Epsilon Omicron

( Stetson University)

A Tale of 2 Sororities

By early 1969, a group of women at Stetson University had organized themselves under the name Alpha Kappa Sorority. Newspaper reports from February 1969 indicate that the organization already had at least twelve members and was active in community service and support activities.

By the spring semester, nineteen women appeared in the Stetson yearbook as members of Alpha Kappa Sorority. Alpha Kappa was an interracial organization and included several members of the first generation of African American students to attend and graduate from Stetson University following its integration in 1962. Among these members were Barbara Deveaux, Willie Hunter (wife of Cornelius Hunter, the first African American graduate to earn a bachelor's degree from Stetson University), and Marva Lewis, who entered Stetson in 1967. The organization also included Sadie Talbot, who was Chinese. The races of three members could not be determined from the census records attached to this report and are therefore identified as unknown.

Nothing in the surviving records I have been able to locate to date explicitly identifies Alpha Kappa as an official colony of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.

The documentary trail that follows suggests that Alpha Kappa occupied an important place in the development of Black Greek-letter life at Stetson University. By October 1969, Sandy Sanders appeared in the press representing Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. in a campus competition before the December 10, 1969 charter date traditionally associated with the creation of the Epsilon Omicron Chapter. Whether this reflected the activities of a colony, an interest group, or an informal relationship with the national sorority remains unclear.

What is clear is that many of the women associated with Alpha Kappa in 1969 continued to appear in Alpha Kappa Alpha records in the years that followed. Women documented in Alpha Kappa rosters later appeared in Ivy Leaf publications, membership records, and subsequent yearbooks as members of Alpha Kappa Alpha. Several women identified in the 1969 Alpha Kappa yearbook were among those recorded as initiated on December 10, 1969, while others appeared in Alpha Kappa Alpha membership records in later years.

Epsilon Omicron chapter photo

The records I have been able to locate likely tell a more complicated story than the events themselves. However, in the absence of a firsthand account, the available documentation provides the best evidence for reconstructing what occurred.

Stetson yearbooks continued to use the name Alpha Kappa after the December 1969 chartering of the Epsilon Omicron Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., even as national sorority records documented new Alpha Kappa Alpha initiates from Stetson. By 1972, the yearbook identified the organization as Alpha Kappa Alpha, suggesting a gradual evolution in how the group was represented rather than a sudden organizational break. However, without additional documentation, that conclusion cannot be stated with certainty.

The surviving evidence points to substantial continuity between Alpha Kappa Sorority and the newly established Epsilon Omicron Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. Although no surviving document has yet been located proving that Alpha Kappa was the officially recognized colony, the overlap in membership, chronology, and organizational identity strongly suggests that Alpha Kappa served as the foundation from which Epsilon Omicron emerged.

According to the membership database, the first women initiated into the Epsilon Omicron Chapter were:

Carol Santiago
Gwendolyn Joyce Frazier Azama-Edwards
Joan Marie Russell
Marva Jean Lewis Dowding
Mary Bailey
Mary Young
Nancy West
Phyllis Byrne
Rachel Rajchel
Sandra Sanders
Sharon McDonald

According to the 1970 issue of The Ivy Leaf, the following women were listed as initiates:

Carol Santiago
Gwendolyn Frazier
Joan Marie Russell
Linda Adams
Marva Lewis
Mary Bailey
Mary Young
Nancy West
Phyllis Byrne
Rachel Rajchel
Sandra Sanders
Sharon Lawrence

Sharon Lawrence and Sharon McDonald may have been the same individual or two different women. At present, however, I have only located independent evidence documenting Sharon Lawrence.

Among this initial group of Alpha Kappa Alpha members, all appear to have been members of Alpha Kappa Sorority, with the possible exception of Mary Bailey. Of the nineteen women identified as members of Alpha Kappa Sorority in 1969, I have found no evidence that eight later became members of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

At one point, as many as 90 percent of the chapter's membership may have been identified as white however, the founding group doesn’t match that statement. The available evidence further suggests that the founding members of Epsilon Omicron were initiated by a group of women who were themselves approximately 66 to 72 percent white, making the chapter's earliest membership both interracial and majority white. All were scholars and heavily involved in campus life and its organizations.

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