About Alpha

  The Origin of Alpha Phi Alpha

       At the beginning of the school year, 1905-1906, at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, a group of students, distributed among the various colleges of the university, were desirous of maintaining more intimate contact with one another than their classroom study permitted. They often met in small groups during the autumn of 1905 and talked of the possibilities of closer contacts among themselves. Different ones among them took the lead in calling these meetings, which were informal in every detail.

                 As students in a large American university, they were cut off from many of the opportunities for mutual helpfulness which come to groups of students through personal contacts and close association.  As individuals, there were personal contacts of value with other members of the student body, but as a group, they were self-supporting, and their resources were limited.  If membership in the university fraternal association had been permissible, it is probable that advantage could not have been taken of the opportunity.  Confronted by social proscriptions of race common to American institutions of this era, hampered by limited means with the attendant circumstances of the average “poor” student, these students faced the future and boldly endeavored to find a way out of the difficulties, scarcely realizing, however, the importance of their action on subsequent generations of college students.  Despite the difficulties of organization in this untried field of student life, on December 4, 1906, the seven visionary founders, Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelly, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle, and Vertner Woodson Tandy, succeeded in laying a firm foundation and remained steadfast in their goals, serving as the catalyst of the development of the Fraternity’s membership.

                The Fraternity has grown steadily in influence throughout the years. It integrated its membership by race in 1945 and has expanded mightily to the extent where there are now approximately 700 chapters located throughout the United States, Caribbean islands, Africa, Asia, Europe and the West Indies.

                Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, is the oldest intercollegiate fraternal Greek letter organization founded by African Americans. Its universal goals of manly deeds, scholarship, and love for all mankind have propelled it historically in leading the struggle for social and academic advancement for over 100 years.

                A few notable “Sons of Alpha” include; civil rights activist, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; abolitionist, Frederick Douglass; educator, Dr W.E.B. DuBois; musician, Edward “Duke” Ellington; actor, orator and singer, Paul Robeson; former UN ambassador and mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young; former New York mayor, David Dinkins; former mayors of New Orleans, Ernest and Marc Morial; NFL Players Associations Director, Eugene Upshaw; General Roscoe C. Cartwright; General Johnnie Wilson; singer, Jerry “Iceman” Butler; entertainer, Lionel Ritchie; and many other notable brothers.

First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All