history

Since it’s founding on December 4, 1906, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. has supplied voice and vision to the struggle of African-American and people of colour around the world.

Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greekletter fraternity established for African-Americans and people of colour, was founded at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York by seven college men who recognized the need for a strong bond of Brotherhood among African descendants in the United States of America. The visionary founders, known as 'Jewels' of the Fraternity, are: Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelly, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle and Vertner Woodson Tandy.

The Fraternity initially served as a study and support group for minority students who faced racial prejudice, both educationally and socially at Cornell. The Jewel founders and early leaders of the Fraternity succeeded in laying a firm foundation for Alpha Phi Alpha’s principles of scholarship, fellowship, good character, and the uplifting of humanity.

Alpha Phi Alpha chapters were established at other colleges and universities, many of them historically black institutions, soon after the founding at Cornell. The first Alumni Chapter was established in 1911. While continuing to stress academic excellence among its members, Alpha also recognized the need to help correct the educational, economic, political and social justices faced by African-Americans and men of colour.
Alpha Phi Alpha has long stood at the forefront of the African-American community’s fight for civil rights through leaders such as: W. E. B. DuBois, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Edward Brooke, Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Andrew Young, William Gray, Paul Robeson, and many others. True to its form as the “first of first”, Alpha Phi Alpha has been interracial since in 1945.

The objectives of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. are to stimulate the ambition of its members; to prepare them for greatest usefulness in the causes of humanity, freedom and dignity of the individuals; to encourage the highest and noblest form of manhood: and to aid down-trodden humanity in its efforts to achieve higher social, economic, and intellectual status.

More than 175,000 men have joined the ranks of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. since it’s founding in 1906. The Fraternity is international in scope, with chapter in more than 700 colleges and communities throughout the world including: The United States, Bermuda, The Bahamas, The Caribbean, Europe and Asia.