Editor’s note: The Courier & Press and The Gleaner are marking Black History Month with a collection of stories about people, places and events from local Black history.
EVANSVILLE — Black females at Evansville College — now the University of Evansville — needed something to call their own.
According to UE, the only social organizations open to them from 1934 until the dawn of the 1950s were the YWCA and the Student Christian Association.
The Ivy Leaf Club was created to meet the need.
According to the Feb. 2, 1951 edition of the Evansville Courier, the club, consisting of 12 Black women, organized in spring of 1950 to become a chapter of national Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA). Later that year, the new chapter of the national sorority was granted a charter.
The Evansville Courier announced that the chapter had planned “as one of its immediate activities” the presentation of Mary Coleman — the newspaper noted that she was a soprano — in a concert two weeks hence at St. John’s Methodist church. It would go on to present concerts and dance programs, among other activities.