NatHist

History

Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated was founded on

January 16, 1920 at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

by five coeds: Arizona Cleaver, Myrtle Tyler, Viola Tyler,

Fannie Pettie and Pearl Neal. These five women, also know

as our Five Pearls, dared to depart from the traditional coalitions

for black women and sought to establish a new organization based

on the precepts of Scholarship, Service, Sisterly Love and Finer

Womanhood. It was the ideal of the Founders that the Sorority

would reach college women in all parts of the country who

were sorority minded and desired to follow the founding

principles of the organization.

Since its inception, the Sorority has chronicled a number of firsts. Zeta Phi Beta was the first Greek-letter organization

to charter a chapter in Africa, in 1948; to form adult and youth auxiliary groups; to centralize its operations in a

national headquarters; and to be constitutionally bound to a fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated.

Zeta’s national and local programs include endowment of its National Education Foundation, community outreach

services and support of multiple affiliate organizations. Zeta chapters and auxiliary groups have given innumerable

hours of voluntary service to educate the public, assist youth, provide scholarships, support organized charities and

promote legislation for social and civic change.

A nonprofit organization, Zeta Phi Beta is incorporated in Washington, D.C. and in the state of Illinois. The dues and

gifts of its members support the Sorority.

Zeta has many established national affiliations with such esteemed organizations as The March of Dimes, American

Lung Association and the American Diabetes Association.