Happy june team and welcome to juneteenth and divine nine i’m rodney dawson curator of education with the greensboro history museum the divine nine a name that has gained recent popularity with one of its members occupying the white house i’m referring to a member of alpha kappa alpha sorority incorporated which was founded
In 1908 and she’s the current vice president of the united states kamala harris some might be surprised to know how many notable people belong to the divine nine you have martin luther king jr coretta scott king jesse jackson zora neal hurston shirley chisholm hattie mcdaniel johnny cochran emmitt smith congressman bobby rush and
Local favorites like justice henry fry shirley fry james b dudley recognize that name deadly panthers and former councilwoman katie dorsett greensboro’s first african-american mayor yvonne johnson and swann middle school you’re named after mel swann jr he’s a member of kappa alpha psi fraternity incorporated founded in 1911.
There are too many to name locally and nationally but today we’ll learn just a little bit more as we talk to local triad chapter representatives of the divine nine so sit back and tell a friend to check it out this is juneteenth and divine nine the national panhellenic council is the
Is comprised of the divine nine so you have all historically black greek letter organizations but here in guilford county we actually have 13 chapters that make up the guilford county panhellenic council and that will span from greensboro to high point so we have three aka chapters we have two zeta chapters
Two delta chapters two omega chapters and then sigma’s sigma gamma rho kappas try to make sure i’m not forgetting about it alphas it’s all one chapter that kind of services both high point and greensboro so what i really got from uh being in a black greek organization
Is that it is different than most other social organizations for reasons like the lifetime commitment and things of that nature but when it comes to the idea of improving oneself in order to improve the like the community at large i find that black greek organizations kind of specialize in that particular activity
Something that we’ve been fighting for for decades uh and you know that’s a whole part of why the pan hell came to to be in existence because we were not able to be a part of the white letter white greek letter organizations um the uh the nine organizat was
Eight and now it’s nine uh formed um that alliance so being in a black letter organization it’s a special thing the black greek d9 organization is a lifelong commitment with college chapters you have grad advisors and these advisors are in graduate chapters so for example for neuro on uncg’s campus
Bio beta iota omega is our grad chapter that oversees us there are multiple women who are in the organization of bio or that chapter and what happens is when you graduate you since you’re a lifelong member you need to start looking for those chapters looking what you want to do because it’s
Important to stay connected so i recently was on a call with bio and you have uh new members of that chapter who recently just graduated and you have women who have been in there and they’re 65 now 100 oh she just turned 105 too so it’s important to see that and realize that
These women are not going to give up on giving back to their communities giving back to students like us and pouring into us and helping us they always say we want to make sure that you guys are okay make sure you guys are mentally okay physically okay and they always push that lifelong
Membership because it’s important especially in this day and age with a lot of um things that are kind of you know against black students black people in corporate world you know it’s important to have that type of foundation it is a lifetime commitment and i’m also
A life member which we purchase a life membership as well so and um in all my years i’ve never not been financial so it is a life commitment and so i’ve been a member of delta sigma theta sorority incorporated for 25 years now and um there’s i knew from a little girl
That this is what i want to do i had influential women in my life who were deltas and i saw how they lived in such a way in their commitment to community service and scholarship and so i always knew that was something that i wanted to be a part of and
I’m continuing that lifelong commitment through community service and i currently work in education and also participate in the activities and projects that my current chapter is a part of and i’m also passing that on to my daughter community conscious action-oriented organization and so that alone you know you have a group of
People supporting you and rooting for you throughout everything and so like she was mentioning you’re graduating after undergrad you’re going to have to find that grad chapter and you know wherever you go you’re going to have that community those group of people the group of women looking for you and rooting for you
Um because as we know things are not set up for us all the time but that’s what your fraternity your sororities for is bringing us together knowing that people are rooting for you like my sword said i have my sister’s vet feel the same way i feel like the
Lifelong commitment to the organization is definitely important a lot of times when people are joining organizations they may feel like it just may change their undergraduate experience but like just going through and joining different organizations i really realize the importance of what ronnie said just giving back to the
Organization and being in a position to where like uh margaritas say you can just leverage all your own brothers and sisters so not just in your specific organization but all greek organizations i feel like so just seeing you know the the community that we have and the network that we’ve
Built within each other is crazy for us so i’m just appreciative just to be a part of something bigger than myself as you see it takes a lifelong commitment the divine nine has become almost a culture unto itself with chapters spanning the globe but plenty here in guilford county
And guilford county natives who joined divine nine organizations have helped shape our society to this day because service is essential to each organization i mentioned the many public servants that have served as council men and women mayor educators you can go to any school and you’ll find someone representing the
D9 so it made sense to ask our participants about how the divine nine contributes to social justice causes kids the social injustice is going on locally and even nationally it’s important that the delta sigma sigma chapter we have engaged as much as possible through social platforms um having panel discussions
Participating in panel discussions through other d9 organizations even from our national platform making sure that we are engaged with politicians legislation um making sure that we are in the know of what the movement is for example even the census um how important that is for social action
And when we do see those injustices whether they’re local um or across the country we do take a a stand from a national perspective so we follow that lead it plays a role not just in the local level but at our national level social justice has played a role because even though
You had the passage of legislation going back to the emancipation proclamation to the civil rights act of 1964 and and subsequent legal acts attitudes are what has to change and so it’s important uh as women of alpha kappa alpha that we continue to raise awareness not only to equality
To call out injustices as we have them in our community and also to get out there and to be involved it’s more than just watching a tv it means active activism um when you talk about it you think about juneteenth for example it was more than freedom you have to
Also work to protect those rights that come with the freedom there are people who died and gave their livelihood so that we could vote so that we could sit in the same classrooms so that uh we could live where we wanted to live and so we owe it to ourselves to continue
To perpetuate and make sure that generations to come have access to those same uh rights and privileges that every american should have regardless of gender or culture we’re saying when you think about our organization make yourself opportunity to corporate you got to think about you know those that came before us like
Brother jesse jackson um but you also got to think about like the cardinal principles of college principles one of them’s perseverance and when you’re going through when you think about social justice you see it’s a continuous fight it’s not something that you just see back in the day in the 60s
It’s not something you just see in the 80s or the 70s we’re fighting it literally every year um last year you know i’m out there marching just like my ancestors would you know what i’m saying so you just have to keep on keeping all that we can’t stop this fight not over
Just because uh you know somebody got convicted of one murder you know i’m saying i have a target on my back just like he did i was just another man who was just wasn’t in the right place at the right time but we have to keep going we have
To keep persevering and you know use our organization as a platform to continue to get our community together on these um issues because the fight not over it’s it’s far from over but you know if we keep coming together as a people you know what i’m saying we have people like
Um kamala harris in the white house we have people out here voting we have mandated programs like within um in the naacp and our voter registration you know out here doing things like that so if we just keep on persevering you know a change will come i can’t think about social justice without
Thinking about the founders of delta sigma theta who participated in the women’s suffrage march in 1913 and how that legacy continues on to this day greensboro alumni has a very very active social action committee so we are participating in partnering with other organizations rallies forums workshops seminars showing our support fighting for advocacy
Delta days at the general assembly we just finished delta days at the nation’s capital so fighting for justice and fighting for equity for all so that’s always been at the forefront of what we do think about some of the strides that some of our former members have made in the past
You know such as uh ralph avernet was one that always kind of stood out to me i learned about who he was before i found out he was a new um the things he did with martin luther king you know with the uh the sj and cc music sc student non-coordinator
Um strides they made and things they did to you know get our people things that we needed back then and even how a lot of those things still you know are being done today this next topic kind of took me by surprise it elicited emotion when i
Asked many of the participants about it i’m talking about the singing of the hymn for each d9 organization originally i thought this would only be a blip in this documentary but surprisingly we ended up devoting more time to it because i saw how much it meant to everyone made me appreciate
My hymn even the more uh as corny as this may sound man when i’m singing it the founders are right beside me they’re right beside me because you know with ours you know the founders of our wondrous band and numbers there were three so it’s you know the three of them and i
Think about what was it like for a person of color black man in 1914 you know i i think about that and i think about just jim crowism and just all of the things that we have overcome and all of us are still standing there are nine greek letter organizations in the pan
Hell we’re still standing from but i think it’s more or less just a feeling of us you know and not a whole lot you know we might not be a lot of great singers within it but you know it’s just everybody coming together to sing a song and
You know feeling that pride um looking around you better not mess it up especially if we’re at a national or regional conference and you have a room of almost 10 000 sorority members um just that i sort of get goosebumps kind of say just know that we’re all sisters and we’re
We’re forming a united front and we’re holding hands and everyone knows all of the lyrics that him and we’re all in sync yeah i i i get misty every time i and i and every time i sing it you know i’m looking up in the sky i mean that’s my moment
That’s my moment because it’s personal it’s definitely powerful it’s like you feel it in your heart like you sing from your diaphragm if you are a singer but you think about when we were laughing i thought about ours and with the smile the smile when we help each other
For we know there is no other like our sisterhood alpha kappa alpha the meaning of it and it takes you back to the reason you wanted to be a part of the organization why you are a part why you serve and why you’re committed to the organization
Yeah so when singing to him it just depends on obviously the occasion so you know if it just obviously it’ll take a different tune if someone passes or you know new members being initiated things like that but the emotions that you feel is something that i’m not able to
Describe it just makes me feel closer to all my other swords and my sisters and brings a sense of calm and peace um because you know you all are singing as hammy you know you know the meaning of it so it definitely brings a calm and a sense of togetherness
And collectiveness that’s what i was saying when we sing our hymn it is such a solemn reminder of why we became women of alpha kappa alpha oh my goodness it it’s almost indescribable i mean just you know the feeling that you have um we have um a hymn that we sing when um
Someone gets a sore gets married um sweetheart song and it it’s just you know you’ll see tears and it’s just really emotional and you know just the feeling that you have when you sing some of those songs and hymns but when you’re saying to him that’s the song
That every other iota has sung from the founders all the way to now and the song that brothers were saying as you know years and years to come you know so that that song is just a song that everybody has sung and it just binds you
You know that makes you it’s like put you in touch with all those founders that are no longer here or all the brothers that have you know passed through the years and for me the him whenever we’re singing it it’s always like a meaningful event or something going on whether that
Be your founders day or like um she said initiation so i know for me singing it i was crying at initiation because i was just like wow i’m really a member of this illustrious sisterhood like something that like no one can take away from me
So for each of us i know for sure when you hear it every time you’re like i get it because when i was an undergrad i was just like okay i’m just gonna sing but over the years it’s like i get it i get why i sing this but to sing our hymn
As one voice regardless of chapter regardless of whether you were in there for 50 years or 50 minutes as a member it is overwhelming and by the end of the ceremony we were all moved to tears and even talking about it and reflecting upon it it’s emotional
To be able to stand in a circle with my sorority sisters and talk about struggling through the ears to capture a vision fair it’s overwhelming for me it’s like kind of personal whatever i’m going through because i went through so much to get to where i am now
Um i’ll say it is different for me because i didn’t get the chance to like kind of because i crossed in this pandemic so i didn’t really get a chance to do all that but i would say it’s meaningful because i know what me and my lbs went through to get to
Where we are now and make it made us closer and also my profiles as well um it just brings us closer as a whole and that’s what i said especially when you have those like former music teachers in your chapter and and you know when i learned it it
Was an older sorority sister who was at that piano at our zeta center and was like in a five six sec i knew i was supposed to sit up so i think about her a lot so i just think that she watching me low-key i think now you can get a better
Understanding of what i meant when i talked about how important the singing of the hymn can be in a member’s life it’s a time to reflect you can individualize yourself within a large group and also put yourself in the place same place that the founders found themselves
When you’re singing to him so i thought that was a touching moment uh let’s go on to something fun not that the hymn can’t be fun but you know how every song has a hook the hook is designed to capture your interest and often is the most memorable part of
The song but the hook can often convey an important message i liken this next topic to the hook stepping stepping in fraternities and sororities has long been awaited to convey a message communicate entertain and hook an audience stepping has deep cultural roots as well it lets you know
That this is my organization that i’ve worked so hard to become a member of and stylistically says here we are to communicate so they had to come up with other forms and so they started eating their chest their arms and that’s how it got started so i mean it’s still
Even today as a form of us communicating as a form of fellowshipping and uh you know never too old to step and y’all can get taken well like they’re saying stepping is not done as much anymore we do strolling um usually we do have different we have a song that we all
Have different strolls too um so that’s something we’ll all be doing like all different organizations be doing at once but everybody’s doing a different motion movement we do that just to you know provide entertainment and you know just to have a little bit of fun um but yeah not as much stephanie
You know we usually do like a stepping video with our uh mad estate director that was something we did but it’s not done as much well i’m from connecticut so divine nine was not really introduced to me until i watched like jumble on and stop there and i’m like
Okay what are they doing so you have to realize like when you’re strolling or stepping in a public setting it might be the first time that people are going to interact with this organization so you know you want to bring your best self you want to look clean you want to
Make sure that you’re doing everything that you’re supposed to be doing and then be prideful this is your organization like you work to get here you want to learn the information you know just show show out basically as much more stepping out as he did back in the day i was just more
Um kind of time um but i would say like the people that prosper for me like older guys they they i would say they appreciate stepping a lot because that’s what they that’s what they were brought up stephanie’s basically paying homage to our organizations as a whole like that’s something that we’ve
Been doing you know even i don’t want to say like dating back to sleep like that’s how we communicated to it to each other so that’s something that we do more modernly we do strolling um more like social gathering that’s what we do basically like pay homage to our chapters to
Our founders and just like this is what we’ve been doing the strolling is more of kind of the um it’s just like what it says it’s a stroll through where stepping is more um synchronized it’s more formation um but strolling you do have the um the formation but um you
Kind of pay tribute a little bit more to the other orgs in your strolling um so that’s a little bit it’s a little more uh less aggressive if you will with omega staff opportunity incorporated lee uh hop you know step but the the origins for all of that um i believe it
You can trace it back to africa a lot of the tribes would have their you know specific um dance or tribal dance that’s the way you can recognize that certain tribe similar to the divine nine you know you see uh the different fraternity sororities they may do certain acts when they’re
Out in public that lets you know you recognize oh yeah this is or makes that fun oh yeah this is capital design it doesn’t see what they have for uh things like that so one way to recognize a member of omega size 5 aka qq aka q dog is to play this song
Atomic dog by george clinton play this anyway and you’ll see the hues hopping george clinton by the way he’s also a member of omega sci-fi incorporated Regarding black greek letter organizations we have talked about lifelong commitment singing organizational hymns and just now stepping now we’ll highlight family ties in many homes and families black greek letter organizations have a major footprint my mother my cousins my wife and minnie and her family are denied members
And most intend to pass the legacy on to other family members it’s a very special thing so we’ll take this last little bit of time to have our participants speak on it is that a father’s pride when his son first of all accomplishes something that means so much to him let’s forget
About the fraternities for a minute and sororities but when a parent sees a child accomplished something that they’ve really really focused on and worked so hard for for so long first of all that pride swells up so much in you that you feel like you converse
And if it happens to be in this case me being one of the initial i want to say founders because it’s kind of different but one of the initial members of kappa alpha psi at unc greensboro and have my son cross into the same chapter
I mean i i exposed her to it slowly but you know for her birthday i got her a t-shirt and anybody antique can appreciate that it said alchemy with the year i would think she would pledge like spring of 2020 or 2000 excuse me 33. so
You know she wears it she doesn’t fully understand but at the same time though i’m trying to expose her to these things to appreciate it my great-grandmother was initiated into the gamma raw omega chapter in jacksonville florida in 1945 and my mother was initiated into the iowa lambda chapter
In 1988 and i was pinned in the alpha phi chapter in 2020 so being able to continue a family legacy for that long was an amazing feeling my mom actually pinned me with my great-grandmother’s pen it’s something that she keeps near and dear to her heart
Since she is going from us but my mom cried she cried and she cried she cried because it was something like the pandemic i wasn’t even sure if i would be able to accomplish so just for her to be able to see something that i had wanted for so long
Was an amazing feeling you see you really don’t have the words to describe what that feeling is like my daughter joined delta in the same chapter where i was initiated and that feeling of putting my pen on her that day is indescribable it’s just amazing and to think that your children have been
Watching you and watching other deltas in the community and they want to emulate that i mean that’s just a great sense of pride that you can’t put a price tag on so i’m very proud of that and then i have a son who is a member of omega sci-fi so my mother-in-law
Charter member of zeta phi beta nephew capital we’ve got the whole pan in the best family juneteenth in divine nine i asked the current president of the guilford county panhellenic council ashley jones to close us out by requesting that she made one last closing remark about how people can best support the
Guilford county panhellenic council and appropriately civic engagement was foremost on her mind makes sense because that is one thing amongst many but one thing the entire divine nine has in common service I think in current times right now my plea would be to get individuals out registered to vote and actually votes come election day we have seen over the last few years what voting has helped us and where voting has not helped us and in order for us i believe to be
Progressive and to go further and do better we need to have our population our community out there in actually voting so i would hope that anybody that’s not registered to vote would take the time to register to vote or take somebody especially those undergraduate students that might have just graduated high school
First year in college they don’t know anything they’re moving to a new state take a young person and help them get registered to vote and then even take them to the polls on election you
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