In the beginning, there was

Alpha Phi Alpha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated, the first intercollegiate Greek Letter fraternity established for Black college students, was founded on the campus of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, on December 4th, 1906. The first unit of this national fraternity, organized by college men of Afro-American descent, was called "Alpha Chapter." Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity was born out of the desire for maintaining close association and a unified support for members of this small minority group, inasmuch as they were denied, for the most part, the mutual helpfulness which the majority of the students attending their university regularly enjoyed.

 

The seven visionary founders at Cornell, Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle, and Vertner Woodson Tandy, labored in the years of severe economic struggle and racial conflict in the United State. Despite their difficulties of organization in this untried field of student life, the early fraternity pioneers succeeded in laying a firm foundation and remained steadfast in their goals pointing towards development of the Fraternity's membership - that is the espousing of the principles of good character, sound scholarship, fellowship, and the uplifting of humanity, especially the struggling Black minority in the United States.

 

The Fraternity has grown steadily in influence throughout the years, it integrated its racial membership in 1945; it has expanded mightily to the extent that there are now more than 700 chapters scattered throughout the U.S., Canada, Virgin Islands, Africa, Asia, Europe, ant the West Indies.