By SAMUEL MORTEL
On the night of one of the most unpredictable elections in American history, hundreds of millions of people were glued to their screens, waiting to see whether Donald Trump would retake the Oval Office or if Americans would elect their first female president. One small bar in Queens was full of people who were hoping for the latter.
Nettie’s Bar and Restaurant is a small, black-owned establishment in Queens Village on the eastern edge of the borough. Nettie’s is a bar with peculiar hours. Every other week it’s closed from Monday to Wednesday, but Nettie’s decided to break from their usual routine on election night, staying open that Tuesday from 8pm to midnight.
There was a packed crowd at the bar for the start of the evening, almost all of the attendees were wearing red or blue letterman jackets, though. Nothing on the event poster or the Nettie’s Instagram post for the watch party indicated that it would be specifically held for or by any fraternities or sororities.
According to Danny Lumis, owner of Nettie’s Restaurant and Bar and Brooklyn College alumnus, he was just as surprised as anyone. “Well, each one told [another] one, and they all happened to be fraternities, and that’s basically what literally happened,” said Lumis. “It wasn’t exclusively to frats or sororities but they showed up.”
Through word of mouth, this event at a local bar turned from a standard watch party to a reunion of sorts for members of the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) or the Divine Nine. The Divine Nine is a council of four sororities and five fraternities all founded at Howard University. Kamala Harris herself is a notable member of one of these sororities, Alpha Kappa Alpha (commonly referred to as the AKAs). It seems some members of other parts of the Divine Nine decided this bar would be the place to cheer on a candidate who was one of their own.
Throughout the night, the crowd hooted and hollered whenever a state was called for Harris, the largest cheers being when New York went blue. These were small, predictable victories but they still meant a lot to those in the crowd. Each state Harris picked up added to the chances that a member of the Divine Nine could become president.
But as the night wore on, those chances started to slim dramatically.
At a certain point reality started to set in, and the mood in the bar shifted. North Carolina was going to Trump, Georgia was doing the same, and many other key swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan weren’t looking too good either. By 11 pm, it was becoming clear that Kamala Harris, VP and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, would not be the President of the United States Of America.
Slices of a cake with the words “Madam President!!” started to be handed out, the number of red and blue letterman jackets started dwindling from the bar, and the 2024 election was coming to a close. Something that wasn’t lost, however, was community. Danny Lumis opened Nettie’s Restaurant and Bar two years ago as a place to bring the local community together, and on election night, regardless of the outcome, he did just that. One sorority member could be heard saying “At least I have a group of people to go crazy with me!” as she was leaving the restaurant. “Just to see so many people involved in the election process was mind blowing,” said Lumis.