Hastings Women’s Law Journal Volume 27 Article 5 Number 1 Winter 2016 1-1-2016 Lifting as They Climb: Race, Sorority, and African American Uplift in the 20th eC ntury Gregory S. Parks Caryn Neumann Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj Part of the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Gregory S. Parks and Caryn Neumann, Lifting as They Climb: Race, Sorority, and African American Uplift ni the 20th Century, 27 Hastings Women's L.J. 109 (2016). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hwlj/vol27/iss1/5 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Women’s Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Lifting As They Climb: Race, Sorority, and African American Uplift in the 20th Century Gregory S. Parks* and Caryn Neumann** INTRODUCTION In the July 2015 issue of Essence magazine, Donna Owens wrote an intriguing piece on black sororities within the Black Lives Matter Movement. Owens addressed the complicated and somewhat standoffish position of four major black sororities-Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Zeta Phi Beta, and Sigma Gamma Rho-in light of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Among them, only Zeta Phi Beta had taken an unwavering stance from the outset to allow their members to wear sorority letters while participating in protests.3 This narrative probably would seem insignificant, except for the following: First, black sororities have a unique structure.