Mrs. Amy Mahin

Amy Irene McIntire Mahin (1879–1973) occupied a quiet but important place in the educational and social history of Wichita, Kansas, particularly in the development of Black collegiate women’s organizational life during the segregation era. Born Amy Irene McIntire in 1879 to Jasper Newton McIntire and Martha Carter McIntire, she emerged from a Midwestern family rooted in education and civic respectability. She later married educator Charles A. Mahin (1875–1967), a longtime Kansas teacher, superintendent, and principal who arrived in Wichita in 1926, the same year that Psi Tau Delta was founded at the University of Wichita. Together, the Mahins became deeply embedded in Wichita’s educational infrastructure and middle-class civic culture. Their children included Charles B. Mahin (1908–1997), Amy Ruth Mahin (1911–1996), and Francis M. Mahin (born 1914). Newspaper records later noted that the family maintained strong educational and professional ties across the Midwest and Washington, D.C., reflecting the upwardly mobile academic environment in which the Mahins operated.

Professionally, Amy Mahin served as a professor of Education and English at the University of Wichita during a period when opportunities for Black collegiate women at predominantly white institutions remained limited and heavily mediated by segregation. Contemporary newspaper accounts repeatedly described her involvement in educational and civic initiatives, including work with immigrant families, interracial committees, women’s organizations, and student groups. Most significantly, she served as faculty advisor to Psi Tau Delta, a Black collegiate social sorority founded in September 1926 by Black women students at the University of Wichita. Under Mahin’s advisement, Psi Tau Delta developed into a structured organization with elected officers, initiation services, social programming, fundraising activities, and a recognized presence within Wichita’s Black collegiate community. Articles from Black newspapers across Kansas and Oklahoma documented the sorority’s dances, pledge services, club rooms, and campus activities over more than a decade.

Psi Tau Delta’s importance extended beyond campus social life. Archival notes later preserved within Alpha Kappa Alpha chapter materials reveal that many Psi Tau Delta members began aspiring toward affiliation with a national Black sorority after developing connections with women tied to Alpha Kappa Alpha and other Black Greek-letter organizations through family and collegiate networks. After what one document described as “many rap sessions,” members began “making contacts” with Alpha Kappa Alpha women, eventually leading to the establishment of a local AKA presence in Wichita. In this sense, Mahin’s contribution was not that of a national sorority founder, but rather that of a faculty advisor and institutional bridge-builder who helped create the stable organizational environment in which Black collegiate women could cultivate leadership, sisterhood, and social infrastructure before transitioning into national affiliation. Her legacy survives not through prominent national recognition, but through the enduring evidence that Psi Tau Delta served as an incubator for the later development of Alpha Kappa Alpha in Wichita.