Born March 12, 1864 to ex-slaves in the little hamlet of MaysLick, Kentucky Colonel Charles Young is remembered and honored as a man of unique courage and inspiration. This was especially true for those of "goodwill", who knew him, and for those who followed him into battle. He stands honored both as an African-American and in the history of African-Americans in the U.S. military. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1889. This gave him the honor of being the third African-American to do so, in spite of the hatred, bigotry and discrimination he encountered as an undergraduate. On a day in June, 1918 retired Lt. Colonel Charles Young, made his way on horseback, 500 miles from Wilberforce, Ohio to this nation's capital, to show he was as always, fit for duty. There, he petitioned the Secretary of War (now called Secretary of Defense) for immediate reinstatement and command of a combat unit in Europe. The ride from Ohio to Washington D.C. brought bittersweet results. Young was reinstated and promoted to full Colonel, but he was assigned to duty at Camp Grant, Illinois. By the time his reinstatement and promotion were in effect the war was near its end. .
   
Count Basie (1904-1984) was born William James Basie in Red Bank, New Jersey was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Widely regarded as one of the most important jazz bandleaders of his time, Basie led his popular Count Basie Orchestra for almost 50 years. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump" and "April In Paris". Count Basie introduced several generations of listeners to the Big Band sound and left an influential catalogue. Basie is remembered by many who worked for him as being considerate of musicians and their opinions, modest, relaxed, fun-loving, drily witty, and always enthusiastic about his music.  As he summed up the key to his understated style, in his autobiography, “I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter”.
   
Carter G. Woodson, born in New Canton, Virginia, was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of Negro History Week, which became Black History Month. He is considered the first to conduct a scholarly effort to popularize the value of Black History. He recognized and acted upon the importance of a people having an awareness and knowledge of their contributions to humanity and left behind an impressive legacy. Woodson was one of the founders of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and Journal of Negro History. Woodson remained focused on his work throughout his life. Many see him as a man of vision and understanding. Although Dr. Woodson was among the ranks of the educated few, he did not feel particularly sentimental about elite educational institutions.[citation needed] The Association and journal which he started in 1915 continue, and both have earned intellectual respect.
   
Born in Greenville, South Carolina Rev. Jesse Jackson., is an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as "shadow senator" for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is his eldest son. In 1983, Jackson traveled to Syria to secure the release of a captured American pilot, Navy Lt. Robert Goodman who was being held by the Syrian government. Goodman had been shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian positions in that country. After a dramatic personal appeal that Jackson made to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Goodman was released. Initially, the Reagan administration was skeptical about Jackson's trip to Syria. However, after Jackson secured Goodman's release, United States President Ronald Reagan welcomed both Jackson and Goodman to the White House on January 4, 1984.  In June 1984, Jackson negotiated the release of twenty-two Americans being held in Cuba after an invitation by Cuban president Fidel Castro.
   
Michael Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York  1963. His biography on the National Basketball Association (NBA) website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time."  After a stand-out career at the University of North Carolina, Jordan joined the NBA's Chicago Bulls in 1984. He quickly emerged as one of the stars of the league, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line at Slam Dunk Contests, earned him the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness". He also gained a reputation as one of the best defensive players in basketball. In 1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a "three-peat". Though Jordan abruptly left the NBA at the beginning of the 1993-94 NBA season to pursue a career in baseball, he rejoined the Bulls in 1995 and led them to three additional championships (1996, 1997, and 1998).   Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, but he returned for two more NBA seasons in 2001 as a member of the Washington Wizards. Jordan's individual accolades and accomplishments include five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances and three All-Star MVP, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award.
   
Langston Hughes born 1 February 1902 was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist.   Hughes' life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Hughes was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé, and he didn’t go much beyond the themes of black is beautiful as he explored the black human condition in a variety of depths. His main concern was the uplift of his people who he judged himself the adequate appreciator of and whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience. Thus, his poetry and fiction centered generally on insightful views of the working class lives of blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African American identity and its diverse culture. "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,"  Hughes is quoted as saying. Therefore, in his work he confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself; a “people’s poet” who sought to re-educate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality.
   
William Henry Cosby, Jr. was born July 12, 1937 is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer and activist. While serving in the Navy as a Hospital Corpsman for four years, Cosby worked in physical therapy with some seriously injured Korean War casualties, which helped him discover what was important to him. He immediately realized the need for an education, and finished his equivalency diploma via correspondence courses. He then won a track and field scholarship to Philadelphia's Temple University in 1961,and studied physical education while running track and playing fullback on the football team. Cosby's greatest television success came in 1984 with the debut of The Cosby Show. For Cosby the new situation comedy was a response to the increasingly violent fare the networks usually offered. He insisted on and received total creative control of the series, and he was involved in every aspect of the series. Not surprisingly, the show had parallels to Cosby's actual family life: like the characters Cliff and Claire Huxtable, Cosby and his wife Camille were college educated, financially successful, and had five children. Essentially a throwback to the wholesome family situation comedy, The Cosby Show was unprecedented in its portrayal of an intelligent, affluent, nonstereotypical African-American family.
   
Ronald Ervin McNair, PhD born on October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina was an American physicist and NASA astronaut. Dr. McNair perished during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger In 1986. McNair received a B.S. in physics from North Carolina A&T State University in 1971, and a Ph.D. in the same discipline from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. He was also honored with honorary doctorates in 1978, 1980 and 1984. He was a fifth-degree black belt karate instructor and had won five regional championships. Among many other studies in the field of physics, McNair had conducted research on the scientific foundations of the martial arts. During the 1970s, actress Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek fame was employed by NASA to recruit minority candidates for the space program. McNair was chosen for the process, selected for the astronaut program in 1978, and flew on a Challenger mission in February 1984 as a mission specialist.
   
Earl Gilbert Graves, Sr. was born in January 9, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York  is an author, publisher, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Black Enterprise magazine. In 1968, Graves started Earl G. Graves, Ltd. Under that holding company, he began the Earl G. Graves Associates management consulting firm. In 1970, the company's Earl G. Graves Publishing Company division began publishing Black Enterprise magazine. Black Enterprise states as its goal to provide inspiration to African Americans in the business sector. The magazine has 500,000 paid subscribers and over 3 million readers. It has also grossed $53 million in sales. Black Enterprise Events is another division of Earl G. Graves, Ltd., which coordinates gatherings for the readers of Black Enterprise. The Black Entrepreneurs Conference, Black Enterprise Golf and Tennis Challenge, and Women of Power Summit are a few of the events sponsored by Black Enterprise Events. Earl Graves, Ltd., also co-owns a private equity fund with Travelers Group called the Black Enterprise/Greenwich Street Corporate Growth Fund. The purpose of the fund is to invest in minority controlled businesses. From 1990 to 1998, Graves owned the Pepsi Cola bottling franchise in Washington D.C.

Prominent Members of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.

Activists:
  • Rev. Jesse Jackson: Founder Rainbow Coalition
  • Grant Reynolds: Key in desegregation of US Armed Forces
  • James Nabrit: National Urban League
  • Roy Wilkins: NAACP Director
  • Benjamin Hooks: NAACP Director
  • Vernon Jordan: Director, National Urban League
  

Education/Scholarship:

  • Carter G. Woodson: Originated the study of Black History
  • Benjamin Mays: President, Moorehouse College
  • Herman Dreer: Wrote "History of Omega Psi Phi 1911-1961"

 

 

  

Science/Medicine:

  • Dr. Ernest Everett Just: Biologist and professor 
  • Dr. Charles Drew: Perfected the use of blood plasma
  • Percy Julian: Discovered the use of foam to extinguish fires
  • Lt. Colonel Guion Bluford:  First African-American in space.
  • Dr. Fred Gregory: Astronaut, graduate of USAF Academy
  

Entertainment:

  • Roland Hayes: Internationally known tenor of the 1920's
  • Tom Joyner: Radio Host
  • Steve Harvey: Comedian and radio host
  • Wanya Morris: R&B singer
  • Ricky Smiley: Comedian
  • Joe Torry: Comedian
  • Carl Rowan: Syndicated columnist
  

Government/Politics:

  • Jesse Jackson Jr.: State Representative from Illinois
  • David Satcher: Former Surgeon General of the United States
  • Douglas Wilder: First African-American elected governor
  • Clifford Alexander, Jr.: First African American Secretary of Army
  • William Hastie: First Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands
  • Robert Weaver: First Secretary of HUD
  • Togo West, Jr.: Former Secretary of the Army
  • Hank Johnson: State Representative from Georgia
  • Walter Washington: First Home-Rule Mayor of Washington D.C.
  • George Weaver: Asst Sec. of Labor for International Affairs

 

  

 

 

Sports:

  • Hank Aaron: Former MLB Player, Former Home Run King
  • Ottis Anderson: Former NFL Player 
  • Vince Carter: NBA Player
  • Clarence Gaines: Coached most NCAA basketball games
  • De Hart Hubbart: First  black representative of U.S in Olympics
  • Ed "Too Tall" Jones: Former NFL Player
  • Keith Jackson: Former NFL Player
  • Vonta Leach: Former NFL Player
  • Shaquille O'Neal: NBA Player 
  • David Justice: Former MLB Player
  • Robert Mathis: NFL Player
  • Cedric Maxwell: Former NBA Player
  • Alonzo Mourning: NBA Player
  • John Salley: Former NBA Player
  •  Ken Hamlin: NFL Player
  • Corliss Williamson: Former NBA Player
  • Joe Black: Former MLB Player
  

Military:

  • Robert Lawrence, Jr.: First African-American astronaut
  • Roscoe Robinson: First Black Four Star General - USA
  • Matthew Zimmerman: First African-American Chief of Chaplains
  

 

 

 

Business:

  • Tony Grant: Professional African-American Banking Group 
  • Edward Lewis: CEO, Essence Communications
  • Gillard Glover: African-American Life Insurance Co.
  • Jessie Hill: President of Atlanta Life Insurance Co.
  • Otis Smith: General Counsel General Motors, Corp.
  • Nathaniel Bronner: Co-owner of Bronner Brothers Beauty Supplies

 

  
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