The former St. Louis home of Ethel Hedgemon Lyle, founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated (AKA), the country’s first African American sorority, will be turned into an African American women’s museum.
The $4 million project is a partnership between The Gamma Omega chapter of AKA and the Ivy Alliance Foundation, the sorority’s nonprofit. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the empty home at 2844 St. Louis Avenue in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood is being converted into a museum dedicated to Black American women. An adjacent 12,000-square-foot community center which will offer job assistance and skills training will also be built.
“For over a hundred years, we have been providing service to mankind,” said AKA member Tracey Clark Jefferies, in reference to the sorority’s mission. “Now the community will know where to find us.”
Lyle grew up in St. Louis and graduated from Howard University, where she co-founded the sorority with eight of her classmates in 1908. Gamma Omega was founded in St. Louis in 1920 and now has hundreds of members. According to Jefferies, the organization assists the underserved throughout the region and frequently collaborates with the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and the NAACP.
Jefferies found the three-story home after a decade-long search for a home base for the Ivy Alliance Foundation and was surprised to see it still standing because it had been “tagged for demolition.”
The Lyle house was owned at the time by developer Paul McKee and his company Northside Regeneration before being sold to the sorority.
McKee told the Post-Dispatch that he saw this as a “rare opportunity to support their initiative.”
He assisted the AKAs in connecting with Sensient Technologies Corp., the landowner of the block where the Lyle home is located, which reportedly sold its land to the sorority as part of a “lifetime partnership” opportunity, according to Sensient General Manager Matt Bartoe.
The group will reportedly work with Sensient to aid residents obtaining potential job opportunities at the company.
Lyle’s house, which will become the museum, is being renovated. According to Jefferies, construction on the community center will begin next fall and be completed by the summer of 2024.
“Developing underdeveloped areas is a great thing. What we hope is that the people of the community will be able to benefit from it,” Jefferies said. “We want to be there to help them benefit from it.”
The group will kick off the community center with a land dedication ceremony open to the public on December 2.
