Samuel Brown Wylie Mitchell
Dr. Samuel Brown Wylie Mitchell founded Phi Kappa Sigma at the University of Pennsylvania on August 16, 1850. Between August 16 and October 19, 1850, Mitchell sought 6 other men to constitute the Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma. Dr. Samuel Brown Wylie Mitchell along with Andrew Adams Ripka, Alfred Victor Dupont, Charles Hare Hutchinson, Duane Williams, James Bayard Hodge and John Thorne Stone oversaw the formal organization of the Alpha chapter, which occurred at the house of James Bayard Hodge on October 19, 1850. While the official founding date of the Fraternity is August 16, 1850, Phi Kappa Sigma celebrates “Founder’s Day” on October 19 as a commemoration of the establishment of the Alpha Chapter.
Samuel Brown Wylie Mitchell, born August 16, 1828, attained a high level of achievement at the University of Pennsylvania, earning B.A., M.A., and M.D. degrees. Inspired by the national trend in Universities, Mitchell was fascinated by the prospect of fraternal relations with his fellowmen and sought to create a separate fraternity at the University of Pennsylvania.
In the autumn of 1849, when Samuel Brown Wylie Mitchell matriculated in the sophomore class at Penn directly after his graduation from Central High School in Philadelphia, the Delta Phi Fraternity established at chapter at Penn. The following summer, a chapter of the Zeta Psi Fraternity also established itself on the campus. It is likely that the establishment of these two chapters at Penn inspired Mitchell to formulate the ideals of Phi Kappa Sigma: good fellowship; scholarly pursuit of knowledge; and the cultivation of genteelness all combined into a life long bond.
The idea of creating a new Fraternity on Penn’s campus was first recorded in Mitchell’s personal papers on August 16, 1850 (his 22nd birthday). This date signifies not only the birth of our founder and fraternity, but also as fate would have it, Mitchell’s death on August 16, 1879. By the fall term of the 1850, Mitchell had developed the basic tenets of the Phi Kappa Sigma. These included a Constitution and Ritual, the order’s name, and the design of the membership badge: a Maltese cross supporting the six-pointed star, the letters Phi, Kappa, Sigma, and the Skull and Bones. No modifications except in size have been made to the membership badge since.
Phi Kappa Sigma soon started spreading throughout the eastern half of the United States and on December 31, 1902 at the Grand Chapter Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Fraternity approved the chartering of the Alpha Kappa Chapter at the University of Alabama. On January 24, 1903 two brothers from the Mu Chapter at Tulane University came to Tuscaloosa as representatives of the Executive Board of the Fraternity. In the front room of the second story of the First National Bank Building of Tuscaloosa, the Mu chapter representatives initiated James Oscar Prude Jr., George Coleman Nixon, Richard Andrews Dickson, Willis Marone Etheridge, and Rowan Emmett Hill. Those first 5 founding fathers helped Phi Kappa Sigma develop into one of the founding fraternities of the University of Alabama Greek System.
The Alpha Kappa Chapter continued to flourish, building a Chapter House on campus and growing in size. The Chapter initiated many men including: Bob Riley, former Governor of Alabama and Steve Windham, former Lieutenant Governor of Alabama; and helped write history for the University of Alabama. In 1926, after a victory over Washington in the Rose Bowl, Ethelred Lundy Sykes, a member of Phi Kappa Sigma, wrote “Yea Alabama” which has served as the University’s fight song ever since. On two separate occasions the Chapter House burnt down, eventually leading to the dismemberment of the Chapter in 1994, but on October 17, 2006 the Alpha Kappa Chapter was once again colonized at the University of Alabama by a group of young men ready to see a new type of Fraternity flourish on campus. Alpha Kappa was once again an officially chartered chapter on November 4, 2007 where it still resides today as a fully functioning part of the Greek System at Alabama
