Legacy Found Me First – The Burke Sisters

Subtitle: Discovering My Bloodline Among the Founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.

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Discovered Legacy

Can you imagine casually searching Ancestry.com, making connections on your family tree, and stumbling into your own living history?

About three years ago, that’s exactly what happened to me. While tracing family lines, I discovered that Lillie E. Burke and Beulah E. Burke—two of the original nine founders of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated—and I are related.

I wiped my glasses twice, unsure I had read it correctly.

These were the very women whose full names I had memorized when I pledged AKA as an undergraduate in the spring of 1981—completely unaware that they were not only my sorors, but also my cousins! I was shocked. We share the same great-great-great grandmother, Sally Ann Rooks, making us first cousins four generations removed/ago.

Sally Rooks was a white, free woman who bore four daughters with Jacob, an enslaved man. Under the brutal logic of the slave codes, slavery was a permanent condition passed through the mother. Because Sally was free, her daughters were born free, a rare and consequential circumstance that altered the destiny of generations to follow. Sally and Jacob shared a long life together, under her fathers eyes – Jacobs owners.

Those four Rooks sisters each married free men of color, forming the four branches of what became the Sally and Jacob (Rooks) family tree. One of which is my family branch, the Reids. The other three branches – the Burkes, the Greens, and the Reynolds. From this lineage came physicians, dentist, nurses, educators, attorneys, veterans, musicians, leaders—and history-makers. *Google the Four Rooks Sisters for more details-they are well documented.

Humble Beginnings in Hertford, North Carolina

The Burke sisters were born free in the mid-1880s in Hertford, North Carolina, daughters of free people of color, did not equal safety, access, or opportunity. The post-Reconstruction South, North Carolina included, was tightening its grip through Jim Crow laws, racial terror, and systemic exclusion. For Black families—free or formerly enslaved—education beyond the most basic level was rare, contested, and often dangerous.

Yet the Burke family persisted.

Seeking opportunity and education, they moved to Washington, D.C., one of the few places in America where Black intellectual life, though still constrained, had room to breathe. Lillie and Beulah attended Howard Preparatory School, graduating in 1904, before enrolling at Howard College, now Howard University as freshmen.

The Climate of 1908: An Unlikely Moment

To fully appreciate their achievement, one must understand the climate of 1908 America.

This was a nation deeply segregated by law and custom. Plessy v. Ferguson was the law of the land. Lynching was common. Black women were rarely admitted to colleges at all—and almost never encouraged to imagine themselves as intellectual leaders, organizers, or founders of institutions.

College-educated women were still a rarity. College-educated Black women were extraordinary.
Black women forming a national organization rooted in scholarship, service, and global vision? Nearly unimaginable.

And yet…

In January 1908, while the country struggled to reconcile freedom with equality, nine young Black women dared to define themselves—not by limitation, but by purpose.

The Birth of a Legacy

On January 15, 1908, Lillie and Beulah Burke, alongside seven other women, founded Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, the first Black Greek-letter sorority in the world.

At Howard College, Lillie E. and Beulah E. Burke were known among their peers as serious-minded, intellectually disciplined, and purpose-driven young women, carrying themselves with quiet confidence rather than bravado. As daughters of free people of color, they arrived with a deep sense of responsibility—to family, to community, and to the larger project of racial uplift that defined Black higher education at the turn of the 20th century.

Their temperament was described as studious and composed, balanced by warmth and loyalty within close circles. Beulah, in particular, was recognized for her academic strength in classical studies, including Greek, and for her thoughtful articulation of ideas—skills that later shaped the naming, motto, and symbolism of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

“By Culture, By Merit.”
Her vision extended even to the aesthetics—salmon pink and apple green, colors that would come to symbolize grace, strength, and sisterhood for generations.

Both sisters were engaged in campus intellectual life, drawn to literary societies, moral philosophy, education, and service-oriented pursuits, rather than social frivolity. They were respected not for loud visibility, but for reliability, vision, and follow-through—young women others trusted to help build something lasting. At Howard, they were known as women who understood education not as privilege alone, but as preparation for leadership and service.

After graduating in 1908, the Burke sisters remained deeply connected to both Howard and AKA, helping to ensure the sorority’s nationalization, incorporation, and expansion through chapters across the United States.

Recognition at Last

Today, their hometown of Hertford, North Carolina, proudly bears a historical marker honoring Lillie and Beulah Burke—recognizing not only their individual brilliance, but the improbability and significance of their achievement. It is a long-overdue acknowledgment that greatness often rises quietly from the most humble places.

A Legacy That Found Me

When I pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha in 1981, I had no idea—none—that I was stepping into a legacy already written into my DNA. That history had found me long before I understood its full meaning.

Now, 118 years later, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated stands as a global force for good—over 300,000 members worldwide, more than 1,000 chapters, spanning the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, Ghana and South Africa—committed to scholarship, leadership, and service to all mankind.

What began in 1908 as a bold idea among nine young Black women has become a living, breathing testament to what vision, courage, and collective purpose can achieve.

Today, I am not active with a chapter but I am profoundly humbled—and deeply proud—to be even remotely connected to an institution of such history, impact, and caliber.

Skee-Wee 💗💚
#4Spr81

*Blog originally posted in 2024.

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UPDATE: Shout-out to my Spring ’81 line sisters, Slow Motion 8 RPMs.
Despite the challenges we faced, we bonded—and that bond never broke. Time may move fast, but our connection never did. I love you. 💗💚Our AKAnniversary = 45 years of sisterhood in 2026.

See what photos I was able to collect below:

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