Sigma Pi Phi


Sigma Pi Phi is the first successful and oldest Black Greek-lettered organization. Sigma Pi Phi was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 15, 1904. The fraternity quickly established chapters in Chicago, Illinois and then Baltimore, Maryland.
The founders included two doctors, a dentist and a pharmacist. When Sigma Pi Phi was founded, black professionals were not offered participation in the professional and cultural associations organized by the white community.
Sigma Pi Phi has over 5,000 members and 139 chapters throughout the United States, England and The Bahamas.

Founders

Membership in Sigma Pi Phi is highly exclusive, numbering only about 5,000. The organization is known as "the Boulé," which means "a council of noblemen". Founded as an organization for professionals, Sigma Pi Phi never established college chapters, and eliminated undergraduate membership during its infant stages. However, Sigma Pi Phi has historically had a congenial relationship with college Black Greek-letter organizations, as many members of Sigma Pi Phi are members of both. Sigma Pi Phi founder Henry McKee Minton and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are both members of Alpha Phi Alpha, while Arthur Ashe is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi. Vernon Jordan and L. Douglas Wilder are members of Omega Psi Phi. James Weldon Johnson is a member of Phi Beta Sigma, as is civil rights leader and member of Congress John Lewis. University of Massachusetts-Boston Chancellor, , and Hibernia Southcoast Capital CEO, are members of Iota Phi Theta. Members of Sigma Pi Phi have provided leadership and service during the Great Depression, World War I, World War II, the Great Recession, and addressed social issues such as urban housing, and other economic, cultural, and political issues affecting people of African descent.

Notable members

Members of Sigma Pi Phi include W. E. B. Du Bois, Civil Rights Leader and one of the founders of the NAACP, Rev. Martin Luther King, Civil right leader, Robert J. Abele, founder and brother of Julian Abele who served as the lead architect of Duke University, Former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, former United Nations Ambassador Ralph Bunche, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, former Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder, American Express President Kenneth Chenault, Bobby Scott, C. O. Simpkins, Sr., Ken Blackwell, United States Attorney General Eric Holder, Ron Brown, Vernon Jordan, Arthur Ashe, Mel Watt, and John Baxter Taylor, Jr., the first African-American to win an Olympic Gold Medal. Numerous other American leaders are among the men who have adopted the fraternity’s purpose of "creating a forum wherein they could pursue social and intellectual activities in the company of peers."
Sigma Pi Phi is open to members of all races, as can be demonstrated by its well-known white member Jack Greenberg, who succeeded Thurgood Marshall as the leader of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc..

In media

reports on the organization and his membership in it in the 1999 book Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class.