Today Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. turns 101 years old. There was a wonderful celebration last year. The idea for the organization happened when Arizona Cleaver was walking with Charles Robert Samuel Taylor, a Phi Beta Sigma at Howard University. Taylor suggested that Cleaver consider starting a sister organization to Phi Beta Sigma. She, along with her four friends, Pearl Neal, Myrtle Tyler, Viola Tyler, and Fannie Pettie, are the five pearls (founders) of Zeta Phi Beta.
They sought and were granted approval from university administrators. The five met for the first time as a sanctioned organization on January 16, 1920. They named their organization Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. It is the only National Pan-Hellenic Council sorority constitutionally bound to a fraternity; that fraternity is Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.
Sallie Wyatt Stewart
Although she was born in Tennessee in 1881, Sallie Wyatt Stewart spent most of her life in Evansville, Indiana. She was an educator and community leader.
While attending public school she also worked as a domestic to support her family. She graduated high school at the age of 16 and was first in her class of 11 students at Governor High School. She went on to Evansville Normal School and began teaching school in 1898. During summers she studied at the University of Chicago.
In 1911, she married Logan H. Stewart whose business was real estate. When the Evansville chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was chartered in 1915, she was one of its members and its first secretary. She was one of the women who founded the Day Nursery Association for Colored Children in Evansville. They raised $2,000 to put a down payment on a house where more than two dozen children could be cared for while their mothers worked. She also had a hand in the establishment of the Phyllis Wheatley Home which opened in 1922.
In addition to her service to the Black community in Evansville, she was also a board member of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association beginning in 1916. The organization named her President for Life in 1939.
When Evansville established the Inter-Racial Commission in 1927, Stewart served as an officer. She was also president of the city’s Anti Tuberculous Auxiliary.
Stewart was president of the Indiana Federation of Colored Woman, an organization formed in 1904 which was part of the National Association of Colored Women. She created its newsletter, The Hoosier Woman, and was its first editor. Stewart also became involved in the national organization. From 1924 until 1928, she was vice president of the NACW and then succeeded Mary McLeod Bethune as its president. She served until 1933.
Diabetes slowed her down in the late 1930 but she continued to teach until shortly before her death in 1951. Stewart established a trust for her $100,000+ estate specifying that it be used to help young Black women.
