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

_________________________ 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)

_______________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

brigand (n) An outlaw or bandit. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/brigand)

______________________ 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.)