What does “Boule” mean?

the oldest Black fraternity, and shorthand for the Black professional class

Entry · catalog no. 5230

Boule

/ /buːˈleɪ/ /boo-LAY

noun · Philadelphia, spreading nationwide · 1900s

✓ Verified

Sigma Pi Phi, the Black professional fraternity founded in 1904, and by extension its local chapters and its members. In wider Black speech it is a metonym for the Black professional elite as a class — said admiringly, neutrally or with an edge, depending entirely on who is saying it.

“Half the doctors in that city are Boule.”

Origin & Attribution

Philadelphia, 15 May 1904, founded by the pharmacist Henry McKee Minton with Algernon B. Jackson, Edwin C. Howard and Richard J. Warrick. It is the oldest Black Greek-letter organization, predating the Divine Nine, and it was built for mid-career Black physicians, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers and educators shut out of white professional and social associations. Members are called Archons, chapters are Boules, and the biennial national meeting is the Grand Boule. The name is the Greek boule, a council. From Philadelphia it spread to Chicago, Baltimore, Memphis and Atlanta and now runs to more than 130 chapters and roughly 5,000 members.

1904

Sigma Pi Phi is founded in Philadelphia, the first Black Greek-letter organization

1912

The Boule Journal begins publication

1954

Charles H. Wesley publishes the fiftieth-anniversary history of the fraternity

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

Philadelphia, spreading nationwide · 1900s

Spoken by

Black physicians, lawyers, dentists, educators and their families; Black professional and social circles generally

$BOULEThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Steady

122 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

38/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1904

in the culture

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@auntiereg

Atlanta, GA

@deltasoul

Memphis, TN

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Citations & Sources

■

Charles H. Wesley, History of Sigma Pi Phi, First of the Negro-American Greek-Letter Fraternities

1954

■

Lawrence Otis Graham, Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class (HarperCollins)

1999

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