Zeta phi beta founders day

How it works

Five Howard University students — Arizona Cleaver Stemons, Pearl Anna Neal, Myrtle Tyler Faithful, Viola Tyler Goings, and Fannie Pettie Watts — met as a sanctioned organization on 16 January 1920 and named it Zeta Phi Beta. Members call them the Five Pearls. The principles they set were scholarship, service, sisterhood, and finer womanhood. Founders Day is the yearly return of that square. Chapters hold programs, wear royal blue and white, and talk about the Pearls. The date does not slide to a convenient Saturday. When 16 January is a weekday, the commemorations sit on that weekday or on a nearby weekend the chapter chose. The anniversary itself stays the 16th.

From Thursday 3 September 2026 the 2026 Founders Day, a Friday, is already past. The next 16 January is Saturday 16 January 2027, one hundred and thirty-five days from this Thursday. A Saturday makes public programs easier. It does not create a civic closing. Howard University may greet the day; federal offices elsewhere stay on their ordinary calendar.

Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated, is one of the four historically Black sororities in the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the Divine Nine. It is constitutionally bound to Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Incorporated, a sister-and-brother tie the organization treats as unique among those councils. Founders Day is not Sigma’s founding date. Do not merge the two calendars because the bond exists.

What a chapter actually does that week

Local schedules differ. What repeats is the names of the Pearls, the colours, the dove, the white rose, and some form of service. A banquet is common. A church visit, a scholarship mention, a community project under Z-HOPE or another named program may sit on the same weekend. None of that is required of a stranger on the street. If you are not a member, you do not owe a tribute. If you are a member, your chapter’s notice is the document, not a generic “founders day for zeta phi beta” search result from last year.

Date: 16 January every year (next: Saturday 16 January 2027). Place of founding: Howard University, Washington, D.C. Founders: the Five Pearls named above. Colours and symbols in ordinary chapter use: royal blue and white, the dove, the white rose.

Not on the U.S. federal holiday list, and not a school closing unless that campus said so. The sorority’s own histories also list firsts it claims: a chapter chartered in Africa in 1948, adult and youth auxiliaries, a centralized national headquarters, and that constitutional bond with Phi Beta Sigma. Those are organizational facts members recite on Founders Day. They are not a public statute. Reciting them at a dinner does not make 16 January a bank holiday.

Wear the colours if you have the right to. Do not treat 16 January as a day the rest of the country called in sick.

How not to confuse it with other January Greek dates

Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, and Zeta Phi Beta were all founded at Howard, and two of the others also sit in January. That cluster is a campus history, not one shared feast. Check the numeral. 16 January is Zeta’s. A “Divine Nine founders day” mega-event is a program someone scheduled. It does not move Zeta’s anniversary off the 16th, and it does not cancel the others.

If you need a hall, read the chapter flyer for 2027. If you need a day off, ask your employer; the answer will almost always be no, with the 16th falling on a Saturday in 2027 anyway. If you need the next date from this Thursday, it is 16 January 2027. Write the Pearls’ names before you write the party theme. The day is a founding. The party is optional.