Alpha Chi Pi Omega Sorority and Fraternity of Illinois Incorporated is a Greek-lettered national service organization dedicated to the development of hair care and Beauty professionals and the advancement and promotion of the entire beauty industry throughout the United States. Alpha Chi Pi Omega was established on October 27, 1945 in Washington, DC in the headquarters of the National Council of Negro women, by our beloved and legendary originating founder Dr. Marjorie Stewart Joyner and her co- founders, renowned educator Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and United States Congressman William Dawson.
In 1945, Dr. Marjorie Stewart Joyner embarked upon her greatest and most enduring contribution to Black America and to the entire nation, as a whole, when she founded with the help of her close friend and mentor, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and longtime political comrade U.S. Congressman William L. Dawson, the Alpha
Chi Pi Omega Sorority and Fraternity and the United Beauty School Owners and Teachers Association. She beheld the need for concerted action among the members of her profession and recognized that the times in which they lived dictated a united and cohesive movement of black women, centered around a shared vision of beauty and culture. For many years, she and other African Americans of her profession had been cold shouldered and barred from joining the various White trade associations, and we’re treated as outcasts in the very industry they had helped to develop and maintain. But Dr. Marjorie Stewart Joyner would not be denied.
She envisioned a network of well-organized black Beauticians Barbers, salon owners, and Beauty School directors and instructors, empowered not just to “do hair”, but to affect and influence the images of black society and culture everywhere and at every level.
On January 8, 1952, the organization known as the Alpha Chi Pi Omega Sorority and Fraternity was incorporated.