CNN entertainment | Phylicia Rashād on the legacy of the AKAs highlighted in the ‘Twenty Pearls’ documentary

(CNN) – Phylicia Rashād pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Howard University in Washington, DC in 1968, yet it took narrating a new documentary about the organization before she learned some of its earliest history.

“When you pledge a fraternity or a sorority, you learn the names of the founders and the year in which it was founded,” she told CNN. “But the detailed history that’s in this documentary, we did not learn that as pledgees.”

“Twenty Pearls” tells the story of the first Black sorority, which was founded in 1908 by nine women enrolled at Howard University.  —read more— 

“Twenty Pearls”

read more—