The History of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.

National History

Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1914 by three daring, young black students. The founders, Most Honorable A. Langston Talyor, Most Honorable Leonard F. Morse, and Most Honorable Charles I. Brown, wanted to organize a Greek letter fraternity that would truly exemplify the ideas 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 it. They believed that individuals should be judged on their own merits rather that their family background, without regard of race, nationality, color, skin tone, or hair texture. They wanted their fraternity to exist as a part of an even greater brotherhood which would be devoted to the "inclusive we" rather than the "exclusive we".

From the beginning, the founders conceived Phi Beta Sigma as a mechanism to deliver services to the greater 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 to their newly acquired skills to the community from which they had come. This deep conviction was mirrored in our fraternity motto, "Culture for Service, Service for Humanity".

With the power, force and vigor of it's more than 85,000 dedicated men united in more than 600 chapters across the United States, Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. continues to faitfully perpetuate growth and progress as the "people's fraternity" dedicated to providing service to all humanity. As our communities change and we move towards the year 2000, Phi Beta Sigma has become dedicated to "meeting the challenge of change".

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