The History of Phi Beta Sigma

• PHI BETA SIGMA FRATERNITY, INCORPORATED was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C., January 9, 1914, by three young African-American male students. The founders, Honorable A. Langston Taylor, Honorable Leonard F. Morse, and Honorable Charles I. Brown, wanted to organize a Greek letter fraternity that would truly exemplify the ideals of Brotherhood, Scholarship, and Service.
  
  
       The founders deeply wished to create an organization that viewed itself as "a part of" the general community rather than "apart from" the general community. They believed that each potential member should be judged on his own merits rather than his family background or affluence...without regard of race, nationality, color, skin tone or texture of hair. They wished and wanted their fraternity to exist as a part of an even greater brotherhood-sisterhood which would be devoted to the "inclusive we" rather than the "excusive we".
  
  
       From its inception, the founders also conceived Phi Beta Sigma as a mechanism to deliver services to the general community. Rather than gaining skills to be utilized exclusively for themselves and their immediate families, the founders of Phi Beta Sigma held the deep conviction that they should return their newly acquired skills to the communities from which they had come. This deep conviction was mirrored in the fraternity motto, "Culture For Service and Service For Humanity".
  
       Today, more than eighty years later, Phi Beta Sigma has blossomed into an international organization of leaders. As one of the nine predominately African-American, Greek-Lettered organizations, Phi Beta Sigma has a membership roll of over 125,000 with 650 chapters throughout the continental United States, Switzerland, Europe, Korea, Japan, Guam, the Caribbean Islands and Africa. No longer a single entity, the fraternity has now established the Phi Beta Sigma Educational Foundation, Inc. (to provide housing assistance) and the Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union (to build financial equity within our target communities). As a social and service organization, Phi Beta Sigma has many programs. The three National Programs of Bigger and Better Business, Social Action, and Education, help focus the fraternity on delivering to the needs of today's and tomorrow's world.
  
       Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated was organized at Howard University on January 16, 1920 as the result of encouragement given to the five founders by Charles Taylor and A. Langston Taylor, members of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. These Sigma brothers felt the campus would benefit by the development of such an organization as sisters to the fraternity. Thus, Zetas and Sigmas became the first official Greek-letter sister and brother organization.