Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Returns to Boston After 30-Year Absence for Regional Conference

Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority gathered in Boston this week for their first regional conference in the city in nearly 30 years, with about 5,000 women converging at the Thomas Menino Convention Center for the four-day event running through Sunday.

The historic Black sorority’s return to Boston carries special significance for members who first joined the organization as undergraduates at local colleges and universities, according to sorority leaders.

“I’m coming home,” said Elicia Pegues Spearman, a Wellesley College graduate and the sorority’s North Atlantic Region director. “I’m coming back to Boston after being away for 30 years.”

Spearman, who joined AKA in 1984, said members are experiencing nostalgia for their campus days. “We’re feeling lots of energy to be in Boston,” she said. “When we were in school together, we used to visit each other’s campuses.”

The conference brings together alumni with AKA members from about 15 local chapters, including those at Harvard, Northeastern, and Suffolk universities, according to organizers.

High costs for securing conference space, lodging and food had prevented the sorority from holding the event in Boston in recent years, members said. The last AKA conference in Boston took place in 1997, according to attendees.

Members noted significant changes in Boston’s landscape for Black professionals and organizations since then. “There are a lot of institutions in Boston that are celebrating Black Americans,” said Kafi Meadows, another Wellesley College graduate. “We want to showcase the diversity of Boston for the members of our sorority.”

Founded in 1908 at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Alpha Kappa Alpha is the nation’s oldest Black sorority. The organization has served as a collegiate and professional home for generations of Black women, with notable members including former Vice President Kamala Harris, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, tennis champion Althea Gibson, civil rights leader Coretta Scott King, and poet Maya Angelou.

Local AKA chapters play a particularly important role for African-American students in Boston, where they are traditionally underrepresented, according to members.

“Being able to create that collective community and find a critical mass and also pour back into the undergraduate community was definitely a highlight,” said Farrah Belizaire, 36, who graduated from Boston University in 2011 after growing up in Brockton.

The conference also celebrates a milestone for the Boston area’s main AKA graduate chapter. The Psi Omega Chapter, founded in 1926, marks its 100th anniversary this year, building on the legacy of college-educated Black women who made Boston their home throughout the 20th century, according to Meadows.

“All of this is legacy,” said Meadows, 54, who grew up in Dorchester. “We’re building on those who came before us and we’re creating something for the generations that come up behind us.”

While many associate AKA with Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the South, members emphasized the organization’s significant presence in northeastern cities like Boston.

“Black fraternity and sorority life often has more visibility and is ingrained a little bit more in the southern parts of our country,” said Belizaire, who lives in Randolph and runs the sorority’s chapter for southeast Massachusetts. “But a lot of our organizations have had just as much of an impact in the northeastern parts of the country, where we’re not always as strongly represented in numbers.”

The conference began Thursday with a donation drive for Paige Academy Community Cultural Center and Home for Little Wanderers, according to the sorority. Saturday’s programming includes a step show “homecoming takeover” dance party featuring performers.