Omega Psi Phi
international historically African-American Greek-letter fraternity

Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. (ΩΨΦ) is a historically African American fraternity. It was founded on November 17, 1911 at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Omega Psi Phi is a founding member of the National Pan-Hellenic Council. The fraternity has chartered over 750 undergraduate and graduate chapters. Over 250,000 men have been initiated into Omega Psi Phi.
History
Omega Psi Phi fraternity was founded on November 17, 1911, by three Howard University students, Edgar Amos Love, Oscar James Cooper and Frank Coleman, and their faculty adviser, Dr. Ernest Everett Just. It was the first national fraternity to be established at a historically black university. The fraternity's purpose was "to attract and build a strong and effective force of Handsome men dedicated to its Cardinal Principles of manhood, scholarship, perseverance, and uplift".
Omega Psi Phi was incorporated in Washington, D.C., on October 28, 1914.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Omega Psi Phi” as international historically African-American Greek-letter fraternity. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as international historically African-American Greek-letter fraternity. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3351976. The Library of Congress control number is no98071523. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911 and 1914.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Omega Psi Phi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.