Founder’s Day Celebration at YSU for 106-year-old sorority

March 17, 2019 at 12:08a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Beverly E. Smith peppered her inspirational message with a lot of talk about shoes, but in this context, they served a role more important for their symbolism than their ability to protect one’s feet.

“Each of us has inherited a pair of shoes that must be worn and not left on the rack to be dusted,” Smith said in her keynote address to an audience of a few hundred Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters and others who attended a Founder’s Day Celebration luncheon Saturday afternoon at Youngstown State University’s DeBartolo Stadium Club.

The three-hour program honored the 106th anniversary of the nonprofit service organization that 22 Howard University women established in 1913. Hosting the gathering was the Youngstown Alumnae Chapter, which four women chartered in May 1951. One of the four, Betty Greene Armstrong, attended Saturday’s celebration.

“This is a day to honor our 22 founders,” said Susan M. Moorer, YAC president.

The program was originally scheduled for Jan. 19, but was postponed because of a snowstorm.

YAC is dedicated to fulfilling goals the national chapter set forth, which include a heavy focus on what it calls a Five Point Programmatic Thrust: physical and mental health, international awareness, economic development, political awareness and educational development, its mission statement says.

Smith, the national Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s president and chief executive officer, told the sorority sisters that it’s incumbent upon them to “inherit and preserve” the shoes worn by people who have left major footprints on society, such as Harriet Tubman and the marchers who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March 1965 in Selma, Ala., for voting rights.

The organization’s first public event was taking part in the March 3, 1913, Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., in which an estimated 5,000 women marched on Pennsylvania Avenue demanding the right to vote, Smith noted. The parade also took place the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.

Today, it’s vital that Delta Sigma Theta members continue to address community needs individually and collaboratively while avoiding striving for self-aggrandizement or placing too strong a focus on social media or other distractions, Smith cautioned. Members also “must uphold cultural accountability at every level,” she continued.

Smith, of Marietta, Ga., outlined three initiatives she said are vital for achieving the organization’s primary aims: collaborating with those who have similar goals and objectives regarding community building, educational opportunities and other drives; making their voices heard at the table of local, state and national bastions of power; and taking care of themselves so they can more effectively serve others.

“I urge you to hold tight to who we are as a movement,” Smith added.

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown gave Smith a key to the city and a proclamation for her achievements. During his remarks, Brown, whose wife, Lynette, is a Delta Sigma Theta member, recalled having been first introduced to the sorority when he attended a wedding at age 15 in Mississippi.

“This organization has been empowering people for 106 years; this organization has left a legacy of true excellence,” said city Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st, whose fiancee’s mother is a member. “I would encourage you to continue this legacy.”