Alpha Phi Alpha is the first intercollegiate fraternity established by African Americans. Founded on December 4, 1906, on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as a social fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha has initiated over 175,000 men into the organization and has been open to men of all races since 1940. The fraternity utilizes motifs and artifacts from Ancient Egypt to represent the organization and preserves its archives at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, which is located on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C.

 

The founders, Henry Callis, Charles Chapman, Eugene Jones, George Kelley, Nathaniel Murray, Robert Ogle, and Vertner Tandy, are collectively known as the "Seven Jewels". The fraternity expanded when it chartered a second chapter at Howard University and a third chapter chartered at Virginia Union University in 1907. Beginning in 1908, Alpha Phi Alpha became the prototype for other Black Greek Letter Organizations. Today, there are over 680 active Alpha chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, the West Indies, and the Virgin Islands.

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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 principles of scholarship, fellowship, good character, and the uplifting of humanity.

 

Alpha Phi Alpha chapters were developed at other colleges and universities, many of them historically black institutions, soon after the founding at Cornell. While continuing to stress academic excellence among its members, Alpha also recognized the need to help correct the educational, economic, political, and social injustices faced by African-Americans.

 

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.