THE HISTORY OF PHI BETA SIGMA FRATERNITY, INC.

Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. was founded at Howard University in Washington, DC January 9th, 1914 by three young African American male students. The founders, Most Honorable Founder A. Langston Taylor, Most Honorable Founder Leonard F. Morse, and Most Honorable Founder Charles I. Brown wanted to organize a Greek-letter fraternity that would truly exemplify the high ideals of Brotherhood, Scholarship, and service. The founders deeply wished to create an organization that viewed itself as "a part of" 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 "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 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 three-quarters of a century 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, Inc. and the Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union (to build financial equity within our target communities). With the force, vigor, power and energy of its more than 150,000 dedicated men united in more than 750 chapters across the United States, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean, Phi Beta Sigma continues to faithfully perpetuate composite growth and progress as the "people's fraternity" dedicated to providing services to all humanity.