Alta Roney

Alta Roney, Twice a Sister. 

The story of an extraordinary woman who was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated & Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Incorporated.

Alta Maria Roney’s sorority life does not fit the neat storylines that came later. 

She was a member of both Alpha Kappa Alpha and Sigma Gamma Rho.

Alta was especially unusual in that she became one of the earliest pledgees of Sigma Gamma Rho’s Beta line even before the sorority was officially established on November 12, 1922. While living in Indianapolis and attending the State Normal School in Terre Haute, she, her cousin Birdie Roney, Edna Tucker, Irene Turner, Geneva Howard, Lucile Linthecome, and Loraine Jackson became pledgees of the Beta Chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho and were announced in the newspaper on November 11, 1922. 

Alta joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, as did her sister Reba. Her membership in both sororities was possible because, although the two organizations shared strong commitments to education and service, Sigma Gamma Rho in 1922 was open to women pursuing higher education and college-educated women, while Alpha Kappa Alpha membership was open only to college-educated women.

Although these were two distinct organizations, the members of AKA’s Kappa and Tau chapters and Sigma Gamma Rho’s Alpha and Beta chapters often overlapped in many parts of life. They attended the same high schools and normal schools, worshipped in the same churches, worked to improve the same communities, and, in some cases, belonged to the same families.

Alta’s early years were marked by energy, visibility, and community involvement. In July 1916, she appeared in print as a teenage contestant in an NAACP oratorical contest at Witherspoon United Presbyterian Church, speaking as part of the local branch’s anti-lynching and civic-education work. The following year, she was listed among the graduates at William Bell School exercises. By October 1919, Shortridge’s “School Notes” mentioned her in connection with biology-class work, hinting at a student trusted to take part in public demonstration lessons.

By the time Alta graduated from Shortridge High School in June 1921, she was already a familiar name in the local Black press. Newspapers listed Alta Roney among that year’s Black graduates, alongside Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. founder Nannie Mae Gahn Johnson. Her yearbook description offered a glimpse of how her classmates saw her: “ Alta is the girl who never stops smiling. A regular potter. We think she is very fond of English as she has ten credits in that subject.” That same summer, she was hired as an assistant colored women’s playground instructor by the Indianapolis park board, where she helped supervise games and activities for children in segregated recreation spaces. In August 1921, she led the Girls’ Bible Class in a benefit entertainment for the Colored Orphans’ Home, helping raise funds for children’s schooling and care. Her siblings, Narcoissa, Lillie, Reba, Arthur Jr., and Martha, led similarly active lives.

Against this backdrop, it is easy to see how Alta’s engaging life placed her among some of the most prominent members of both sororities and Black society. Her formal achievements were considerable, especially given how short her life would be. By November 11, 1922, however, Alta and six other Indianapolis Normal School students were bound together for life, laying the foundation for what was then called the Beta Chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho.

In June 1923, Alta appears again as a playground appointee, responsible for supervising children’s activities at School No. 23’s colored playground. By 1925, fellow student Lenoir Beatrice Smith helped organize the Negro-Caucasian Club at Michigan, likely the first interracial student association on that campus. It brought together Black and White students and faculty for discussion, joint meetings, and interracial dances supported by Black fraternities. Alta’s own graduate work in Ann Arbor unfolded in those same moments.

She graduated from the University of Michigan in October 1927 with a Bachelor of Arts and a teaching certificate. The previous month, after securing a teaching position in Shelby, North Carolina, she had already positioned herself among the young Black educators who left Indianapolis to staff Southern schools in the interwar years. Other placements took her to Knoxville, where she left an indelible mark on Alpha Kappa Alpha. Her membership in the sorority is especially significant because, by 1929, she became a charter member of the Alpha Pi Omega Chapter in Knoxville on November 23.

Having found her way back to Indianapolis, Alta made the Phyllis Wheatley Branch of the YWCA one of the central platforms of her public life. On September 12, 1931, the Indianapolis News reported that she had been appointed secretary of the branch, an administrative role that placed her at the center of its day-to-day work. In early October, she was noted for leading a “Personal Budget” discussion, teaching women and girls how to manage household finances during the Depression years. By December, the Indianapolis Star identified “Miss Alta Roney” as an assistant in the health-education section of the Phyllis Wheatley Girl Reserves, where she helped lead a junior membership party for more than one hundred girls.

Alta completed her master’s degree in June 1932, and her public work continued to expand. Through 1932 and 1933, newspaper items described her as a Girl Reserves worker, and by March 1933, she had become a well-known speaker for girls’ programs across the city. Her literary life also surfaces in the sources. A YWCA bulletin describing “The Writers,” an appreciative and creative literary group at the Phyllis Wheatley Branch, names Alta as both a participant and a “friend and critic” to the author, suggesting that she not only wrote but also read and evaluated the work of others within a Black women’s literary circle.

In April 1934, Alpha Kappa Alpha announced that one of its sisters had become an Ivy beyond the wall. Miss Vera Forte and Basileus Morton-Finney, Vivian Terry, Susie Price, Maenell Harris, Frances Stoud, Childs Doyle, Mary Johnson, and Mrs. Roy served as honorary pallbearers, and the sorority added that it expressed its deep regret for the loss of this beloved member. In a deeply physical and communal gesture, her A.K. A sorors carried Alta to her final rest. Grace Edwards, author of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s pledge, was also noted for having traveled a considerable distance to attend Alta’s service.

Alta’s death in 1934, at just thirty-two, cut short a well lived life of service and sisterhood and community. Even after her death, her name continued to open doors for other girls. In June 1934, the east-side Phyllis Wheatley group announced the creation of an “Alta Roney Memorial Scholarship” at the YWCA to cover activity fees and lessons for girls without money, noting that she had served as the association’s first house secretary. Her obituary also confirmed that she attended Shortridge and State Normal and received a Master of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1931, describing her as a “widely known Negro scholar.”

Reba Roney emerged from the same Indianapolis Black middle-class world that shaped her sister Alta Maria Roney. Like Alta, Reba grew up in a family that valued schooling, church life, civic engagement, and public achievement. Reba herself became an active member of Alpha Kappa Alpha and later remained engaged in the sorority’s graduate life, including Gamma Gamma Omega, where she was remembered as a Golden member in her later years. Her long life stands in contrast to Alta’s, but the sisters’ records are closely intertwined in the historical record because both moved through the same Indianapolis networks of education, service, and Black women’s leadership.​

Reba’s marriage to Tee K. Borders (Epsilon) added another layer to that story. The University of Michigan Michiganensian identifies Tee K. Borders in connection with Alpha Phi Alpha, marking him as part of the Black collegiate and professional elite emerging from the university environment. Alta and Reba also illuminate how closely Black women’s sorority histories were braided together. Alta’s life shows the early 20th-century world of normal schools, YWCA work, playground supervision, interracial student organizing, and overlapping paths through Alpha Kappa Alpha and Sigma Gamma Rho. Reba’s record belongs to that same world, but her longevity allowed her to carry the family story forward long after Alta’s death. For Our Sister’s Sisters, the Roney women belong together: Alta marks the junction where later narratives begin to simplify, while Reba shows how those same networks persisted across decades in sorority, family, and public memory.​

Note: Later, Loraine moved and was eventually reinitiated into the Alpha Chapter with Sigma Gamma Rho leaders Lucy Maxey and Ruby Rankin.