McClure, Cubena

Impact on the world

Co-founded Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority at Butler University in 1922, hosting the new organization's first initiation ceremony at her own home and helping design its official pin; she won the prestigious Gregg Scholarship intending to use it to pursue further study at Columbia University, but died just weeks after an appendicitis operation in August 1924, before she ever had the chance to use it.

Life & background

A graduate of Shortridge High School and the Indianapolis City Normal School who went on to study briefly at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, McClure joined six fellow Black educators in 1922 to found Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, hosting the group's first initiation ceremony at her own home and contributing directly to the design of the sorority's official pin alongside fellow founder Nannie Mae Gahn Johnson. She taught at several Indianapolis schools over the following three years and was selected as one of only five instructors for a special supervisory project at School No. 24, while attending Butler University for a single term in 1923. Her academic promise earned her the Gregg Scholarship, which she had planned to use to pursue further study at Columbia University, but in August 1924, only a few weeks after undergoing an operation for appendicitis, she died, never living to use the opportunity she had earned; she remains honored among Sigma Gamma Rho's founding 'Seven Pearls' alongside six women who went on to live full careers she was denied.

Sources

1. Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority (Alpha Chapter; Los Angeles Alumnae Chapter); The Butler Collegian (Butler University)