|
It was an issue that threatened to completely destroy the initial organization. Immediately following an October 1912 meeting with the dissenters, and, armed with a renewed sense of what Greek life was all about, Nellie Quander, always committed to her initiation vows taken in 1910, sprang forth, and pursued with renewed vigor the first steps to have AKA chartered by Howard University and for legal incorporation under the laws of the District of Columbia. Working quickly and with malice towards none, she committed herself and others to get the job done before the dissidents could snatch the limelight by legally chartering their own organization, despite AKA's almost five year head start. In retrospect, Nellie Quander was the first to acknowledge and say so, now almost 100 years after this tumultuous incident, that two truly great organizations, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, a national service organization, have each sprung forth from one seed of intellectual foresight, and have each grown along side one another, to develop independently and to serve humankind more abundantly.
AKA was formally incorporated on January 29, 1913, as a perpetual body, with "power to organize, institute, and charter subordinate chapters whose particular purposes and objectives would be educational," and would "promote the intellectual standard and mutual uplift of its members." Nellie Quander authored the preamble to the constitution, which statement continues to well serve Alpha Kappa Alpha as it enters its second century. The first directorate included Nellie May Quander as "Basileus", a position which she held from 1913 until 1919, when she was succeeded by Dr. Loraine Richardson Green of Chicago, Illinois.
This group photograph was taken at the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in 1937,
in Washington, D.C. Pictured in the front row, fouth from the left is Ms. Mary Church Terrell, to her left Ms. Mary McLeod Bethune, to her left is Ms. Dorothy Height. Third from the right (standing) is Nellie May Quander.
Nellie Quander continued to work for its expansion and perpetuation, traveling to other colleges, selling the idea of AKA to the students and skeptical faculty and administration. The sorority grew slowly at first, partly handicapped by travel restrictions imposed by World War I, and the relatively small pool of African American women attending college at that time.
As AKA grew and became a national organization, she presided over the first two boules, one at Howard University in 1918, and the second one in Chicago, Illinois, in 1919. She retired from the position of "Supreme Basileus", as the title was then called, in 1919, surrendering the reins to Dr. Green, with all tributes to Nellie effusively extended for her nine years of dedicated, faithful, and comprehensive service.
Continue
|
