Changes

(1859-1937)

At the 1881 Convention, years before the portrait was painted, Tade Hartsuff was an eager, vivacious, black-eyed collegian, her dark curly hair pulled into long ringlets that fell down her back. Changing the Fraternity’s Bylaws to a Grand Council form of government wasn’t the only revolutionary idea Tade put forth as Mu delegate in 1881. The first business recorded in the Convention minutes concerns the founding of a Fraternity publication, a proposal that originated with a committee Tade chaired. In adopting the idea, Kappa Kappa Gamma became the first women’s fraternity to publish a magazine. As Minnetta Taylor, DePauw, wrote of the 1881 Convention in the first issue of The Golden Key, “Miss Hartsuff and I found a common sympathy. She was a red-hot radical, or rather improver, and I was a white-hot one. We both believed with all our hearts and minds and souls in the new woman and her future.”

The strength of Kappa Kappa Gamma can be traced to the vivacious leadership and foresight of Tade Hartsuff Kuhns, a woman whose life is an inspiration not only for Kappas but for all women.