National Pan-Hellenic Council (Divine Nine)
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50 free National Pan-Hellenic Council (Divine Nine) trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The National Pan-Hellenic Council is the umbrella body for the historically Black fraternities and sororities known as the Divine Nine. Its members were founded by students who were shut out of white Greek life in the early twentieth century, and they grew into some of the most influential networks in Black America, with alumni in Congress, the courts, the arts, science and sport. This quiz covers the council and every one of its member organizations: the campuses where they started, the colors, symbols, mottos and nicknames that members learn first, and the service projects that made their names. It also asks about step shows and other traditions, the films that put Black Greek life on screen, and the well-known people who pledged. The opening questions suit anyone curious about Black Greek life. Later ones are for members, aspirants and step-show regulars who know their founders and their history.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Five of the Divine Nine, and the council that unites them, were all founded on which historically Black campus?
Howard University
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.
Q 02Which politician joined Alpha Kappa Alpha as a college student before starting her career as a prosecutor?
Kamala Harris
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.
Q 03Alpha Phi Alpha led the decades-long drive to build a memorial in Washington to which of its own members?
Martin Luther King Jr.
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.
Q 04Delta Sigma Theta and Kappa Alpha Psi, 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. Kappa Alpha Psi brothers go as far as wrapping their step-show props in the same two shades.
Q 05Which pair of colors identifies Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first sorority founded by Black college women?
Salmon pink and apple green
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.
Q 06Which 1988 Spike Lee musical follows fraternity pledges and a campus step show during homecoming at a Black college?
School Daze
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.
Q 07Which 2007 dance film follows a student who pledges a fraternity at Truth University and competes in stepping contests?
Stomp the Yard
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.
Q 08Sigma Gamma Rho honorary member Hattie McDaniel won a historic Academy Award for which 1939 film?
Gone with the Wind
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.
Q 09Phi Beta Sigma member Huey P. Newton co-founded which revolutionary group in Oakland in 1966?
The Black Panther Party
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.
Q 10Omega Psi Phi member Carter G. Woodson created the 1926 week of study that grew into which annual observance?
Black History Month
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.
Q 11Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest of the Divine Nine, grew out of a 1905 study club on which New York campus?
Cornell University
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.
Q 12Kappa Alpha Psi brothers are famous for twirling and tapping which accessory in their step show routines?
Canes
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.
Q 13Omega Psi Phi member Ronald McNair, a physicist and astronaut, died in the 1986 loss of which Space Shuttle?
Challenger
Q 21Alpha Phi Alpha borrows its imagery from ancient Egypt and uses which monument as the fraternity's symbol?
The Great Sphinx
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.
Q 22Which plant emblem, recalling what the founders planted on campus in 1908, is the symbol of Alpha Kappa Alpha?
An ivy leaf
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.
Q 23Members of Kappa Alpha Psi, the fraternity founded by ten students in 1911, are popularly known by which nickname?
Nupes
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.
Q 14Jesse Owens was one of seven Alpha Phi Alpha men on the U.S. team at the 1936 Olympics in which city?
Berlin
Berlin was where Owens won four gold medals. Fellow Alphas on the team included Ralph Metcalfe, Archie Williams and John Woodruff.
Q 15Which Delta Sigma Theta member, who joined at Brooklyn College, became the first Black woman elected to Congress?
Shirley Chisholm
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.
Q 16Which Harlem Renaissance novelist and folklorist joined Zeta Phi Beta during her college years in Washington, D.C.?
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was the first in her family to attend college. While there she also co-founded the student newspaper, The Hilltop.
Q 17Which Harlem Renaissance poet joined Omega Psi Phi while studying at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania?
Langston Hughes
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.
Q 18Which basketball legend belongs to Omega Psi Phi, the fraternity of fellow NBA stars Shaquille O'Neal and Vince Carter?
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan joined through the fraternity's Omicron Alpha chapter. The Omega roll also includes Jesse Jackson and comedian Steve Harvey.
Q 19Whose 2018 Coachella headline show honored HBCU homecomings with a marching band, a step show and strolling pledges?
Beyoncé
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.
Q 20Alpha Kappa Alpha's twenty early members and Zeta Phi Beta's five founders are each remembered as which gems?
Pearls
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.
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.
Q 24Omega Psi Phi, founded by three students and a professor in 1911, has a motto calling what essential to the soul?
Friendship
Friendship is the heart of the Omega motto, while manhood, scholarship, perseverance and uplift are the fraternity's four cardinal principles.
Q 25Kappa Alpha Psi's motto urges members to pursue what in every field of human endeavor?
Achievement
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.
Q 26Weeks after their 1913 founding, members of Delta Sigma Theta marched in Washington for which cause?
Women's suffrage
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.
Q 27Which animals are Delta Sigma Theta's unofficial mascot, a nod to founder Florence Letcher Toms, who collected them?
Elephants
Elephants remain an unofficial favorite among Deltas, never a formal emblem. The sorority's official flower, by contrast, is the African violet.
Q 28Phi Beta Sigma and its sister sorority, Zeta Phi Beta, share blue and white colors and which bird as a mascot?
A dove
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.
Q 29Which dog breed is the official mascot of Sigma Gamma Rho, the sorority founded by seven educators in 1922?
Poodle
Poodle pride runs deep in the sorority: Pretty Poodles is one of the nicknames its members use for themselves.
Q 30Phi Beta Sigma member Kwame Nkrumah, initiated at Lincoln University in 1942, later led which country to independence?
Ghana
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.