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Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. 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 by his own merits rather than his family background or affluence...without regard
of race, nationality, skin tone or texture of hair. They wished and wanted their fraternity to exist as part of even a greater brotherhood which would be devoted to the “inclusive we” rather than the “exclusive 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 a 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’s motto, “Culture For Service and Service For Humanity”.
Today, eighty-seven years later, Phi Beta Sigma has blossomed into an international organization of leaders. No longer a
single entity, the Fraternity has now established the Phi Beta Sigma
Educational Foundation, the Phi Beta Sigma Housing Foundation, the Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union, and the Phi Beta Sigma Charitable
Outreach Foundation. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., founded in 1920 with the fraternity and sorority is constitutionally bound as Sigma and Zeta. We both enjoy and foster a mutually supportive relationship
Phi Beta Sigma has three national programs.
1. Bigger and Better Business -
A program designed to promote minority owned business ventures.
2. Social Action -
A vehicle for addressing the critical problems affecting the nations communities. To better understand our plight, in 1995, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., in cooperation with our lovely sorors, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., became the only African-American Fraternity and Sorority to not only SUPPORT the Million Man March in Washington D.C. but to SPONSOR it as well.
3. Education -
An ongoing effort to support the academic endeavors of minority students at all levels.
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