DID YOU KNOW? Cornell has a connection to the start of the first greek letter fraternity and the first civil rights organization for African-Americans.

Part of "The Ivy Influence" on African-American history in the United States can be most certainly attributed to what could be tabbed the "Cornell Connection" and that university's impact on the culture at large, including sports.

Cornell's influence on black history in America dates all the way back to Dec. 4, 1906, when Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first intercollegiate fraternity for African-American men, was founded at Cornell. Seven undergraduates, known as the "Seven Jewels," united on the Ithaca campus to create a social and support group for minorities who faced racial and social prejudice on campus. The fraternity quickly evolved into a national organization built on defending the rights of African-Americans through social action via its motto, "First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All."

The Alpha chapter at Cornell played a role in the fraternity developing The Sphinx Magazine, first published in 1914. The magazine is the second oldest continuously published black journal in the United States behind Crisis Magazine, a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) publication started by one of its fraternity members, W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard. The founding chapter also encouraged the fraternity to adopt its signature program "Go-to-High School, Go-to-College" in 1919 to increase the number of black students eligible for college enrollment.

Alpha Phi Alpha members represent a who's who of American society, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, Jesse Owens and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., whose grandson of the same name was a three-time Ivy League swimming champion at Columbia. Numerous greats in the Ivy League's athletics history are members of the fraternity as well including Brown's Fritz Pollard, Dartmouth's Reggie Williams and Cornell's own Samuel Pierce.

Less than three years after Alpha Phi Alpha formed, the NAACP was founded in 1909. Today, the organization has developed into the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights advocacy group. One of Cornell's first African-American graduates  its College of Veterinary Medicine, Owen M. Waller, Sr. played a key role in the NAACP's development as the organization was establishing its first national offices in New York City in 1910. Two of Waller's sons also attended Cornell's veterinary college. One son, Owen Waller, Jr., wrote an influential essay titled, "The Colored Man as an Athlete" to show his strong support for two classmates, W.H. Seabrook and Abram J. Jackson, Jr., who were standout athletes in track and baseball, and their rights to participate in varsity athletics.

Waller, Jr.'s words definitely had an lasting impression on athletes at Cornell as evidenced by the influential African-American athletes that span Cornell's history -- Jerome "Brud" Holland, Paul Roberson, Jr. and Irving "Bo" Roberson in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Pierce in the early 1960s and Shea Maultsby, Peter Pakeman, Melinda Vaughn and Kevin Boothe in the 1980s, 1990s and into the 2000s. All are a part of Cornell's unqiue connection to black history in the Ivy League, in the world of sports and beyond.

Research done by the Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine was used in this article.