40 Fun Facts About Omega Psi Phi

Which historian and Omega Psi Phi member urged the fraternity to launch the week that grew into Black History Month?

Carter G. Woodson pressed his fraternity brothers in 1924 to hold Negro History and Literature Week. Two years later his own association took it national as Negro History Week, and it filled all of February from 1976.

Which Omega Psi Phi member won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls after starring in college at North Carolina?

Michael Jordan is one of the athletes the fraternity lists among its notable brothers. He was named NBA Finals MVP six times, a league record.

Omega Psi Phi lawyers Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson and James Nabrit worked on which 1954 Supreme Court case?

Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregated public schools. The three men sat in the inner circle of the legal defense fund that coordinated the court battles leading up to it.

Which Omega Psi Phi member, a 7-foot-1 center, won three straight NBA titles with the Los Angeles Lakers from 2000?

Shaquille O'Neal, a three-time NBA Finals MVP, was first drafted by the Orlando Magic with the top pick of 1992. He added a fourth ring with the Miami Heat in 2006.

Which Omega Psi Phi member, a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance, published the collection The Weary Blues in 1926?

Langston Hughes belonged to Beta chapter at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he graduated after dropping out of Columbia. He was an early innovator of jazz poetry.

Which Omega Psi Phi member founded Rainbow/PUSH and twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s?

Jesse Jackson finished as runner-up for the 1988 nomination, behind Michael Dukakis. A protégé of Martin Luther King Jr., he was also an ordained Baptist minister.

Which Omega Psi Phi member, one of the Original Kings of Comedy, became host of the game show Family Feud in 2010?

Steve Harvey started out as a stand-up comedian in the early 1980s and hosted Showtime at the Apollo long before the game show. He gave up stand-up after a final show in 2012.

Omega Psi Phi takes its name from a Greek phrase, also its motto, that calls what essential to the soul?

Friendship is essential to the soul, runs the phrase, and its Greek initials spell out the fraternity's three letters. The founders adopted the same words as the motto.

Which animal follows Que in a popular nickname for Omega Psi Phi members, though it is not an official mascot?

Dog completes Que Dog, a term whose use is an unofficial tradition among members rather than an official mascot. Members are also known simply as Omegas or Ques.

On which campus was Omega Psi Phi born in 1911, the first national fraternity founded at a historically Black school?

Howard University at first refused to recognize the fraternity as a national body, so it ran without official sanction until 1914. It was founded in the science building, later renamed Thirkield Hall.

Old gold is one of the two official colors of Omega Psi Phi; which shade completes the pair?

Royal purple is paired with old gold as the fraternity's official colors. The men who wear them go by Omegas, Omega Men or simply Ques.

Which oil-burning light source is the official symbol of Omega Psi Phi, listed with its colors and motto?

The lamp is the fraternity's official symbol. The best-known animal nickname for its members, by contrast, has no official standing at all.

Manhood, Scholarship and Uplift are three of Omega Psi Phi's four Cardinal Principles; which quality is the fourth?

Perseverance completes the set that the founders adopted when they set up the fraternity in 1911. The four are also known as its pillars.

Omega Psi Phi was one of five founding members in 1930 of which umbrella body, home of the Divine Nine?

National Pan-Hellenic Council membership began with five groups, and Omega Psi Phi's Matthew W. Bullock was its first permanent chairman. It reached nine members in 1996.

Omega Psi Phi moved its international headquarters out of Washington, D.C. in the 1990s to which Georgia city?

Decatur became home after 31 years at a headquarters on Georgia Avenue in the capital. That earlier building was the first of its type to be built by a Black fraternity.

Which blood-bank pioneer and Omega Psi Phi member gives his name to the fraternity's scholarship fund and blood drive?

Charles R. Drew also wrote the last two stanzas of the fraternity's official hymn, adopted in 1931. His large-scale blood banks saved thousands of Allied lives early in World War II.

Omega Psi Phi's Talent Hunt, run from chapter contests up to an international final, showcases youth in which field?

Performing arts are the focus, and the program offers talented performers exposure, encouragement and financial help. Winners can be awarded college scholarships.

Under a program begun at its 1955 convention, Omega Psi Phi chapters buy life memberships in which civil rights group?

Buying life memberships in the NAACP became a fraternity program at the 1955 Los Angeles convention. Every chapter and district is required to keep one, and all members are encouraged to join.

Which fraternity, founded at Indiana University in January 1911, beat Omega Psi Phi to its centennial by ten months?

Kappa Alpha Psi, founded as Kappa Alpha Nu, dates from January 5, 1911. With Alpha Phi Alpha founded even earlier, Omega Psi Phi was the third Black collegiate fraternity to turn 100.

Omega Psi Phi founder Edgar Amos Love, a World War I Army chaplain, later rose to which office in the Methodist Church?

Bishop Love was elected in 1952 to lead the church's Baltimore area, where he helped integrate the denomination. He was the last of the four founders to die, in 1974.

Omega Psi Phi founder Oscar James Cooper spent about fifty years in Philadelphia working in which profession?

Medicine was Cooper's calling: he earned his M.D. in 1917, six years after the founding, and practiced in Philadelphia for half a century. He also served as the fraternity's second national president.

Omega Psi Phi founder Frank Coleman, an Army officer in World War I, later headed which university department?

Physics was Coleman's field, and he became professor and head of the department at the very university where the fraternity was born. He held a master's degree from the University of Chicago.

Ernest Everett Just, the faculty adviser among Omega Psi Phi's founders, won international renown in which science?

Biology made Just's name: he studied how the eggs of sea creatures are fertilized, working at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A U.S. postage stamp honored him in 1996.

Omega Psi Phi founder Ernest Everett Just was the very first recipient, in 1915, of which award for Black achievement?

The Spingarn Medal went to Just in February 1915 for his scientific achievements and service to his race. It has been given for outstanding achievement by a Black American in most years since.

Omega Psi Phi organized its first chapter outside the United States in 1923 at which Canadian university?

McGill University in Montreal gained Sigma chapter in December 1923. That same year a Los Angeles chapter made the fraternity the first Black Greek organization to span the country from coast to coast.

Omega Psi Phi founders Frank Coleman and Edgar Love graduated in 1917 from which Army camp for Black officers?

Fort Des Moines in Iowa trained the first class of Black officers after the United States entered World War I. Several other fraternity brothers graduated alongside the two founders.

Omega Psi Phi members Robert C. Weaver and William Hastie advised Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of which informal group?

The Black Cabinet was an informal circle of African American policy advisers, and the fraternity names nine of its own men who served in it. Weaver went on to a real Cabinet seat in 1966, as the first housing secretary.

Omega Psi Phi holds its Memorial Day on March 12, the birthday of which honorary member, the Army's first Black colonel?

Charles Young, by then retired, rode 500 miles on horseback from Ohio to Washington, D.C. in 1918 to show he was fit for duty. The fraternity's memorial service was set up in 1926 to mark his birthday.

Omega Psi Phi's national president holds a title made of Grand plus which Greek word, first borne by Edgar Love?

Basileus is the word, so the fraternity's chief officer is the Grand Basileus. Love took the office six days after the founding, with his two fellow students as national secretary and treasurer.

Which Omega Psi Phi member was the principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, working behind the scenes?

Bayard Rustin also organized Freedom Rides and advised Martin Luther King Jr. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, 26 years after his death.

Which Omega Psi Phi member, the second Black American in space, died aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986?

Ronald McNair had first flown on Challenger in 1984 as a mission specialist. He was 35 when he died during the launch of the same shuttle two years later.

Which Omega Psi Phi member flew four Space Shuttle missions and in 2009 became the first Black permanent head of NASA?

Charles Bolden was a Marine Corps major general and test pilot before President Barack Obama nominated him. The Senate confirmed him by unanimous consent.

Which Omega Psi Phi honorary member led his own big band for almost 50 years and wrote One O'Clock Jump?

Count Basie formed his orchestra in 1935 and built its sound on a driving rhythm section and his own spare piano style. Singers such as Joe Williams rose to prominence with the band.

Which Omega Psi Phi member took office in 1990 as the first African American ever elected governor of a U.S. state?

Douglas Wilder won Virginia's 1989 election narrowly and served one term, because the state bars governors from immediate re-election. He returned to elected office in 2005 as mayor of Richmond.

Which Omega Psi Phi member played college football at Alabama and Oklahoma before being named MVP of Super Bowl LIX?

Jalen Hurts led the Philadelphia Eagles to that title, two years after reaching Super Bowl LVII with them. The Eagles had drafted him in the second round in 2020.

Omega Psi Phi's national convention, held in cities from Nashville to Tampa, is known as the Grand what?

Conclave is the word, and the fraternity's national leaders are elected at the Grand Conclave. The 1961 gathering in Washington, D.C. marked 50 years and brought together all three surviving founders.

Which quarterly magazine, first issued in the spring of 1919, is the official publication of Omega Psi Phi?

The Oracle has carried the fraternity's writing since 1919 and comes out quarterly, online or by mail. A second publication, the Omega Bulletin, followed in 1928.

Omega Psi Phi member William "Kip" Ward, an Army officer, became the first chief in 2007 of which U.S. military body?

Africa Command was led by Ward from October 2007 until March 2011. He had earlier taught at West Point and commanded the Stabilization Force in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Omega Psi Phi member David Satcher, a four-star admiral in the Public Health Service, was named in 1998 to which post?

Surgeon General Satcher was the 16th person to hold the office. In the same year another Omega man, Togo West Jr., was appointed Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Which Omega Psi Phi member led Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967 and gave the eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr.?

Benjamin Mays first met King in 1944 and became the mentor King saw as his intellectual father. Under Mays the college's enrollment quadrupled and its endowment doubled.