael Jordan joined through the fraternity's Omicron Alpha chapter. The Omega roll also includes Jesse Jackson and comedian Steve Harvey.

Whose 2018 Coachella headline show honored HBCU homecomings with a marching band, a step show and strolling pledges?

Beyoncé built the set around Black college culture and wove in Black Greek life, from a step show to strolling. It was released in 2019 as the concert film Homecoming.

Alpha Kappa Alpha's twenty early members and Zeta Phi Beta's five founders are each remembered as which gems?

Pearls name both sets of founders: AKA honors The Twenty Pearls, drawn from its original group, the sophomores and the incorporators, while Zetas honor The Five Pearls.

Alpha Phi Alpha borrows its imagery from ancient Egypt and uses which monument as the fraternity's symbol?

The Great Sphinx was carved from one unified body of stone, which the fraternity takes to represent its members standing as one. Brothers make pilgrimages to Giza to see it.

Which plant emblem, recalling what the founders planted on campus in 1908, is the symbol of Alpha Kappa Alpha?

An ivy leaf recalls the vine members planted in the sorority's first spring, and the first Ivy Day followed in 1909. The sorority's magazine carries the same name.

Members of Kappa Alpha Psi, the fraternity founded by ten students in 1911, are popularly known by which nickname?

Nupes comes from Kappa Alpha Nu, the name the fraternity carried until 1915. Ques are Omega men, and Outlaws is a nickname used in Iota Phi Theta.

Omega Psi Phi, founded by three students and a professor in 1911, has a motto calling what essential to the soul?

Friendship is the heart of the Omega motto, while manhood, scholarship, perseverance and uplift are the fraternity's four cardinal principles.

Kappa Alpha Psi's motto urges members to pursue what in every field of human endeavor?

Achievement was even the argument national officers used against step shows in the 1960s: the weekly practice hours, they said, belonged to academic or civic work.

Weeks after their 1913 founding, members of Delta Sigma Theta marched in Washington for which cause?

Women's suffrage drew the new sorority into the collegiate section of the 1913 procession, its first public act. A century later, Deltas staged a re-enactment of the parade.

Which animals are Delta Sigma Theta's unofficial mascot, a nod to founder Florence Letcher Toms, who collected them?

Elephants remain an unofficial favorite among Deltas, never a formal emblem. The sorority's official flower, by contrast, is the African violet.

Phi Beta Sigma and its sister sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, share blue and white colors and which bird as a mascot?

A dove represents both groups, the only Divine Nine pair bound to each other by their constitutions. A Sigma brother first suggested the sister sorority to founder Arizona Cleaver in 1919.

Which dog breed is the official mascot of Sigma Gamma Rho, the sorority founded by seven educators in 1922?

Poodle pride runs deep in the sorority: Pretty Poodles is one of the nicknames its members use for themselves.

Phi Beta Sigma member Kwame Nkrumah, initiated at Lincoln University in 1942, later led which country to independence?

Ghana broke from British rule in 1957 with Nkrumah as prime minister, and he later became its president. He had joined the fraternity's Mu chapter while studying theology in Pennsylvania.

Kappa Alpha Psi began in 1911 on which Big Ten campus, later home to the NPHC's first permanent national office?

Indiana University gave the council an office on its Bloomington campus in 1992. For the 62 years before that, the national office had moved from one officer to the next.

Iota Phi Theta, the last of the Divine Nine to be founded, began in 1963 on which Baltimore campus?

Morgan State University, then a college, saw the fraternity founded on September 19, 1963. In 2016 two Baltimore chapters pledged a $100,000 endowment to its scholarship fund.

Alpha Kappa Alpha's 1930s Health Project took mobile clinics to rural Black families in which Southern state?

Mississippi was where the sorority's Health Project brought primary medical care to the rural Black population. Member Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, a physician, directed it.

In 1946, Alpha Kappa Alpha became the first sorority granted observer status at which international body?

The United Nations was barely a year old when the sorority gained observer status in October 1946. In 1948 AKA joined other Black Greek organizations in the American Council on Human Rights, a civil rights lobby.

Which unofficial tradition leaves many Omega Psi Phi members with Greek letters permanently marked on their skin?

Branding is worn as a matter of pride, and some prospects first learn of the fraternity by seeing the marks on members. One popular design links two Omega symbols.

Which U.S. president is an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma, a fraternity that also counts African heads of state?

Bill Clinton, the 42nd president, is an honorary Sigma. Scientist George Washington Carver and congressman John Lewis were brothers of the fraternity as well.

What name is given to the small outdoor campus spaces some Divine Nine chapters keep in place of fraternity houses?

Plots stand in for the traditional Greek houses that are rare among the council's members. Chapters that want houses point to funding as the main obstacle.

Sigma Gamma Rho, the only Divine Nine sorority born at a mostly white institution, began on which Midwestern campus?

Butler University is where the founders, all working educators, were taking courses in 1922. The sorority's Alpha chapter was chartered there in 1929.

Zeta Phi Beta became the first Greek-letter organization with a chapter in Africa by chartering one in which country?

Liberia's capital, Monrovia, received the chapter in 1948. The sorority has since spread to Europe, Asia and the Caribbean as well.

Zeta Phi Beta's Stork's Nest program, which promotes early prenatal care, is a partnership with which health charity?

March of Dimes and the sorority use incentives and education to encourage women to seek care within the first trimester of pregnancy.

Which biologist, the faculty adviser to three student founders, helped establish Omega Psi Phi in 1911?

Ernest Everett Just was approached by three students who wanted the first Black fraternity on their campus. The administration at first opposed the idea, fearing it could become a political threat.

Which student began recruiting classmates in 1907 for the sorority that became Alpha Kappa Alpha the following January?

Ethel Hedgeman Lyle was encouraged by a faculty member's stories of sorority life at another college. When she presented the plan that November, the administration approved it immediately.

Which author coined the phrase The Divine Nine as the title of a history of Black fraternities and sororities?

Lawrence Ross gave the council's members a lasting nickname with the book. The more formal label for them is Black Greek Letter Organizations, or BGLOs.

The National Pan-Hellenic Council, formed in Washington in 1930, was incorporated in 1937 under the laws of which state?

Illinois granted the charter in the same year that Sigma Gamma Rho became the eighth member. The council's founding chairman was Matthew W. Bullock.

Kappa Alpha Psi's national president, who appoints a leader for each of twelve provinces, holds which Greek title?

Grand Polemarch is the national title, and each regional leader is a Province Polemarch. The fraternity was first divided into districts in 1921.

Which name do Alpha Kappa Alpha, Zeta Phi Beta and Sigma Gamma Rho all give to their national conventions?

Boulé gatherings began early: Zeta Phi Beta held its first in December 1920, and Sigma Gamma Rho followed in 1925. Several Divine Nine fraternities meet in a Conclave instead.

Which 2017 Netflix drama follows fraternity pledges through Hell Week at a fictional Black university?

Burning Sands is set at the fictional Frederick Douglass University, where the pledges hope to join Lambda Lambda Phi. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Which creature from Greek mythology is the mascot of Iota Phi Theta, the fraternity founded in Baltimore in 1963?

Centaur imagery is so central that Centaurs is one of the nicknames for members, alongside Iotas and Outlaws.

Alpha Kappa Alpha member Katherine Johnson's work as a NASA mathematician was dramatized in which Oscar-nominated film?

Hidden Figures cast Taraji P. Henson as Johnson, an AKA who had graduated from college at 18 with degrees in mathematics and French.

Phi Beta Sigma member George Washington Carver did his famous crop research as a professor at which Alabama campus?

Tuskegee Institute is where Carver urged poor farmers to grow peanuts and sweet potatoes on soil worn out by repeated plantings of cotton.