Lyle also founded the West Philadelphia chapter of the League of Women Voters and the Mothers Club in the city.

All these activities helped create social capital in the city in a time of rapid growth and population changes.

[3] She was the first student from Sumner to receive a scholarship to Howard University, a highly ranked historically black college.

Hedgeman went to Howard at a time when only one in three hundred African Americans and 5% of whites of eligible age attended any college.

Throughout college, she belonged to Howard's choir, YWCA, and the Christian Endeavor,[clarification needed] as well as participating in drama plays.

She was inspired by the accounts of Miss Ethel Tremaine Robinson, a faculty member at Howard who shared her sorority experiences at Brown University.

[5] On June 21, 1911, Ethel Hedgeman married George Lyle, whom she had dated in high school and college.

She helped found civic institutions such as the West Philadelphia League of Women Voters and the Mother's Club of the city.

[5] As national treasurer of Alpha Kappa Alpha from 1923 to 1946, Lyle helped lead the sorority through years of rapid social change, including the Great Migration of more than a million African Americans from the South to the North, the Depression and challenges of World War II.

)[9][11] Lyle's leadership skills were called on in 1937, when the Mayor of Philadelphia appointed her to chair the Committee of 100 Women, organized to plan the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Adoption of the U.S.