A Brief History of Alpha Phi Alpha

Alpha Phi Alpha Fratenity, Incorporated was founded on the cold and snowy night of December 4, 1906 by Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle and Vertner Woodson Tandy. The founders of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. were no ordinary achievers. These phenomenal men lived in a time when African Americans could be overtly persecuted by a population that knew they could inflict harm on them, without fear of being accused of a crime. Despite these circumstances, these men and their brotherhood persevered and thrived.

As founder Henry Arthur Callis euphemistically stated—because the half-dozen African American students at Cornell University during the school year 1904-05 did not return to campus the following year, the incoming students in 1905-06, in founding Alpha Phi Alpha, were determined to bind themselves together to ensure that each would survive in the racially hostile environment.

In coming together with this simple act, they preceded by decades the emergence of such on-campus programs as affirmative action, upward bound and remedial assistance. The students set outstanding examples of scholarship, leadership and success—preceding the efforts even of the NAACP and similar civil rights organizations.