Christina Gulseth, History 250: The Historian Craft, Fall 2022

Debates over the integration of universities engulfed the United States in the 1960s. Colleges across the country faced fierce, often violent, opposition in the face of growing calls for racial justice. Access to higher education was the subject of these debates, but it was not limited to the classroom. For decades, exclusion in extracurriculars, especially Greek life, had never been questioned. Since their founding, sororities and fraternities had been used as a tool to reinforce the existing hierarchy on college campuses nationwide, and by 1965 the University of Nebraska finally had to reckon with it. As the Civil Rights Movement changed education across the country, the University of Nebraska was forced to address the racially restrictive practices of Greek life on its campus, although the University’s actions led to little meaningful change.

The first fraternities and sororities were established at the University of Nebraska in the early 1880s.[1] The first fraternity at the University was Sigma Chi in 1883. Initially, Greek life was more about affordable housing than the social aspect now associated with fraternities and sororities. As more and more chapters were being established at the University, the existing structure of student organizations changed. As other social clubs lost members to Greek life and the rift between Greeks and Barbarians (slang for people opposed to Greek life) grew, but by the early 1900s it became clear that Greek life was not going away. As socializing became a more appealing facet of Greek life, the University became worried that Greek students would forget their academic and professional responsibilities.[2] Thus, the Intra-Fraternity Council was established in 1905 and the Intra-Sorority Council in 1906, both with the intent of regulating chapters on campus. While these councils were initially established for academic purposes, as Greek life grew at the University, so did the role of their governing councils. This meant that they had to start addressing social issues like racial justice and sexist double standards as the problems within fraternity and sorority life came into sharper focus. 

The popularity of Greek life ebbed and flowed at the University, with many chapters being established in the 1920s, closing due to lack of interest, then reopening in the 1960s as fraternity and sorority life became more popular again.[3] As Greek life became a larger part of the day-to-day operations of the University, they were expected to take on more responsibilities like promoting civic engagement and progressive social policy. Greek life had remained apolitical through much of the early 1900s, but that could only last so long. By 1965, the Civil Rights Movement had already been changing the country for over five years. Universities in the South had already been forced to integrate by the federal government, but civil rights issues did not seem as pressing at schools like the University of Nebraska. There was a relatively low Black population, and the National Guard did not need to be sent in to enroll the first Black students. Aaron Douglas, the first Black student to graduate from the University of Nebraska, finished his fine arts degree in 1922 with little fanfare,[4] but as the Civil Rights Movement took the country by storm, racial issues at the University came into light in ways they had not in the past.

While classes might have been integrated, there was no mandate that clubs and student organizations had to be integrated too. Greek life was an obvious display of this. Fraternities and sororities had been created by white people, for white people and, by the 1960s, were already steeped in centuries of the tradition of exclusion. Chapters gave preference to legacies, potential new members whose parents or siblings were in that chapter, and, given that most chapters were established in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were racially exclusionary in their recruitment practices. Social and chapter dues that had to be paid regularly also ensured that only affluent students were involved in Greek chapters. Greek life could hardly be apolitical, and chapters were, and still are, constantly pushed to respond to the issues of the time. Given the service and involvement stressed by sororities and fraternities, civic engagement has been a part of Greek life for decades. In 1964, leading up to the presidential election between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, two Greek students organized a voting drive through the Junior Interfraternity Council and the Junior Panhellenic Council.[5] That same year, the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and the Panhellenic Council (PHA) required houses that did not have homecoming lawn displays to put yard signs encouraging voting in their front yards,[6] and throughout the 1960s Panhellenic brought in speakers to talk about civil rights to junior and senior members of Greek life.[7]

Much like the University, Greek life could not separate itself from politics. At a University of Nebraska Board of Regents meeting on April 16, 1965, the Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council both asked the Board of Regents to make regulations it deemed appropriate to ensure equity at the University. Despite this, they did not go nearly as far as to say they would try to do the same for the chapters under their control.[8] The Board of Regents subsequently unveiled an action plan for assessing the issue of racial bias in fraternity life, although sororities are never mentioned. There were three provisions as follows: investigate discriminatory requirements in national fraternities, work with students and Greek life to eliminate discriminatory requirements in recruitment, and present a report to the Board of Regents with the findings from the investigation. In January of 1965, the President of the Interfraternity Council wrote to Sigma Nu headquarters to inform them that the University was supporting a resolution against discrimination in Greek life.[9] Sigma Nu was the only fraternity on campus with a “white clause.”[10] A clause in Sigma Nu’s national bylaws prohibited nonwhite members. IFC acknowledged that they cannot change a national fraternity’s policies and that a strong national system is important to Greek life, but the University of Nebraska’s IFC would continue to advocate for racial inclusion in Greek life and the recruitment process.[11]

While the councils professed their desire that chapters use values-based recruiting, there was no action plan in IFC or PHA to ensure that happened. Instead, the councils punted responsibility to the Board of Regents. While the Board had more power over student organizations than IFC or PHA, there was next to no effort by the councils to make recruitment more equitable themselves. As Greek life expanded on campus in the early to mid 1960s, an absence of racially exclusionary restrictions was occasionally commended by the Board of Regents when new chapters were brought to the University, but it was not consistently recognized, and racially exclusionary chapters were scarcely punished. As is clear in the letter from Nebraska IFC to Sigma Nu Headquarters, there is little recourse for a university’s own Greek council to impose rules that contradict a national chapter’s constitution and bylaws. Nebraska IFC could do little else than write a letter to Sigma Nu Headquarters. The letter likened the national fraternity structure to federalism in the United States. Local chapters can make their own rules, but if the national chapter headquarters rejects them, or the local rules contradict the national rules, there is nothing a local chapter can do to change that.[12] It may seem like integrating Greek life at the University of Nebraska was doomed from the start because of the limited agency some chapters have, but local chapters can always try to push the envelope on issues not yet addressed by their nationals.

When the University was trying to make Greek life more inclusive, multiple governing bodies at the University tried to investigate the current practices of Greek chapters on campus. In 1965, the Board of Regents requested a report on racial exclusion in the constitution and bylaws of chapters.[13] Also in 1965, the Panhellenic Council sent a questionnaire out to chapters on racial clauses in their bylaws.[14] The report requested by the Board of Regents is not mentioned at all after the initial request, and the racial clause questionnaire is never addressed by Panhellenic after sending it to chapters. Every year IFC and PHA had rush reports with statistics on who went through recruitment, but these reports were never released to the general public and never seemed to be analyzed to adjust recruitment to make it more equitable or inclusive. The lack of initiative and follow up shows the tendency of organizations to seek change and progress in the moment and forget or choose not to see it through once the moment has passed. It is always hard to change things that have been the same for centuries and rely on tradition like Greek life, and as is often the case in activism, the changes that people want to see are harder to achieve than originally thought and are never seen through.

Because of the exclusion many people on color faced during recruitment, and the lack of action making recruitment more equitable, multicultural sororities and fraternities were established at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as early as 1916. Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically Black fraternity, was established at the University in 1916 in the face of exclusion and inequity in the new Greek system at the University. The second historically Black fraternity chapter established on campus was Alpha Phi Alpha in 1926.[15] They eventually became part of the Multicultural Greek Council (MGC). For decades, these chapters were the only chapters that were not historically white on campus, but there is no proof that they became any more or less popular during the Civil Rights Movement. The new multicultural fraternities were much smaller than the historically white fraternities on campus, and the two groups of fraternities did not work together. While historically white Greek life flourished in the 1960s, no new multicultural chapters were charted in that decade. Little was done to reach out and make connections between IFC, PHA, and MGC, which further entrenched the divide between historically white Greek life, historically multicultural Greek life, and students of color on campus.

While calls for the racial integration of Greek life at the University of Nebraska may have originated in the Civil Rights Movement, other universities did not have the same activism in Greek life. At many Southern universities, just admitting Black students into the school was met by violence and unrest from the local white population in the 1960s. At the University of Alabama, strides were not taken to integrate Greek life until 2013.[16] The University of Nebraska benefits by not having the extensive history of racial violence that Alabama has, but that does not mean that the integration of Greek life at the University of Nebraska was easy or necessarily successful. In 1991, the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska (ASUN) created a racial affairs subcommittee where one of the goals was “Promoting localized minority programs in such areas as fraternity and sorority system…”[17], but by 1992, 42.8% of Black students on campus said they did not feel part of social life on campus compared to 16.4% of non-minority student groups. That same year, 59.2% of Black students said that socially, campus needed to be more integrated.[18] It is clear that from 1965 to 1992, little changed in the integration of Greek life. More effort was put in by ASUN in the 1990s with the racial affairs subcommittee, but other than the UNL Racial Climate Survey, there are no reports on the progress made on the subcommittee’s goals. Yet again, Greek life and the University were faced with calls to make the fraternity and sorority system more equitable, but once the initial push was over, little progress was made and the goals were ultimately left unmet.

The history of the integration of Greek life at the University of Nebraska shows the cyclical nature of history. Calls for integration, inclusion, and equity in Greek life at the University originated in the 1960s, had a resurgence in the 1990s, and are again seeing a resurgence in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement. The national system of fraternities and sororities make it difficult for individual chapters to make changes on their own, 8 but often, even when the Greek councils or the University try to make changes, the extensiveness of the reforms are made clear and the drive to see the reforms to completion wanes. While calls for the integration of Greek life originated during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, little progress was ever actually made on the matter.

Endnotes

1. J.V. Dorsey, ed. “Greek Life at the University of Nebraska.” Nebraska U: A Collaborative History. University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives. Accessed March 30, 2022. https://unlhistory.unl.edu/xslt/xslt.php?&_xmlsrc=https%3A%2F%2Funlhistory.unl.edu%2Flegacy%2Funl.0001\3 %2Funl.00013.006.xml&_xslsrc=https%3A%2F%2Funlhistory.unl.edu%2Fxslt%2Funlhistory.xsl.
2. J.V. Dorsey, ed.
3. J.V. Dorsey, ed.
4. Amber Harris Leichner. “Aaron Douglas at the University of Nebraska.” Nebraska U: A Collaborative History. University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives. Accessed April 18, 2022. https://unlhistory.unl.edu/xslt/xslt.php?&_xmlsrc=https://unlhistory.unl.edu/legacy/unl.00005/unl.00005.xml&_xslsr c=https://unlhistory.unl.edu/xslt/unlhistory.xsl
5. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, The Cornhusker (Lincoln, NE: 1964), Page 207, University of Nebraska- Lincoln Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life.
6. Panhellenic Minutes, 5 October 1964, Panhellenic Minutes 1963-1965, Box 1, Folder Panhellenic Minutes 1964/65, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives, Lincoln.
7. Panhellenic Minutes, 11 January 1965, Panhellenic Minutes 1963-1965, Box 1, Folder Panhellenic Minutes 1964/65, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives, Lincoln.
8. Special Meeting, 16 April 1965, Board of Regents Minutes, Reel 112, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives, Lincoln.
9. Buzz Madson. Buzz Madson to Richard R. Fletcher, January 20, 1965. Letter. From University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives, Interfraternity Board of Control Correspondence 1964/65-1965/66.
10. Priscilla Mullins. “SC Urges Organizations To Omit Racial Restrictions.” Daily Nebraskan, January 14, 1965.
11. Buzz Madson.
12. Buzz Madson.
13. Special Meeting.
14. Panhellenic Minutes, 12 April 1965, Panhellenic Minutes 1963-1965, Box 1, Folder Panhellenic Minutes 1964/65, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives, Lincoln.
15. Suzanna Adams. “Multicultural Greek Presence Grows at UNL.” The Daily Nebraskan. September 24, 2003. https://www.dailynebraskan.com/multicultural-greek-presence-grows-at-unl/article_81e3cb35-513c-57e4- a595-ab32faff3788.html.
16. Victor Luckerson. “University of Alabama Moves to End Segregated Sorority System.” Time. Time, September 16, 2013. https://nation.time.com/2013/09/16/university-of-alabama-moves-to-end-segregated-sororitysystem/. 10
17. Gene Collins. Gene Collins to Student Organizations & Advisors, Racial Affairs Subcommittee, ASUN Senators, ASUN Speaker, October 29, 1991. Letter. From University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives, Student Government 1991-1992.
18. UNL Racial Climate Survey, Spring 1992, Box 65, Folder Racial Climate Surveys, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Archives, Lincoln.

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