Leave a Comment »The year was 1912 when twenty two African American women came together on the campus of Howard University to start Delta Sigma Theta, a sorority dedicated to serving others. By then, over 5000 African Americans had been lynched, with sixty-one being lynched in that year alone. The National Urban League was started the year before 1912, and the NAACP started three years before that. In 1912, segregation was legal in the United States, and the great migration of Southern African Americans to the north with hopes of living a better life had began. By the time our founders stood on the steps of Howard University in 1913 to pose for the infamous Founder’s Day picture, Harriet Tubman was in her final days — she died on March 10, 1913 — while Rosa Parks had yet to be born.
Two months after posing for the infamous founder’s day picture, our sorors participated in the Women’s Suffrage march that occurred on a rainy day in Washington, D.C., in March of 1913. But because of the legalized Jim Crow laws in place at that time, our founders were required to march at the very back of the line.
