Records of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Alpha Theta Omega Chapter, Raleigh, NC.

Top left image: The oldest document present in the Alpha Theta Omega records is a handwritten history of the chapter, written in 1936, eight years after the first initiation of members. It lists in detail all the charter members, pledges, and officers for the first years of the chapter, and describes their activities.- “Soror Helen Davis. She had a vision of this Chapter in Raleigh and therefore it existed. -1928-1936: The History of the Alpha Theta Omega Chapter of A.K.A.”

Top right image: Program, “Sixth Annual Regional of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, April 9, through 11, 1937, Alpha Theta Omega Chapter, Hostess, Raleigh, N.C." - This program belonged to Ruth P. Pope, who is documented in the chapter history as pledging in 1931.

Bottom left image: Page from the 1958-1972 scrapbook. captions on the page images reads “AKA Debs entertain Dorothea Dix Patients, April 25, 1970” and “Woman of the Year, 1970”.

Right bottom image: “National Honor Society Members of Ligon High School and Greeks Render Volunteer Service to Gravely Sanitarium, February 26, 1970.”
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NOTE: This post contains a blog post by the State of NC Archives. We did not include all the photographs from the blog post, but we have included a link at the end of our post.
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Records of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Alpha Theta Omega Chapter (Raleigh, NC)

Published February 29, 2024 by Lauren McCoy
This post was written by Elizabeth Bates, Organizational Records Archivist.

As we head from Black History Month towards Women’s History Month, I’d like to share one of our collections of organization records, the records of Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), Alpha Theta Omega Chapter (call number ORG.5).

AKA was established in 1908 (at Howard University) and is recognized as America’s first African American Greek-letter (sorority) society.
You can read more about AKA’s records in the State Archives of North Carolina Catalog, and in our previous blog post from 2021.

Today, I’ll be giving you a close look at some of the very earliest records from the collection.

The oldest document present in the Alpha Theta Omega records is a handwritten history of the chapter, written in 1936, eight years after the first initiation of members. (Top left image)
It lists in detail all the charter members, pledges, and officers for the first years of the chapter, and describes their activities.

Here are some transcribed excerpts:

"Sorors of the A.K.A. Sorority, Greetings to our fifth Founders Day Program and the Eighth Year of the founding of this chapter. Let us turn back the pages of history to June 23, 1928 when a group of eight women were initiated into the A.K.A. by Soror Vivian Mason of Norfolk, Va. We do not owe our existence to someone unknown to us this evening, but to one that all of us know, Soror Helen Davis. She had a vision of this Chapter in Raleigh and therefore it existed. She felt that we would uphold the principles of the sorority upon which it was founded, so she had faith in us. Have we done our best? I shall let you answer that.

Our charter members were Sorors Sara Cochran who is now in Nashville, Tenn., Soror Eloise Cooke, deceased, Helen B. Davis, founder and first president, Armand Jones who is West, Ethel Lexing our first Tamiouchous, Ella Ryalls, who is in St. Augustine Fla., Minnie Turner our first Epistoleus, now in Winston Salem, Susie Vick Perry our first Grammateus and Celia Northam. We at that time had great plans and were ready to do something worthwhile. We all looked to Soror Davis for information and instruction for it was quite new to all of us. We adopted our constitution, set a regular time for meetings, made a budget which amounted to $7.00 per capita, selected the reporters to the Ivy Leaf and decided on pledgees.

…Our activities have been varied many during the years. Three teas have been given, dinners, card parties, showers for brides (elect Soros) public programs, baby contests, dances both public and private, radio talks on Vocational Guidance, …a definite effort to get a chapter at Shaw University, giving of three scholarships and [a] loan fund, two contributions to Shaw University of $25 and $70 each, creative dance programs, gifts of food on Thanksgiving, books to the library, etc."
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The 1938 update to the history kept very close to the original text, and added to the conclusion:

"Our ten years have not been fruitless, but there is still much to do. We must still keep before us the Ivy which “pushes the clods of earth aside”. We must lift others as we go, work diligently, render service which is unselfish, helpful, sympathetic, industrious, honorable, and we shall be supremely happy in working for A.K.A."
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Another notable document from the very earliest years of the chapter is this program (Top right image) from the Sixth Annual Regional Meeting of Alpha Kappa Alpha, hosted in Raleigh by the Alpha Theta Omega Chapter in April 1937.

Though fragile and faded with time, you can still see the ivy green and pink colors of the cover and pages, and the pin attached to the cover.

This program belonged to Ruth P. Pope, who is documented in the chapter history as pledging in 1931. She kept note of the names and chapters of other attendees inside the back cover.

Her list includes AKA members from Wilmington, Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and out-of-state visitors from Richmond Virginia, Petersburg, Virginia, and Cleveland Ohio. Listed at the very top is Anna Easter Brown, of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, who was one of nine founding members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Howard University.
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Besides the 8 boxes of documents and photographs, the bulk of the records by volume is made up of 46 scrapbooks that meticulously document chapter activities. The earliest (and largest) of these covers the years 1958 through 1972, and records chapter activities through photographs, newspaper clippings, and other documents. Many pages are decorated with Alpha Kappa Alpha’s ivy leaf.

Each page of this scrapbook is 20 by 24 inches. At some point the pages were removed from their binding so that they can be handled individually without tearing. The large scale makes photographing the pages a bit of a challenge – for wide shots I had to stand on a chair.

Scrapbooks pose unique preservation challenges: the bindings of volumes can become fragile or detach, adhesives can discolor or start to fail over time, pages laden with many photographs may tear, and newspaper clippings will cause discoloration due to their inherent acidity. It’s important to maintain the deliberate arrangement of the photographs, clippings, and documents within a scrapbook.

We preserve the pages of this one in an archival box in which it perfectly fits and interleave pieces of acid-free tissue paper between the pages to prevent photographs from catching and tearing, as well as to mitigate further acid migration.

These few items are just the earliest records of the chapter, but the collection holds much more. The Raleigh Chapter is still active – and they regularly contribute current records to the archives. In 2028, Alpha Theta Omega will celebrate a full century since their charter.
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Source: State of NC Archives - Blog post was written by Elizabeth Bates, Organizational Records Archivist - Published February 29, 2024 by Lauren McCoy
Source link: https://ncarchives.wpcomstaging.com/.../records-of.../...
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