Greek Organizations
Joining a black fraternity or sorority can enable you to learn and utilize valuable leadership skills; make life-long friends; and create important networking affiliations. Some fraternity and sorority houses date over a century years old and encompass black fraternities and sororities whose members include judges, lawyers, doctors, engineers, educators, members of Congress, and CEOs.
Six of the nine Black fraternities and sororities were founded on HBCU campuses during a historically significant time when students were looking for a means of expressing community, civic, and political activism in an organized means to address racism and sexism at the turn of the twentieth century. While some of these organizations were based on traditional and societal aspects of belonging to such groups, for the most part, members are socially conscious, community-oriented individuals who pledge a commitment to their organization's tenets.
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These fraternities and sororities include:
The National Pan-Hellenic Council is a collaborative organization of historically African American and international Greek lettered fraternities and sororities. Although the nine NPHC organizations are sometimes collectively referred to as the "Divine Nine." The member/partner organizations have not formally adopted nor recommended the use of this term to describe their collaborative grouping. The NPHC was formed as a permanent organization on May 10, 1930, on the campus of Howard University, in Washington, D.C. NPHC was incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois in 1937 and headquartered in Decatur, Georgia.