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125 7 Seven Schoolteachers Challenge the klan The Founders of Sigma Gamma rho Sorority Bernadette Pruitt, Caryn E. Neumann, and Katrina Hamilton In the 1920s, African Americans found themselves the targets of widespread racial bigotry. Only a few years earlier, in 1918, scholar-activist W. E. B. DuBois, editor of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, had urged blacks to “close ranks” and, at least for the time being, support the Allied forces in their effort to defeat the Central Powers of Europe.1 Blacks did just that: 400,000 of them in uniform, almost 1 million as wartime factory personnel, and many more as loyal supporters of the war effort. regrettably, African American patriotism did little to damper racial hatred. Faced with random acts of violence, antiblack labor union strife, unemployment and underemployment , housing discrimination, poor city services, educational inequities, scientific racism, and condescending employers, African Americans turned inward and relied on the principle of self-help to secure autonomy, hope, and constructive resistance.2 In the city of Indianapolis, seven African American educators masked their anxieties, put aside their individual needs, and formed a self-help organization that sought to promote intellectual distinction among female schoolteachers and education majors. Either midwestern natives or southern migrants, these women, all from working-class backgrounds, recognized the power of agency for people of color. The teachers founded Sigma Gamma rho Sorority in 1922 on the campus of Butler College (renamed Butler University in 1923). Community builders and idealists at heart, the educators refined their goals over the next few years. By 1925, they expanded their membership to include African American women outside the realm of education. In an effort to strengthen their collegiate programs and commitment to community agency and racial autonomy, the sorority in 1929 formed alumnae chapters and established scholarships for undergraduate members. A decade later, the organization comprised sixteen undergraduate chapters and four alumnae chapters in thirteen states.3 126 Pruitt, Neumann, and Hamilton Interestingly, in the background of the sorority’s genesis stood the very powerful and dangerous Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which had experienced a rebirth in 1915 in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Unlike the original KKK of the reconstruction era, the second Klan targeted a variety of groups, including Jewish Americans, Catholics, recent European ethnic immigrants, Latinos, East Asians, and feminists. The new KKK of the twentieth century evolved from two national events in 1915: the anti-Semitic lynching of engineer Leo Frank in Atlanta, and the release of D. W. Griffith’s film masterpiece The Birth of a Nation. The secret society grew to record proportions in the 1920s, especially in the Midwest, and Indiana stood out as a major center of Klan activity. With 300,000 members in the early 1920s, the Indiana Klan comprised one-third of the native-born white male population in the state. D. C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana KKK since 1924, resided at 5432 University in Irvington, literally right next door to Butler University. Madge Oberholtzer, the educator that Stephenson raped and kidnapped in 1926, also lived in Irvington.4 The founders of Sigma Gamma rho Sorority faced many aspects of racism on the campus of Butler College. Since its founding in 1855, Butler had been open to African American applicants. However, at least one Board of regents member supported the KKK. The school itself practiced de facto segregation in numerous ways. The university adopted a quota system in 1927 that admitted only ten African American students annually. As a result, the university’s African American enrollment declined from seventy-four in the 1926–1927 academic year to fifty-eight, including nine entering freshmen. The 1925 edition of the university yearbook, the Drift, placed photos of African American graduating seniors in the back of the book, separate from the alphabetical listing and pictures highlighting other seniors. These realities suggest that African Americans on campus encountered some degree of racial hostility.5 Nevertheless, the sorority’s founders pressed on. Sigma Gamma rho Sorority Inc. founders Mary Lou Allison, Nannie Mae Gahn, Vivian White, Bessie Downey, Cubena McClure, Dorothy Hanley, and Hattie Mae Dulin quietly began their society for teachers and sought to make a difference. In doing so, they indirectly challenged perceived early-twentieth-century notions about race and gender. They subtly defied the local KKK when they established their society for college-educated African American women. Ignoring the commonly held view that African American women were intellectually, culturally, and sexually inferior, the seven founders relied on racial...

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