Quote:
Originally Posted by sorority_woman
Thank you for sharing your experience. I, too, am thankful that we have come as far as we have, even though there is still more to go.
This struggle affected every organization and everywhere across the country, just as the broader struggle of civil rights every person across the country. I'm a Tufts alumna, so I came across it as I was looking into sorority histories at Tufts. I had heard that Tufts had had Sigma Kappa and Alpha Xi Delta chapters at one point, which is how I found the articles.
Through further research I found that Sigma Kappa has been cited as the first NPC to pledge a non-caucasian woman, in 1956 at Cornell. So that seems like it could have been the match that lit this fire. Or maybe both chapters were thinking the same thing at around the same time.
I'm so happy to hear that your chapter sisters stood their ground and that your chapter survived. I'm a minority as well, and pledged in the early 2000s, so I had a very different experience, but my collegiate sorority experience may not have been as great as it was if chapters like yours and many across the nation hadn't paved the way and stood their ground on this. I am very grateful for that.
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Out of curiosity, does NPC consider Japanese-American women students non-caucasian? I am aware of at least one NPC group that pledged and initiated (probably American-born) Japanese collegians earlier in the 1950's.
It would also seem to me likely that in the 1940's after WWII Asian-American women were more positively accepted by a few NPC groups, although not Down South but perhaps more likely in Midwest or West Coast chapters.