The cold winds blowing through the campus of Howard University on January 15, 1908, could not diminish the warmth in the hearts of Anna Easter Brown, Beulah Elizabeth Burke, Lillie Burke, Margaret Flagg, Ethel Hedgeman, Marjorie Hill, Lavinia Norman, Lucy Diggs Slowe, and Marie Woolfolk. Their vision of an organization dedicated to cultural enrichment, scholarship, leadership, high ethical and moral values, “racial uplift” and interest in college life after graduation had come to fruition.
With permission from the administration of Howard University, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority became the first African-American Greek-letter organization for college-educated women in the United States. Affectionately referred to as “The Founders,” these nine women, who were privileged to the extent that circumstances allowed them to seek and obtain higher education, had planted the seeds for a sorority that today in 2025 claims over 360,000 members in graduate and undergraduate chapters throughout the United States, Virgin Islands, the Caribbean, Canada, Japan, Germany, Korea and the continent of Africa.​