Pioneering West African Artist Kathleen Easmon Simango Was One of Zeta Phi Beta’s Earliest Honorary Members

Did you know that a pioneering West African artist and educator was among the earliest honorary members of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.? Her name was Kathleen Mary Easmon Simango, and she made history on two continents.

Kathleen Mary Easmon Simango was born on August 9, 1891, in Accra, in what was then the Gold Coast and is today Ghana. She came from the distinguished Sierra Leone Creole Easmon family and was the niece of the educator and activist Adelaide Casely-Hayford. Educated in England, she went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London, where she became the first West African to earn a diploma from the celebrated institution.

Easmon Simango was gifted in many arts. She began writing poetry as a teenager, and the acclaimed composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a friend of her family, set some of her verses to music. She worked as an artist and designer and devoted herself to the cause of education for African girls, traveling and lecturing to build support for schooling in West Africa. Her brilliance was widely recognized; her obituary in the Times of London described her as one of the most cultured women West Africa had yet produced.

It was during this period of travel and advocacy that she was embraced by the Divine Nine. According to Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Easmon Simango was inducted as an honorary member of the sorority in 1920, the very year of its founding, making her one of the earliest honorary members in the organization’s history. The sorority remembers her as an artist and an educational pioneer in Africa.

Easmon Simango married Columbus Kamba Simango, an educator who had studied at the Hampton Institute and Columbia University, and together they championed African education and culture.

Kathleen Mary Easmon Simango died on July 20, 1924, in London, at just 32 years old. Though her life was brief, Zeta Phi Beta’s Kathleen Easmon Simango left a lasting mark as an artist, an educator, and a bridge between Africa and the African diaspora.