Landmark of Black L.A. Gets a New Lease on Life
Sometimes much good can bloom from inauspicious beginnings.
So it was when the women of Alpha Gamma Omega went looking for a home for their burgeoning Los Angeles sorority, more than 40 years ago.
They gazed with envy at the beautiful old houses on USC’s sorority row, but there was a problem. The AGO women were black, a chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first sorority in the nation founded by African American women.
They could not find a real estate agent who would even show them around the all-white sorority row. They ended up in a modest 1911 Craftsman-style bungalow in the historic West Adams neighborhood, and it became the first house owned by an African American sorority in the city.
It has been a good union, even as the years have taken a toll on their abode. Now, there is new life awaiting those old bones.
Because of the house’s importance as a landmark in the African American and university communities of Los Angeles, the sorority last summer was awarded $50,000 from the Getty Grant Program’s highly competitive Preserve L.A. initiative as a first step toward restoration.
“The women tenaciously sought the property; they would not be outbid nor allow racism to stop them from establishing a foundation near campus,” said sorority member Wilma Willis, 67, who was an honor student at USC when she got a tip that the property was for sale. “Remaining on Ellendale [Place], we have established a pillar in the community.”
The two-story, dark pink house with its red shingled roof cuts a distinctive figure at Ellendale and Adams Boulevard. The structure is sound and still exudes charm, with its dark wood features. But the leaking roof and plumbing cause serious damage, and during the rainy season the basement often floods.
The AGOs have ambitious plans, not only to renovate the house but also to turn it into a community resource center, one that preserves their social and cultural history through photographs, projects and written accounts. The initial Getty grant will fund a restoration study, and the sorority can apply later for other grants that would help pay for renovations.
“I feel almost like an archeologist,” said sorority member Marla Bleavins, 24, a Stanford graduate who wrote the Getty grant proposal and is helping administer it. “We have pictures from the ‘20s, the ‘30s and the ‘40s, and you can really see the progression. One thing that stands out, whether you’re looking at the ‘30s or the ‘90s, is the dignity of the women. We like to say of AKA women that they do good in the community and look good doing it.”
The house and its members also reflect the city’s grim history of segregation and how black people coped with and overcame such conditions, said Getty officials.
“The building is worthy of conservation attention, but there is this significant cultural history too of people who have been affiliated with it in the past,” said Getty program officer John Oddy. He added that many sororities have minimal funds for upkeep.
Other Preserve L.A. grant winners last year included the Griffith Observatory and the Brand Library in Glendale.
By their accounts, the women of Alpha Gamma Omega say their sisterhood helped them weather and even thrive in tough times.
Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Maya Angelou are part of the national sorority, which was founded in 1908 by undergraduate women at Howard University in Washington, D.C. A few years later, graduate chapters were established so members could participate in activities beyond college.
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Alpha Gamma Omega, founded in 1927, is such a graduate chapter, and its 250 members include alumnae of USC and UCLA, as well as of colleges in other parts of the country. The Ellendale house is considered a second home, although no sorority members have ever lived there.
Some members are in their 20s, but there are elders who can count nine decades. One soror--as the members are called--who recently passed away at the age of 94 had been in the sisterhood 75 years.
The AGOs have been a mainstay of their evolving South Los Angeles community, donating more than $100,000 in scholarships, tutoring young people, organizing drives for clothing and food and inspiring such members as former state Sen. Diane Watson and Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke to illustrious careers.
Chapter members helped to build two houses for Habitat for Humanity in the area, and have kept in touch with the families that occupy them, donating washers and dryers. Members have sent supplies to schoolchildren in South Africa. They have provided layettes for newborns at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and received a $10,000 grant from the California Wellness Foundation to hold workshops on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS in the community.
They went about that particular duty with typical practicality, enlisting hair salons to help hand out information packets. They knew that beauty salons in the black community are a place of social communion for women of every economic and class stratum.
Over the years the neighborhood around them has evolved from majority white to majority black and then to its present mix of blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos.
The sorority is trying to do historical detective work to discover who the original inhabitants of their house were. They know that, at some point, the building was turned into a rooming house: Their current community room used to be divided into four spaces and the upstairs looked like a dormitory, said member Yvonne Adams, 62.
The group began thinking about purchasing a house as early as 1947, when there were as many as 400 members.
“We would meet in people’s homes or use the Y on the USC campus, but that space was needed for other uses; there were not too many places we could rent,” said Winifred Rhodes, 80, who joined the chapter in 1954.
They established a sorority house fund supported by donations, parties and dances, and managed to buy the Ellendale building. They held their first chapter meeting there Nov. 4, 1961. Much of the remodeling was accomplished with the help of husbands, who were called “honey-doers.”
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Those old days were good ones, many of the older members recall.
“We used to get dressed up to go to meetings--in the daytime--with furs and high heels and gloves,” remembered Helen Williams, 80, a retired school principal who joined the chapter in 1954.
But the women of Alpha Gamma Omega are not just about remembering old times.
“Getting the Getty grant has presented a real challenge to the chapter,” said Reba Cox-Long, 58, who joined in 1981 and is president of the chapter’s foundation.
“We really want to make sure the community knows that we’re here for them. We want this to be a resource where people can come and not only learn about the history of the sorority but about all black history.”
