The Divine Nine: Black Sororities and Fraternities
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50 free The Divine Nine: Black Sororities and Fraternities trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The nine historically Black sororities and fraternities known as the Divine Nine were born on college campuses between 1906 and 1963, when Black students had few places on campus to call their own. Membership lasts for life, and the rolls include civil rights leaders, lawyers, scientists, writers, athletes and entertainers. This quiz covers all nine organizations: where and how each one began, the colors, symbols and mascots members wear with pride, the traditions on show at homecoming, and the famous names who pledged. It also touches on the films and performances that put Black Greek life on screen. It is written for members and alumni, for students at HBCUs and beyond, and for anyone curious about a tradition woven through Black American history. The questions run from easy openers to a few that will test a longtime member, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Alpha Kappa Alpha member rose from California attorney general to the U.S. Senate and then the vice presidency?
Kamala Harris
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.
Q 02Which percussive dance of footwork, hand claps and spoken word was popularized by Black fraternities and sororities?
Stepping
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.
Q 03Which university, nicknamed the Mecca, is the founding site of five of the nine Divine Nine fraternities and sororities?
Howard
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.
Q 04Which civil rights leader joined Alpha Phi Alpha in 1952 while completing his doctorate at Boston University?
Martin Luther King Jr.
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.
Q 05Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest Black sorority, are known for wearing which pair of official colors?
Pink and green
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.
Q 06Which singer's 2018 Coachella set honored Black Greek life and HBCU culture with a marching band and strolling pledges?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé, the first Black woman to headline Coachella, performed in a yellow sweatshirt bearing the Greek letters of an invented group, Beta Delta Kappa.
Q 07Which 2007 film follows a Los Angeles street dancer who pledges a fraternity at a fictional Black university in Atlanta?
Stomp the Yard
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.
Q 08Which Delta Sigma Theta member from Brooklyn became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968?
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Chisholm joined the sorority at Brooklyn College. In 1972 she became the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination.
Q 09The seven women who founded Sigma Gamma Rho in 1922 all worked in which profession?
Teaching
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.
Q 10Which astronaut, an honorary Alpha Kappa Alpha member, carried the sorority's banner aboard a 1992 space shuttle flight?
Mae Jemison
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.
Q 11Which historian and Omega Psi Phi member launched the 1926 Negro History Week that grew into Black History Month?
Carter G. Woodson
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.
Q 12Which honorary Sigma Gamma Rho member was the first Black performer to win an Academy Award, back in 1940?
Hattie McDaniel
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.
Q 13Which Hall of Fame center joined Omega Psi Phi while studying business at Louisiana State University?
Q 21Kappa Alpha Psi and Delta Sigma Theta, founded two years apart, share which pair of official colors?
Crimson and cream
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.
Q 22Kappa Alpha Psi members are famous for twirling and tapping which accessory in their choreographed routines?
Canes
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.
Q 23In 1948 Zeta Phi Beta became the first Greek-letter organization to charter a chapter in Africa, in which country?
Liberia
Shaquille O'Neal
Shaquille O'Neal joined the fraternity's Theta Kappa chapter at LSU, where he was a two-time All-American before turning professional.
Q 14Which Harlem Renaissance novelist and folklorist, a Zeta Phi Beta member, co-founded her university's student newspaper?
Zora Neale Hurston
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.
Q 15Which Alpha Phi Alpha member led the NAACP legal team that won Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall had already won Murray v. Pearson in 1935, a discrimination case against a university that Alpha Phi Alpha itself initiated.
Q 16Which umbrella body, formed in 1930, coordinates the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities?
National Pan-Hellenic Council
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.
Q 17Delta 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
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.
Q 18Alpha Kappa Alpha's official symbol, which also names the sorority's magazine, is the leaf of which plant?
Ivy
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.
Q 19Which 1988 Spike Lee musical pits the pledges of Gamma Phi Gamma against campus activists at a Black college?
School Daze
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.
Q 20Alpha Phi Alpha grew out of a 1905 literary club for Black students at which university in upstate New York?
Cornell
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.
Liberia's capital, Monrovia, hosted that first chapter on the continent. The sorority has since spread to Europe, Asia and the Caribbean as well.
Q 24Which tennis champion pledged Kappa Alpha Psi at UCLA, years before winning the Wimbledon singles title in 1975?
Arthur Ashe
Arthur Ashe joined the fraternity's Upsilon chapter at UCLA, the same chapter that initiated attorney Johnnie Cochran.
Q 25Which Alpha Kappa Alpha member calculated trajectories for the Mercury flights of Alan Shepard and John Glenn?
Katherine Johnson
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.
Q 26Which Phi Beta Sigma member spoke at the 1963 March on Washington as the chairman of SNCC?
John Lewis
John Lewis shared the day with a fraternity brother: A. Philip Randolph, another Phi Beta Sigma member, was the march's key organizer.
Q 27Which Tuskegee agricultural scientist, a Phi Beta Sigma brother, addressed the fraternity's 1930 conclave in Alabama?
George Washington Carver
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.
Q 28Many Omega Psi Phi members follow which tradition, wearing the fraternity's Greek letters on their skin with pride?
Branding
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.
Q 29Which animal do many Delta Sigma Theta members adopt as an unofficial mascot, honoring a founder who collected them?
Elephant
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.
Q 30Which Harlem Renaissance poet joined Omega Psi Phi while studying at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania?
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was a published poet before he left campus: his first collection, The Weary Blues, appeared in 1926, three years before he graduated.