The Men of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity - Pride and History

The Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity started in 1906 with seven African American men, now called the "seven jewels," who were students at Cornell University. The now hundred-year old Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity began with the following founding fathers: Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle, and Vertner Woodson Tandy.

These students found that people of color needed to support each other at Cornell University in 1906, and help fight racial injustices that were prevelent at that time. In 1905, there had been only six minority students enrolled at Cornell University; in 1906 none of them returned the following year as a result of racial injustice and inequalities. In 1906, knowing they would face many hardships and difficulties as they struggled to get a quality education during this harsh time of racial prejudices, Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and legal discrimination, the seven new minority students banded together in 1906 to form a study group and support each other at the otherwise all-white school. This was the core groups that became Alpha Phi Alpha and founded the organization.