[nat sound: Yard Show]
Who runs the yard? Members of Northwestern’s National Pan-Hellenic Council fought for that title last Wednesday.
The NPHC was established in 1930 to unite Black fraternities and sororities when African American students were denied many rights and privileges nationwide. The NPHC is now commonly referred to as the Divine 9: four sororities and five fraternities.
At this year’s Yard Show, members of Divine 9 dressed in their colors and performed for almost two hundred students, faculty and onlookers at Kahn Pavillion.
From choreographed dance routines to chants and history lessons, the Yard Show is an explosion of Black culture. Stepping and strolling: two dance oriented traditions specific to each chapter are also heavily featured in their routines. These performances highlight what the Divine 9 fraternities and the sororities offer the Northwestern community.
YEABSIRA GETACHEW: “We pride ourselves on being centered on service first, but the stepping and strolling is a big part of our history and our Black culture.”
NOLA WILLIAMS: “These organizations are hundreds of years old, so the routines that we perform have been passed along from generation to generation, and they’re derivative of a lot of things that have been passed on from even our enslaved ancestors.”
That was Yeabsira Getachew and Nola Williams, new members of Northwestern’s Theta Alpha Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated.
[nat sound: Delta Sigma Theta at Yard Show]
Like all sororities in the Divine 9, Delta Sigma Theta prides itself on Black sisterhood and community service. This year’s Yard Show doubled as a canned food drive for the Greater Chicago Food Depository as part of the sorority’s May Week.
GETACHEW: “ Every single day we have a different service event catered to our five programmatic thrusts. So, I was able to run a programming event with some of my sisters for our political awareness and involvement programmatic thrust, where we were able to sort of have this informational about misinformation and how to get involved in our democratic processes, like voting and just being weary of the media.”
For many members of the Divine 9, Black sisterhood starts before college. That was true for Williams.
WILLIAMS: “ I decided to join Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated because this organization has been such a large part of my life since I was a little kid. I was a member of Delta Gems, which is a youth development program, and through that I was exposed to so many things regarding social action,community service, and just, like, the women and the character that I was exposed to was invaluable.”
Her mother, along with several other female members of her family, are also part of the Delta Sigma Theta sisterhood.
[nat sound: Alpha Kappa Alpha at Yard Show]
This year, the Yard Show welcomed back a familiar contestant: Northwestern’s Gamma Chi Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
The group was reinstated earlier this year, making Northwestern home to eight of the Divine 9. Now, the Iota Phi Theta fraternity is the only Council member missing from campus.
Junior Taylor Hancock is the Skee Week Committee Chair for Alpha Kappa Alpha. Skee Week is one of the chapter’s service events hosted during winter quarter. The Yard Show was one of AKA’s first Divine 9 events since returning to campus. Hancock says the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
TAYLOR HANCOCK: ”We’ve been preparing for Yard Show for quite some time. I can’t even put a number to it at this point. We put so much energy into it. We had planned the theme, we bought the outfits, we did all the things. I think we were just really excited to be back in the Yard Show.”
Hancock says this year’s yard show location was a big deal for the entire Divine 9 — not just AKA.
HANCOCK: I thought there was a lot of significance to the Yard Show being held at Norris this year, especially because there were people that were like not Black that like stopped by that had probably no clue what was going on. But I still think that Northwestern putting Black sororities and Black fraternities on that platform is huge.”
And who runs the yard? For now, it’s Delta Sigma Theta and Omega Psi Phi — but as Northwestern’s Divine 9 community continues to grow, that title will only get harder to earn.
[nat sound: Yard Show]
For WNUR News, I’m Jessica Watts.