Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Kappa Psi Omega’s 50th Anniversary: Profound Impact (Part 1 of 3)
Frances Huntley-Cooper (l-r), Gloria Ladson-Billings, Latise Brown and Leslie Petty [Not Pictured]: T.R. Williams
by Jonathan Gramling
Back on January 15, 1908, Ethel Hedgemon Lyle and eight other African American women founded Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority at Howard University in Washington, D.C. It was the first Black Greek letter organization in the country that was devoted to service. Through its now 1,120 undergraduate and graduate chapters, it shows that there is power in numbers. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., in the 2020s, set the Guinness World Record for preparing women’s hygiene kits.
And 68 years later, like the original chapter, Kappa Psi Omega was founded in Madison through a call for service. The undergrad chapter on the UW-Madison campus, Epsilon Delta, had been established in 1968 and needed to be mentored by a graduate chapter.
“We were having members of Alpha Kappa Alpha travel from the chapter in Milwaukee, Epsilon Kappa Omega, to supervise our undergrads here,” said Frances Huntley-Cooper, one of the founding members. “They, of course, were very happy that we were chartered. And if my memory serves me correctly, Barbara Archia had lived in Milwaukee a while before she came here. That was a way for her to ask, ‘What can we do?’She was such an amazing person. She had a social work background just like me. She was a social butterfly, so to speak. And she was just a nice person.”
Archia led the effort to found Kappa Psi Omega on May 15, 1976. Besides Archia and Huntley-Cooper, other familiar names were Alicia Allen, I. Lorraine Henderson, Velma Ritcherson, Darlene Hancock, Betty Rowe and Mary Wilburn — all successful African American women professionals at the time.
“Barbara Archia loved AKA,” Huntley-Cooper said. “She was in town. And anyone she saw who was a beautiful Black woman, she would say, ‘Are you an AKA?’ That’s how I got tapped to be a part of the chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. I didn’t know what a chartered chapter was. That was way above my pay scale. I just did what my elders — I was just 24-years-old at the time and most were older and already established in their careers — asked me to be a founding member.”
As the first Black Greek organization, the AKAs have a legacy that draws iots members to it.
“I joined because it was my destiny to do so,” said T.R. Williams who pledged in December 2024. “My mother is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. So is my sister. But beyond that being in my family and beyond that being something that I have always been around, AKAs spoke to me. There is something incredible about a group of women who — don’t check my math — roughly 43 years after Juneteenth decided to come together and create an organization that would replicate a network that was never designed for people who looked like me and lived in bodies like me. And that they have been doing so for over 100 years. That perpetuity, that legacy is something to be proud of. It is something that I wanted to be a part of. And it is something that I wanted to join because I believed even before I was a member, that character, that value that has been poured into me through my family, through my mother was one that connected me to the women of Alpha Kappa Alpha. And so when it came to pass, it was a moment where I was like, ‘Finally! It’s my turn!’”
Joining Alpha Kappa Alpha isn’t like paying your fee and joining a gym. There are strict protocols that potential members must meet and surpass in order to join.
“The difference between an undergraduate and graduate chapter is as an undergraduate, you make the overture,” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, a retired UW-Madison professor who joined and then left and then rejoined the chapter in 2008. “They will advertise that they are having a rush and so you get your transcripts and your letters of recommendation together and you show up for it. Graduate is by invitation only. So in the case of both Leslie and T.R., we asked them to come. Trust me, the undergraduates don’t ask you to come. You beg to come. ‘Please take me!’ The year that I was initiated, 100 women showed up to rush. They selected 21 of us.”
Sometimes, it also takes the luck of networking.
“I met Toya Johnson through her husband Michael,” Huntley-Cooper said. “Michael was at a meeting. And I had my phone out that said AKA. He said, ‘You’re an AKA? My wife is an AKA.’ He told me all about what she did. I said that we needed to get her because she would be a good member to join our chapter.”
For Latise Brown who grew up in Madison, but pledged at UW-Milwaukee, the Delta Iota chapter, before joining Kappa Psi Omega in 2015, has felt the AKA presence most of her life.
“In Milwaukee, joining was important because AKA always stood out to me,” Brown said. “There was no other organization that appealed to me or that I had any interest in in terms of sororities. And I just saw the ladies on the campus there. They were very active and professional for college students, doing a lot of great things. So they were very visible on the campus and it just immediately drew my attention. I actually always had some type of inspiration from Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority even when I was young and I didn’t fully understand it then. But it became more evident when I was in college that I had to do this.”
Leslie Petty, a dean at Madison College was almost lured into Kappa Psi Omega when she was asked to do a training for the executive committee.
“I never gave it any consideration, even as an undergraduate Petty said about becoming an AKA. “Being a part of those women of distinction just in that room, I had an opportunity to be in the presence of educated, wildly successful Black women. I did not know that even existed in Madison. I worked at a school where 90 percent of my colleagues were white middle-aged men. And so to have an opportunity to be in the presence of like-minded women was really appealing to me to join the organization. And of course, I did my own homework. I learned more about the organization. What really stood out were two elements of the organization. One was the sisterhood and the strong bond that is instilled in the members. The other one was service.”