Arizona Cleaver Stemons
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Arizona Cleaver Stemons | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1898 Pike County, Missouri |
| Died | March 1980 (aged 81–82) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
Arizona Cleaver Stemons (1898 – March 1980), born Arizona Leedonia Cleaver, was an American social worker. While she was a student at Howard University in 1920, she was one of the five founding members of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority, and its first president.
Arizona Leedonia Cleaver was born in Pike County, Missouri,[1] and raised in Hannibal, Missouri.[2][3]
Career
Arizona Cleaver was one of the "Five Pearls", the founding members of Zeta Phi Beta, when it began at Howard University in 1920.[4] She was the sorority's first chapter president, and its first Grand Basileus (national president).[5][6]
She organized the Philadelphia graduate chapter of Zeta, and remained active nationally as the sorority's first president emerita for several decades,[7][8][9] and was a popular speaker at Zeta events into her seventies.[10][11] "This country of ours," she said in a speech in 1952, "must oppose movements that divide the races and seek an economy that will feed, clothe, and house the nation, without regard to race, creed, or national origin."[12]
After 1933 she worked as a social worker in Philadelphia, working with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children[13] and for the city's Department of Public Welfare.[14]
