Omega Psi Phi
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40 free Omega Psi Phi trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Omega Psi Phi was founded in November 1911 by three undergraduates and their professor, and it has since initiated more than 250,000 men through hundreds of chapters on several continents. Its members have included astronauts, poets, governors, Hall of Fame athletes and some of the lawyers and organizers behind the civil rights movement. This quiz covers the founding and the men behind it, the motto, colors, symbol and Cardinal Principles that members learn first, and the programs every chapter runs each year. It also asks about the fraternity's part in American history, from war service to the courtroom, and about the famous Omega men of sport, music, television and public life. The opening questions suit anyone curious about the Divine Nine. Later ones are for members, aspirants and Greek-life history buffs who know the founders by name.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which historian and Omega Psi Phi member urged the fraternity to launch the week that grew into Black History Month?
Carter G. Woodson
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.
Q 02Which Omega Psi Phi member won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls after starring in college at North Carolina?
Michael Jordan
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.
Q 03Omega Psi Phi lawyers Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson and James Nabrit worked on which 1954 Supreme Court case?
Brown v. Board of Education
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.
Q 04Which Omega Psi Phi member, a 7-foot-1 center, won three straight NBA titles with the Los Angeles Lakers from 2000?
Shaquille O'Neal
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.
Q 05Which Omega Psi Phi member, a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance, published the collection The Weary Blues in 1926?
Langston Hughes
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.
Q 06Which Omega Psi Phi member founded Rainbow/PUSH and twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s?
Jesse Jackson
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.
Q 07Which Omega Psi Phi member, one of the Original Kings of Comedy, became host of the game show Family Feud in 2010?
Steve Harvey
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.
Q 08Omega Psi Phi takes its name from a Greek phrase, also its motto, that calls what essential to the soul?
Friendship
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.
Q 09Which animal follows Que in a popular nickname for Omega Psi Phi members, though it is not an official mascot?
Dog
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.
Q 10On which campus was Omega Psi Phi born in 1911, the first national fraternity founded at a historically Black school?
Howard University
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.
Q 11Old gold is one of the two official colors of Omega Psi Phi; which shade completes the pair?
Royal purple
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.
Q 12Which oil-burning light source is the official symbol of Omega Psi Phi, listed with its colors and motto?
Lamp
The lamp is the fraternity's official symbol. The best-known animal nickname for its members, by contrast, has no official standing at all.
Q 13Manhood, Scholarship and Uplift are three of Omega Psi Phi's four Cardinal Principles; which quality is the fourth?
Perseverance
Perseverance completes the set that the founders adopted when they set up the fraternity in 1911. The four are also known as its pillars.
Q 21Omega Psi Phi founder Oscar James Cooper spent about fifty years in Philadelphia working in which profession?
Medicine
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.
Q 22Omega Psi Phi founder Frank Coleman, an Army officer in World War I, later headed which university department?
Physics
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.
Q 23Ernest Everett Just, the faculty adviser among Omega Psi Phi's founders, won international renown in which science?
Biology
Q 14Omega Psi Phi was one of five founding members in 1930 of which umbrella body, home of the Divine Nine?
National Pan-Hellenic Council
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.
Q 15Omega Psi Phi moved its international headquarters out of Washington, D.C. in the 1990s to which Georgia city?
Decatur
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.
Q 16Which blood-bank pioneer and Omega Psi Phi member gives his name to the fraternity's scholarship fund and blood drive?
Charles R. Drew
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.
Q 17Omega Psi Phi's Talent Hunt, run from chapter contests up to an international final, showcases youth in which field?
Performing arts
Performing arts are the focus, and the program offers talented performers exposure, encouragement and financial help. Winners can be awarded college scholarships.
Q 18Under a program begun at its 1955 convention, Omega Psi Phi chapters buy life memberships in which civil rights group?
The NAACP
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.
Q 19Which fraternity, founded at Indiana University in January 1911, beat Omega Psi Phi to its centennial by ten months?
Kappa Alpha Psi
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.
Q 20Omega Psi Phi founder Edgar Amos Love, a World War I Army chaplain, later rose to which office in the Methodist Church?
Bishop
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.
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.
Q 24Omega Psi Phi founder Ernest Everett Just was the very first recipient, in 1915, of which award for Black achievement?
Spingarn Medal
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.
Q 25Omega Psi Phi organized its first chapter outside the United States in 1923 at which Canadian university?
McGill
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.
Q 26Omega Psi Phi founders Frank Coleman and Edgar Love graduated in 1917 from which Army camp for Black officers?
Fort Des Moines
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.
Q 27Omega Psi Phi members Robert C. Weaver and William Hastie advised Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of which informal group?
Black Cabinet
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.
Q 28Omega Psi Phi holds its Memorial Day on March 12, the birthday of which honorary member, the Army's first Black colonel?
Charles Young
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.
Q 29Omega Psi Phi's national president holds a title made of Grand plus which Greek word, first borne by Edgar Love?
Basileus
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.
Q 30Which Omega Psi Phi member was the principal organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, working behind the scenes?
Bayard Rustin
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.