Fraternities, Sororities, and Diversity

Traditionally White Fraternities and Sororities

Founded as an academic honor society with the mission of “fostering and recognizing excellence,” the first U.S. fraternity was Phi Beta Kappa, founded on December 5, 1776, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The next organization, founded at Princeton University in 1824, was the Chi Phi fraternity. However, this group went inactive the following year, and the modern social organization of the same name was not established until the 1850s. As a result, the Kappa Alpha Society (established at Union College in Schenectady, New York, on November 26, 1825) is considered the first general—and White—fraternity. The word sorority was first used for Gamma Phi Beta, an international sorority founded in November 1874 at Syracuse University. However, Alpha Delta Pi (founded in 1851 at Wesleyan College) was actually the first organization to fit the White sorority model.

Until the early 1900s, when Black Greek letter organizations (BGLOs) began to appear, most U.S. colleges and universities had a rather homogenous student population—predominantly White, male, and Christian. Greek organizations simply mirrored the student body. Just before the end of the 19th century, racial and religious restriction issues were voiced as non-Whites began to gain access to formerly all-White institutions of higher learning. Therefore, some White Greek organizations incorporated specific racial exclusionary policies into their constitutions to retain both tradition and restrictive systems of social relations. Sociologist Alfred M. Lee wrote in Fraternities Without Brotherhood that the chief defect of the Greek system was “Aryanism” or the acceptance of White, U.S. Christian men and the rejection of persons for membership on grounds of race, religion, and national origin.

...