Phi Beta Sigma - Black sororities and fraternities

Ebony, March, 1992

IT all started, as Panhellenic lore has it, some 78 years ago, when three enterprising young Howar University students--A. Langston Taylor, Leonard F Morse and Charles I. Brown--determined that there was room for a fourth fraternity in the new-but-thriving realm of Black Greek-letter societies. Their vision was to create an organization that would receive men of integrity and purpose, build upon their innate gifts and inspire them to go into the world to serve mankind.

From the lofty dreams of Taylor, Morse and Brown grew Phi Beta Sigma Fratenity, Inc., an international brotherhood dedicated to academic excellence and community service.

Since its inception in 1914, approximately 92,000 college-educated men have joined the ranks of Phi Beta Sigma. Its 325 alumni and 311 undergraduate chapters are located throughout the United States, with foreign chapters in West Africa and the Caribbean.

At the outset, the fraternity's founders aimed to create an organization that was global in membership and scope. Listed on Phi Beta Sigma's membership rolls are internationally renowned figures of past and present such as the late Liberian President William Tolbert; Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana; Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria; Alain Leroy Locke, the first Black Rhodes Scholar; scientist George Washington Carver; author/poet james Weldon johnson; and two current members of the U.S. House of Representatives: Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus; and John Lewis, D-Ga., one of three chief deputy whips.

The Phi Beta Sigma "family" also includes the members of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., founded in 1920 at Howard University under the auspices of the fraternity. The Sigma-Zeta tie is the only constitutionally sanctioned brother/ sister relationship in the domain of Black Greek-letter societies.

Phi Beta Sigma's motto--"Culture for service and service for humanity"-- expresses its purpose.

"Our reason for being is to serve our communities," says Carter D. Womack, 27th national president of Phi Beta Sigma and senior vice president of Black Collegiate Services, publishers of Black Collegian magazine and the journal of the National Technical Association. "I know that sometimes it looks to outsiders as though Black Greeks exist mainly as social organizations. But the men of Phi Beta Sigma are serious about our pledge to aid humanity, and it has been that way since the beginning."

Almost since the beginning, the fraternity has maintained a three-pronged action plan to carry out its civic service mission. The components of the plan are: Bigger and Better Business, a program designed to promote minority-owned business ventures; Social Action, a vehicle for addressing the critical problems affecting the nation's communities; and Education, an ongoing effort to support--financially and otherwise the academic endeavors of minority youths.

Under the umbrella of these programs, Phi Beta Sigma has embarked upon successful partnerships with a variety of charitable and civic organizations. For example, project SATAP (Sigmas Against Teenage Pregnancy) is a collaborative venture the fraternity launched with the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation to address the alarming rise in teenage parentage.

And Phi Beta Sigma has joined with other Black Greek-letter organizations in support of Africare, a Washington-based lobby for African aid.

"We don't see ourselves as competitors with other civil rights or charitable groups," says Jeffrey D. Whitmore, the fraternity s national director of Social Action. All of these groups, Phi Beta Sigma included, have a special place in our efforts to progress as a people. And even where there is some overlapping, it does not, and should not, prevent us from working together."

Currently, Phi Beta Sigma has targeted young Black males as the segment of the community that is most desperately in need of the fraternity's aid. "we have put the plight of the African-American male at the forefront of our agenda," says Womack. " As an organization of professional Black men, we feel duty-bound to do all in our power to lift our young men and boys from tile cycle of drugs and gang warfare that is destroying them. Phi Beta Sigma would not be worth much if we did not respond progressively and creatively to this crisis. "

As part of its response, the fraternity has doubled the manpower and resources poured into its Sigma Beta Clubs, a national program that provides role models, scholarships and mentors for boys ages 6-19. And efforts are underway to heighten the national profile of Camp Sigma, a Los Angeles-based pilot program that provides cultural awareness workshops for boys ages 7-18.

Fraternity leaders believe that their emphasis on issues critical to Black males is a key to strengthening America's communities.

Our goal is to be a leading proactive community service organization that focuses on African-American male issues," says President Womack. "There is a great deal of work to be done to restore faith and hope to our ailing communities. Phi Beta Sigma will play a part of the healing process. We have the talent and energy in our brotherhood to make a difference."