NATIONAL HISTORY
Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 9, 1914, by three daring, young black students. The founders, Most Honorable A. Langston Taylor, 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 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 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 and Service for Humanity."
Today, in celebrating the 100th anniversary and beyond, 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 assistance of Phi Beta Sigma, is the sister organization. No other fraternity and sorority are constitutionally bound as Sigma and Zeta. We both enjoy and foster a mutually supportive relationship.
With the power, force and vigor of more than 125,000 dedicated men united in more than 700 chapters across the United States, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean, Phi Beta Sigma continues to faithfully perpetuate growth and progress as the "people's fraternity." Phi Beta Sigma is dedicated to providing service to all of humanity.