Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. was founded on November 12, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana by seven young Black school teachers. Sigma Gamma Rho’s founders are Nannie Mae Gahn Johnson, Mary Lou Allison Little, Vivian White Marbury, Bessie M. Downey Martin, Cubena McClure, Hattie Mae Dulin Redford, and Dorothy Hanley Whiteside.
The first Editor in Chief of The Aurora, Sigma Gamma Rho’s official communication organ, was Gertrude Murchison. A graduate of Atlanta University, she was a member of the Gamma Sigma Chapter. She began her editorial duties in 1927.
On September 14, 1925, Gertrude Ware Burch married John Prescott Murchison, an initiate of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. The ceremony was at 8 p.m. in the home of the bride’s father in Atlanta. It took place in the living room “room before an altar improvised of foliage and floor baskets of white roses softly illuminated by white tapers.”
The bride was “was radiantly lovely in a beautiful gown of lustrous white satin, covered with brocaded georgette. Her veil was caught with a wreath of orange blossoms and she carried a shower bouquet of bride’s roses and valley lilies.”
The bridegroom earned a B.A. from Howard University and a Master’s from Columbia University. A member of the Fraternity’s Supreme Council, he was the first Editor in Chief of The Oracle. He served in that position from 1924-1927.
Among the out-of-town guests were W.S. Burke, and Doctors J.B. Garrett, George Branch and C. Johnson,” all fraternity brothers of the groom and all of the staff, government hospital, Tuskegee, Alabama.”
I spent a goodly amount of time looking on ancestry.com and the web for more information about Gertrude Burch Murchison. I think the couple may have had three children and divorced before he remarried in the late 1930s. John Prescott Murchinson died in 1984. I also think she remarried and her name became Gertrude Lovinggood.
