AKA’s Alpha chapter celebrates 100 years
By Karen Juanita Carrillo

The African-American Greek letter sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha is celebrating its centennial in the year 2008. 

The organization’s year of remembrances kicked off this past January 12-15 with commemorations at Washington, D.C.’s Howard University.  It will include several more events this summer when the organization holds its 63rd biennial Boulé in D.C. from July 11 to 18, 2008.

Some 1500 members of AKA traveled from across the nation to take part in the January centennial events.  One of the most notable attendees was probably 103-year old Hazel Hainsworth Young, the sorority’s oldest active member. 

During their pilgrimage to Howard, sorority members attended special events, some of which included book donations to the D.C.-based Middle School for Mathematics and Science and to the Asbury Dwelling for Senior Citizens.  Sorority sisters said that since it was their birthday – to keep within the spirit of their stated mission of serving others – they wanted to give away gifts to others.  In that spirit, AKA members gave Howard University a donation of $1 million.

The $1 million, along with a digitized, fully searchable version of 86 years of AKA’s official magazine, the Ivy Leaf, are meant to aid Howard’s technological advances. “If we don’t preserve our heritage,” the sorority’s International President Barbara A. McKinzie stated as she presented the million-dollar check, “no one else will.  In the interest of safeguarding our legacy, we’re more than happy to give $1 million this day.”

AKA Centennial birthday cake
(Karen Juanita Carrillo photo 2008)

Other organizations have also taken note of AKA’s longevity.  Representatives of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, an organization that was created by AKA members who broke from Alpha Kappa Alpha, were on hand to celebrate and congratulate Alpha Kappa Alpha during the celebrations. Rev. Calvin O. Butts of New York’s Abyssinian Baptist church spoke during the Sunday service for the sorority at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel. Darryl Matthews, the general president of Alpha Phi Alpha, the nations oldest African American fraternity – who also serves as chair of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) – read a letter of congratulations to the sorority during their gala event. In Congress, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee and Senator Hillary Clinton are due to pass legislation honoring the sorority.  And Mattel Inc. has been granted permission to issue a special collectible edition of Barbie with the pink and green colors of AKA.

Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first college-educated, majority African-American sorority to mark a centennial year in the United States, was established at Howard in 1908.  The nine young women who founded the first AKA chapter – the Alpha chapter – created it as a sorority that they hoped would make the dedication of “service to all mankind” the sorority’s main mission.

“When AKA was created, women did not even have the right to vote,” noted one of the sororities’ past presidents, Faye Bryant.  “But AKA sorors prevailed anyway.”