MO HB1442

December 4 is designated as "Alpha Phi Alpha Day" in Missouri, with citizens encouraged to observe it with appropriate activities and events.

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. was founded on December 4, 1906, at Cornell University by seven founding members known as the "Seven Jewels": Dr. Henry Arthur Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, Eugene Kinckle Jones, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert Harold Ogle, and Vertner Woodson Tandy.

The fraternity is the first black intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African-Americans and now has more than 290,000 members across more than 730 chapters on five continents.

Notable Alpha Phi Alpha members include W.E.B. DuBois, Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, Jesse Owens, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Beta Lambda Chapter, chartered in Kansas City, Missouri in 1919, is the fraternity's second-oldest alumni chapter and the first established west of the Mississippi River.