THE SIGMA CHAPTER CENTENNIAL
as Sigma Chapter Polemarch [1933] while earning a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1934. • The Eighth Northern Province Polemarch [1946-1952] Floyd H. Penick (Sigma 1932). Penick attended Michigan State Normal School, where he ran track. Also, during this time, Founder Byron K. Armstrong, at age 48, earned his Ph.D. in 1940 from the University of Michigan. During its first quarter-century, un- dergraduate and post-graduate students at Michigan and Michigan State Normal comprised Sigma Chapter. Many of the chapter's post-graduate members enrolled at Michigan due to "segregation scholarships." Southern states provided these "segregation scholarships" to Afri- can American post-graduate students to avoid integrating its schools or to provide 'separate but equal' in-state options." "Sigma Chapter…because of its transient members now has only five brothers [in 1945-46], none of whom are undergraduates. It has been dif- ficult over a period of years to maintain a chapter at the University of Michigan because, as heretofore mentioned, the brothers come and go with much frequency," stated the 7 th Northern Prov- ince Polemarch Theodore R. Owens Michigan State Normal School In addition, students from the Michigan State Normal School (later
Kappa Alpha Psi Journal: October 1954
changed in 1959 to Eastern Michigan University) in nearby Ypsilanti, MI, also comprised the Sigma Chapter. Brothers were known to hitchhike the six-mile distance between the two campuses. This arrangement ended in May 1955 when the Grand Board of Directors ap- proved the Northern Province's petition to establish the Michigan State Normal School Chapter, the Delta Nu of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. Post-World War II After years of unsuccessful attempts to revitalize the chapter, the Seventh Northern Province Polemarch Theodore R. Owens of Detroit (MI) Alumni, his successor Floyd H. Penick and Detroit (MI) Alumni implemented plans to
restart the Sigma Chapter in the years immediately following the end of World War II. In a 1947 Kappa Alpha Psi Jour- nal article, Penick stated: "The most important business to the Northern Province, after coming home from the New York Conclave [Decem- ber 1946], was reviving Sigma Chapter at the University of Michigan. Brother Owens and I made four different trips to Ann Arbor to confer with Brother Charles Swinger Conley (Beta Zeta 1941) and Brother Claudius Britt (Alpha Pi 1938) and attended a very impres- sive smoker for the pledgees. Brothers Conley and Britt were the driving forces behind the seven pledgees who were finally initiated on April 5 at the Kappa Kastle in Detroit."
Source: Michigan Chronicle 1954
Kappa Alpha Psi Journal: October 1954
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