Charter Member, Most Gracious Lady Nadine F. Wright served as the North East Deputy Organizer during the chartering of Psi Omega. Psi Omega Chapter, which was founded in 1926 on the campus of Radcliffe College, is the oldest graduate chapter in New England and currently oversees the Epsilon Chapter.
Most Gracious Lady Nadine F. Wright was one of the first Black graduates of Radcliffe College.
Dorothy Celeste Boulding Ferebee, a graduate of Tufts Medical School, served as the 10th International President from 1939-1941 for Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. She publicized the Mississippi Health Project, one of the most effective volunteer public health campaigns in history, through a slate of public lectures and a CBS radio broadcast. Ferebee earned a national reputation as a prominent physician, public health advocate, and activist during these years.
Learn more on womenshistory.org
Barbara Alma Scott Preiskel, Wellesley ‘45, was the second black woman to graduate from Yale Law School. She became an executive at the Motion Picture Association of America from 1959 to 1983. She helped Jack Valenti, the president of the association, in a legal effort to overturn state and local censorship laws, which sought to ban depictions of interracial relationships on the ground that such laws violated the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Learn more about her impact and unerring social conscience on NY Community Trust
Most Gracious Lady Bertha Harris assisted Soror Coretta Scott King in her transition to Boston after receiving a scholarship to attend New England Conservatory. She was a close friend of Soror Coretta and was mentioned in her book, “My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.”
Read the full script here
Madeleine Kountz Dugger Andrews, a graduate Bridgewater State University, was elected to the Medford School Committee and became the first Black woman elected to public office in Massachusetts. Once elected, she focused her efforts on implementing a program to recruit high-quality teachers (especially teachers of color), creating a racial balance plan for Medford schools, evaluating school building needs, strengthening the existing guidance program, and initiating a skills-training program for students who did not wish to pursue higher education.
Madeleine Dugger Andrews’s legacy lives on today at The Madeleine Dugger Andrews Middle School, named in her honor. It was constructed in 2000, one of Medford’s first new schools to be built in almost 80 years.
Learn more about Madeleine's impact at the Medford Historical Society & Museum
Most Gracious Lady Esther Hawkins Wilson is one of the charter members of the Boston Chapter of the Links, Incorporated, an organization known to attract the black upper class through social activities, including debutante cotillions, fashion show luncheons, auctions and balls.
Helyn C. Jones Hall, State Teachers College at Boston ‘55 is the first female boxing promoter and matchmaker, both nationally and internationally.
Watch this exclusive interview with Helyn Hall at the Boston Teachers Union Digitizing Day
With a passion for women's rights and empowerment, Jane Galvin Lewis, Boston University '62, is a founding member of the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), formed as a response to racist and sexist exclusion Black women endured in the civil rights, Black nationalist, and white women's movements. She coined the iconic statement: "You don't have to be anti-man to be pro-woman"
Learn more about Black Feminism in the 1970s in this New York Times article, They're Black, So Feminism Has Even More Obstacles Than Usual
Members of Epsilon chartered the Iota Gamma Chapter at Northeastern University in 1974. Dr. Cheryl Davis Jordan, one of the charter members and a graduate of Northeastern University, is one of the first Black women to obtain her PhD in Life Coaching
Doxie A. McCoy, Boston College ‘77, is the first black hockey player at Boston College. She also started Collage, a student newspaper focused on the lives of Black students and other minorities on campus during her senior year at Boston College. For Collage, McCoy wrote about a wide range of topics impacting Black students, from on-campus Kwanzaa celebrations to the Black Talent Program—a student-run program created by the University in hopes of recruiting more Black students to attend BC.
Read more about her trailblazing journey in a recent Boston College article, First and Foremost, Doxie McCoy
Dr. Ione Teresa Dugger Vargus of Tufts University 1952 became the first academic African-American dean at Temple University. In 1990, Vargus founded the Family Reunion Institute at Temple University, an organization which boasts being the only one of its kind in America to focus exclusively on strengthening extended families. A recognized authority on family reunions, Vargus has been featured in numerous magazines, newspapers and on radio and television shows across the country.
Vargus has continued the Dugger family's dedication to education and public service. She gifted a collection to the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC in memory of her father, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Dugger. The Papers of Lieutenant Colonel Edward Dugger is comprised of military and personal records, photographs, postcards, correspondence, financial records, military orders and memorandums, promotional certificates, personal notes, academic notebooks, invitations and programs of military events, newspaper
clippings, and African-American military service research materials and books collected during and after his time in the Massachusetts National Guard.
Carol Nicholson Boiling Fulp, Wheelock College/BU, is one of the founding charter members of The Boston Coalition of Black Women, Inc, geared towards providing African-American women in Boston access to resources to become involved in the community through education, social, economic, and civil action. Work sponsored by the organization has included mentoring opportunities, primarily the Sister-to-Sister program, and fundraising and cultural events.
As an avid supporter of women's rights, Fulp was named one of the “50 Most Powerful Women In Boston” by Boston Magazine in 2003. Fulp was a founding co-chair of the Massachusetts Conference for Women in 2005, the largest women’s leadership conference in the country with 10,000 attendees.
Jacqueline Jones and Gina Patterson, alums of Simmons College, are charter members of the Psi Iota Omega Chapter, the Centennial Chapter, in Brockton, Massachusetts.
The Psi Iota Omega chapter provides services to the citizens of Southeastern Massachusetts with passion and grace. The members of this chapter truly exhibit the motto "Sisterhood Over Self". Psi Iota Omega continuously strive for excellence with a positive spirit and productive action.
In 2018, Psi Iota Omega chartered the undergraduate chapter of Upsilon Iota on the campus of Bridgewater State University in Bridgewater, MA. Previously, Bridgewater State University was under Epsilon Chapter's charter in the 1900s.
Denise Ward, Boston University 2016, was selected to perform at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 45th Annual Legislative Conference and sing the National Anthem and Black National Anthem.
Watch her groundbreaking performance at the ALC'15 Phoenix Awards Dinner
Dr. Sheliah Horton, Emmanuel College 1978, became Vice President and Dean of Students at Wellesley College. Dr. Horton knows student life from many vantage points. A seasoned administrator with over 25 years of experience, she has taught undergraduate and graduate students, is a trustee of her alma mater, Emmanuel College.
Andrea Taylor, alum ‘68 and civil rights veteran, is Boston University's inaugural Senior Diversity Officer. University President Robert A. Brown established the position of Senior Diversity Officer (SDO) in August 2020 as protests against systemic racism and police brutality placed a spotlight on longstanding racial disparities around the globe. The appointment of Andrea L. Taylor as Senior Diversity Officer—reporting directly to the President and working closely with the Board of Trustees—places diversity among the University’s top priorities. While many campus units have leaders and teams aiming to increase DEI in their areas of influence, the SDO focuses on policy changes that are coordinated, consistent, and consequential across the entire institution.
Taylor was also a Trustee and President & CEO of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. She served as a delegate to four global summits of the United Nations: Tunis, Africa in 2005; Geneva, Switzerland in 2003; Beijing, China in 1995; and Cairo, Egypt in 1994.
Raquel Wiburn, Boston University 2014, was named Adweek’s Rising Media Star. Adweek recognized her work as an integrated media supervisor at the creative agency Mediahub, where she helped companies like Ulta Beauty, the NBA and Wyndham Hotels deftly pivot their campaigns to weather the pandemic.
Learn more about her impact here
