Onyx Steppers at the
Pink Diamond's Holiday Celebration and Toy Drive 
December 2006



Founders and Directors

Malissa Wilson

Director of Programs
Youth Development

Malissa_Wilson@pinkdiamondsstepteam.com


Alicia Harrison

Director of Events
Public Relations

Alicia_Harrison@pinkdiamondsstepteam.com


Volunteers

Samentha Buissereth
Step Team Coordinator
Dance Choreographer


 



What is Stepping?

"At first try, to describe what stepping is can be rather difficult. Some are prone to equate it with the theatrical show "Stomp," while others consider it a branch of military drill or dancing. While these references help initial understanding, step performances have unique qualities on their own right.

Basically, a step is a collection of rhythms made by using the hands and feet, and occasionally props such as canes. Responding to chants or calls, a team stomps their feet or claps hands to a base beat along with moving into different formations. In actuality there is more to stepping than this and the rich history of this form of entertainment is rather interesting.
 
Stepping has its beginnings in the early African American slave community as a means of communication and keeping hold of traditional aspects of the denied culture. It served mainly as a link back to African tribal dance, which in many areas was prohibited. Call-and-response folk songs helped the slaves to survive culturally and to spread word about important matters, such as the Underground Railroad. Several generations later, Black World War II veterans added in a military march theme to the sounds, while Motown grooves and Hip-Hop energy added more entertainment and increased the appeal of the art form.

In the late 1960s, historically Black fraternities and sororities began embracing stepping at college campuses. Previously using step shows as a rite of passage for pledges, the Black Greek letter system has a strong role in the college step scene. There are often specific steps to each chapter and sometimes the groups playfully mock each other's styles during competitions and benefits.

Overall, stepping in these organizations provides an enjoyable bonding experience. Younger audiences have created teams at the high school level as well."
-Joseph Bufanda



The History of Stepping

The following are excerpts from "A History of Stepping," by Elizabeth C. Fine, Ph.D., from her book Soulstepping: African American Step Shows (copyright 2003) published by the University of Illinois Press.

People give widely varying answers to the simple question, when and where did stepping begin? Some say that they have always stepped and that it goes back to Africa. Others relate it to African American fraternity and sorority pledging rituals of marching online, and date it to the 1940's. While many African movement and communication patterns are clearly evident in stepping, the tradition was forged on college campuses in black fraternities and sororities out of the African heritage of speech, song, and dance. The ritual performance of stepping in black Greek-letter societies may have developed in part from African American Masonic rituals. The first initiation held by Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, founded in 1906, was held at the Masonic Hall, also known as Odd Fellows Hall and Red Men's Hall. During the initiation "the lockers of the lodge were broken open in order that attire more suited to the purpose than civilian clothing might be secured." This close association with an African American Masonic society suggests that early fraternities and sororities may have modeled some of their rituals on those of other secret societies of the time. Since, as Jacqui Malone demonstrates, mutual aid societies were known for their competitive drill teams, it is possible that the black Greek-letter society tradition of marching online, from which stepping likely evolved, may have been borrowed from such societies. Indeed, noting the popularity of drill teams in African American communities, Lawrence Ross says, "I would assume that stepping actually came from drill team movements."

The earliest written reference to public ritual dancing by pledges at Howard University that might indeed be stepping appears in the 1925 student newspaper, the Hilltop. In an article called "Hell-Week," Van Taylor describes the pledging activities of Omega Psi Phi and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternities: "What desire is this that will cause young men, stalwart of frame, and rugged of heart and mind, demurely and aesthetically to dance about the campus as if in time to the fairy Pipes of Pan?"3 The phrase "the fairy Pipes of Pan" suggests that the men are performing to a music or beat that only they can hear; as in stepping, there is no accompanying music. Since the Hilltop only began publishing in 1924, it is difficult to know exactly when pledges performed movements that would be considered stepping. But it is interesting to note that within 18 years of the formation of the first Black Greek-letter society, a public ritual dance associated with pledging was performed by two fraternities at Howard University.

Stepping evolved at different rates on various campuses. Kappa Alpha Psi member Thomas Harville, who pledged at West Virginia State College, says that in 1940, his fraternity participated in group singing, often while they were holding hands or moving in a circle, but they did not step. Another Kappa said that his fraternity began stepping in the 1940s and developed stepping from marching on line while pledging to the group: "Through the years brothers added singing and dancing, and in recent years we started using canes when we step." This information corroborates a claim in a Wall Street Journal article that stepping's "synchronized and syncopated moves date back to the 1940s, when lines of fraternity pledges marched in lockstep around campus in a rite of initiation." Julian Bond reports that he could remember stepping contests when he was a student at Morehouse in the late 1950s. Alpha Kappa Alpha member Anne Mitchum Davis, who pledged at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, states that her sorority did not step in the 1950s, but they did do "synchronized dancing," which was more like ballet, than the "stomping kinds of things" that men did. Fraternity alumni working at Virginia Tech in 1984 recall that at their various colleges and universities in the 1950s, blocking or stepping was mainly a singing event, with some movement, usually in a circle.