Anna Powell appears throughout McNealy’s three history volumes, though one anecdote she repeats from Brown’s diary suggests she left school after being heartbroken by a boyfriend’s death. That part simply isn’t true. Powell didn’t vanish — she graduated, built a distinguished career as an educator, married well, raised a family, and became an active figure in her community. 

The earliest core group numbered eight and included Powell. When Brown and Norman were added, that group became ten. Over time, different historians trimmed the list back to nine, largely based on later decisions about who to highlight and who to omit. In the earliest years of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the group that organized the sorority experienced a brief period of expansion as additional young women joined the effort. Because those early numbers shifted rapidly within the same academic year, the sorority eventually adopted the number nine as the official way to represent the founding cohort.

Choosing nine allows the organization to present a clear, consistent origin story that reflects the women whose names and contributions aligned with the formal structure the sorority carried forward. This standardized number has been used in sorority publications, educational materials, and historical summaries for decades, ensuring continuity across generations.

Even so, Powell isn’t a phantom, she contributed to the organization, is noted in various sorority exhibits and documents, and died an Alpha woman. Priceless Pearls explicitly describes her as “a romantic,” and early sorors like M. Parker remembered her presence, even if later tellings didn’t always name her outright.