Alpha Kappa Alpha is the first Greek-lettered sorority established and
incorporated by African American college women. The sorority was founded on
January 15, 1908, at Howard University in Washington, D.C. by a group of
nine students, led by Ethel Hedgeman Lyle. Forming a sorority broke barriers
for African-American women in areas where little power or authority existed
due to a lack of opportunities for minorities and women in the early
twentieth century. Alpha Kappa Alpha was incorporated on January 29, 1913.
Consisting of college-educated women of African, Caucasian, Asian, and
Hispanic descent, the sorority serves through a membership of more than
200,000 women in over 975 chapters in the United States and several other
countries. Since being founded over a century ago, Alpha Kappa Alpha has
helped to improve social and economic conditions through community service
programs. Members have improved education through independent initiatives,
contributed to community-building by creating programs and associations, and
influenced federal legislation by Congressional lobbying through the
National Non-Partisan Lobby on Civil and Democratic Rights. The current
International President is Barbara A. McKinzie, and the sorority's document
and pictorial archives are located at Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Kappa_Alpha
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1759:
The British Museum in London, today containing one of the largest and most
comprehensive collections in the world, opened to the public in Montagu
House, Bloomsbury.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum)
1885:
American photographer Wilson Bentley took the first known photograph of a
snowflake by attaching a bellows camera to a microscope.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley)
1908:
Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Greek-lettered sorority established by African
American women, was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. by nine
students.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Kappa_Alpha)
1919:
Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two prominent socialists in Germany,
were tortured and murdered by the Freikorps.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps)
1943:
The highest-capacity office building in the world, the headquarters of the
United States Department of Defense known as the Pentagon, was dedicated.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon)
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
brigand (n) An outlaw or bandit.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brigand)
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I'm concerned about justice. I'm concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned
about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate
violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can't
murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't
establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't
murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.)