page_title: Alpha Phi Alpha
section_title: Notable members
hierarchical_section_title: Alpha Phi Alpha / Membership / Notable members
caption_attribution_description: English: View of part of w:Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans.
context_page_description: Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated is the first historically African American intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved into a fraternity with a founding date of December 4, 1906, at Cornell. It employs an icon from Ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza, as its symbol. Its aims are "Manly Deeds, Scholarship, and Love For All Mankind," and its motto is "First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All." Its archives are preserved at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.
  Chapters were chartered at Howard University and Virginia Union University in 1907. The fraternity has over 290,000 members and has been open to men of all races since 1945. Currently, there are more than 730 active chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia. It is the largest predominately African-American intercollegiate fraternity and one of the ten largest intercollegiate fraternities in the nation.
context_section_description: The fraternity's membership roster includes activist Dick Gregory, Princeton Professor Cornel West, Congressman Charles B. Rangel, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel Pierce, celebrity physician Corey Hébert, entrepreneur John Johnson, athlete Mike Powell, musician Donny Hathaway, United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young, the first Premier of Bermuda Sir Edward T. Richards, and Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson.
  Roland Burris became the only black member of the 2009 U.S. Senate when he assumed the seat vacated by President Barack Obama.
  Alpha men were instrumental in the founding and leadership of the NAACP (Du Bois), People's National Party (PNP) Norman Manley, Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) (Jesse E. Moorland), UNCF (Frederick D. Patterson), and the SCLC (King, Walker and Jemison). The National Urban League has had eight leaders in its more than 100 years of existence; six of its leaders are Alpha men: George Haynes, Eugene K. Jones, Lester Granger, Whitney Young, Hugh Price and Marc Morial.
  From the ranks of the fraternity have come a number of pioneers in various fields. Honorary member Kelly Miller was the first African American to be admitted to Johns Hopkins University. Todd Duncan was the first actor to play "Porgy" in Porgy and Bess. During the Washington run of Porgy and Bess in 1936, the cast — as led by Todd Duncan — protested the audience's segregation. Duncan stated that he "would never play in a theater which barred him from purchasing tickets to certain seats because of his race." Eventually management would give into the demands and allow for the first integrated performance at the National Theatre.
  Charles Houston, a Harvard Law School graduate and a law professor at Howard University, first began a campaign in the 1930s to challenge racial discrimination in the federal courts. Houston's campaign to fight Jim Crow Laws began with Plessy v. Ferguson and culminated in a unanimous Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
  Ron Dellums' campaign to end the racist, apartheid policies of South Africa succeeded when the House of Representatives passed Dellums' anti-apartheid Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act calling for a trade embargo against South Africa and immediate divestment by American corporations.
  Martin Luther King Jr. was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Presidential Medal of Freedom, designed to recognize individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors", has been awarded to many members including Edward Brooke and William Coleman. The Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award of the United States Congress, was awarded to Jesse Owens and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. The Spingarn Medal, awarded annually by the NAACP for outstanding achievement by a Black American, has been awarded to brothers John Hope Franklin, Rayford Logan and numerous fraternity members.
  Premier Norman Manley was a Rhodes Scholar (1914), awarded annually by the Oxford-based Rhodes Trust on the basis of academic achievement and character. Randal Pinkett, Andrew Zawacki, and Westley Moore are other Rhodes Scholar recipients.
  A number of buildings and monuments have been named after Alpha men such as the Eddie Robinson Stadium, Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Whitney Young Memorial Bridge, and the W. E. B. Du Bois library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The United States Postal Service has honored fraternity members W. E. B. Du Bois, Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robeson and Whitney Young with a commemorative stamp in their Black Heritag
caption: A portion of the Morial Convention Center Complex in New Orleans, namesake of Alpha Phi Alpha General President Ernest Morial
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