The most remarkable leadership in the African American community in the 20th century has come from the ranks of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Since it's founding on December 4, 1906, the Fraternity has supplied voice and vision to the struggle of African Americans and people of color around the world.

ALPHA PHI ALPHA FRATERNITY, INC., the first Black Greek lettered organization was founded on December 4, 1906, on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Seven aspiring Black men felt a pressing need to pull together and organize themselves into a brotherhood. These seven men known as the SEVEN JEWELS: Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman,Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelly, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle, and Vertner Woodson Tandy, created the fraternity as a social, and literary organization because of segregation and other social problems facing Black students during the period. Upon that, their literary organization developed into a fraternity. However, where as other fraternities traditionally resemble and take their ideas from the golden age of Ancient Greece, Alpha Phi Alpha gains its heritage from Egypt. Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. uses images and songs depicting the Sphinx, pharaohs, and other Egyptian heritage to depict their organization.

Due to the needs of the national African American community and the organization's commitment to positive social change, Alpha Phi Alpha began early on to involve itself deeply into social change and education. The "Go to High School-Go to College" campaigns of the 1920's and 30's established Alpha Phi Alpha as a scholarship oriented organization. The ongoing campaigns of "A Voteless People is a Hopeless People" help to illustrate the fraternity's involvement in civil and human rights. Moreover, through the able leadership and involvement of such brothers as W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robeson, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the struggle for equality, levels of consciousness and mobility was heightened.

Today in its tenth decade of being "trendsetters for the upliftment of humanity," Alpha proudly boasts of having initiated over 250,000 men into Alphadom. Also, not only is Alpha Phi Alpha the first, largest, and most prestigious Black Greek lettered fraternity but, in the professional ranks Alpha claims 60% of all Black doctors, 75% of Black lawyers, 65% of all Black dentists, and close to 90% of all Black college presidents with Brothers in over 700 college and graduate chapters in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe.