Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Kappa Psi Omega’s 50th Anniversary: Profound Impact (Part 3 of 3)
Frances Huntley-Cooper (l-r), Gloria Ladson-Billings, Latise Brown and Leslie Petty. Not Pictured: T.R. William
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.
And 68 years later, like the original chapter, Kappa Psi Omega was founded in Madison on May 15, 1976 through a call for service to mentor the UW-Madison undergraduate chapter, Epsilon Delta. And Kappa Psi Omega has been about service ever since.
For Latise Brown, Kappa Psi Omega’s legacy is their positive mark on people’s lives over the past 50 years.
“The programs that we implement locally are our legacy,” Brown said. “They are all international programs that have to be implemented locally. So the programs that we have implemented locally here in Madison have had lasting impacts. We’ve had a major health initiative Walk It Out that we had for over a decade that focused on different aspects of health awareness. It was an annual event which was a major community event. In addition, we’ve had numerous mentor programs on the elementary, middle and high school levels. That’s had a long-lasting impact where they may have never seen professional Black women and to have those one-on-one relationships and to be introduced to sororities and that they can go on to college and have those aspirations, those are definitely long-lasting impacts. In addition to getting those scholarships, they can know how to get those scholarships and we have created those pathways as well. And again as Leslie said, the childhood hunger initiative, but we have also been a part of the Divine Nine Mt. Zion food drive, which has been an annual event for over 20 years. All of the Divine Nine organizations donate food for the Mt. Zion Food Pantry. Those initiatives, those programs are helping families in need and helping students. Those are lasting major impacts that we’ve had here in the Madison community.”
For T.R. Williams, the legacy is reflected in who Kappa Psi Omega is and how they carry themselves in the community.
“I think the legacy of Kappa Psi Omega as we celebrate our 50th Anniversary is probably the consistency of excellence and the efficiency of organizing,” Williams said. “Even when I was here as a law student and my sister went to UW-Madison as an undergrad and pledged Epsilon Delta, all of the programs that you have mentioned, I heard about them them in New York and there was a whole culture around it. And when it came time for when the community needs help, it was known that you could come to this chapter and they would be that help. And they could organize quickly. There’s a phone call and an email and all of a sudden, you have an entire program put together.”
Leslie Perry also feels that the reputation of Kappa Psi Omega precedes it.
“I would say that the legacy of Kappa Psi Omega after 50 years is we are essentially brand awareness in your community, realizing that there are other sororities and fraternities that are also in this community,” Perry said. “But this is the organization that has been around the longest. We are the first and we are the finest. The legacy of Kappa Psi Omega is really its small membership that is making just significant and high impact in our community. How we follow the initiatives and the projects that are developed through the international administration, they are applied here where the membership, probably 45-55 members, are boots on the ground and we take advantage of our resources, human, financial and in-kind. We are women who understand that if we don’t take care of our community members who are in need and don’t have a voice in our community, we can’t allow nothing to happen. We are a chapter who answer the call when there is a need in our community.”
And in Gloria Ladson-Billings’ view, the legacy is imbued in the relationships and memolrikes that the members carry with them through life.
“If someone is an AKA and they don’t known anyone because they just moved here to take a job, they will reach out to me because the website lists me as the membership chair,” Ladson-Billings said. “They will say, ‘I am new to Madison. I am a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, can you tell me how I can get connected. In fact, I went to breakfast last Sunday in Washington, D.C. with Soror Caroline Lang who was only here for a year, but she reached out right away and said, ‘I’m an AKA. I’m a member of the D.C. chapter, but I am moving to Madison.’ So it’s that network that I think is really important. We’re also an interesting chapter in that a number of our members move away. Madison is a transient place. They move away, but they don’t want to move away from us. And so they will maintain their membership with us even though there probably is a chapter where they live.”
Frances Huntley-Cooper, one of the charter members, reinforced what Ladson-Billings said.
“Tracey Lewis Williams’ husband worked at the university,” Huntley-Cooper said. “I was there for an event with my grandson during the summer. He was walking around with his Alpha Kappa Alpha t-shirt. He had already spoken with Gloria, but he spoke to me and after that, before you know, Tracey was in our chapter. She has been in our chapter 10 years or longer. She now lives in Illinois. Her residency is not in Wisconsin. But she comes back and forth. She has leadership roles. She works. So we love to have those kinds of members who have come and helped us because they have more opportunities to see things than we do here. But having her as a leader in our chapter as been really great.”
Huntley-Cooper feels that the first 50 years have been great. But this is no time for Kappa Psi Omega to rest on its laurels.
“I just want to say that what I hope we’ve accomplished in our first 50 years that we continue to do better and expand the size of our chapter, the enthusiasm, the energy,” Huntley-Cooper said. “And one of the things that will help us will be partnerships. We need to continue the partnerships that we have had over the years from the media to the businesses. We couldn’t do it alone. And I think that is something that we know is going to be hard with our current national president. But we won’t give up because Alpha Kappa Alpha has been here. My husband is from Mt. Bayou, Mississippi. We had our health project there way back in the 1920s and 1930s. We have been there at the forefront of a lot of issues. And I hope that we continue. We might be small, but we are very mighty.”
Perhaps it is the character and the values of the members of Kappa Psi Omega, people like the late Theresa Sanders who organized Men Who Cook for over 25 years, that is its legacy. For the members coming up, there is a lot of legacy to build on. And there is a lot of legacy yet to be realized.
