NATIONAL LEGACY & HISTORY

In the spring of 1919, during a stroll on the campus of Howard University, in Washington, D.C. Charles Robert Samuel Taylor, member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, shared with Arizona Cleaver an idea for a new sister organization. Arizona presented this idea to Pearl Anna Neal, Myrtle Tyler, Viola Tyler, and Fannie Pettie, and a new sisterhood was formed On January 16, 1920.  Both Charles Taylor and Langston Taylor, members of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, provided support and encouragement to five phenomenal women; Arizona Cleaver Stemons, Pearl Anna Neal, Myrtle Tyler Faithful, Viola Tyler Goings, and Fannie Pettie Watts. These five women dared to depart from the traditional coalitions for black women and sought to establish a new organization predicated on the precepts of Scholarship, Service, Sisterhood and Finer Womanhood. It was the idea of the Founders that the Sorority would reach college women in all parts of the country who were sorority-minded and desired to follow the founding principles of the organization. 
Since its inception, the Sorority has chronicled a number of firsts. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated was the first Greek-letter organization to charter a chapter in Africa (1948); to form adult and youth auxiliary groups; and to centralize its operations in a national headquarters.