HISTORY OF BOULÉ
At the beginning of the twentieth century, national, state and local racial discrimination and segregation, legitimized by the 1896 Plessey v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that called for separate but equal racial policies and practices, and further sanctioned by the passage of local and state Jim Crow laws throughout the nation, limited housing, education and employment opportunities for black Americans for more than half of the 20th century. Black citizens were forced to live in segregated neighborhoods with limited access to educational, economic and political opportunities, housing options, and community and health services throughout the United States. Yet, within black communities, social organizations, churches, benevolent associations, secret fraternal groups, private schools, newspapers and small entrepreneurial businesses were established to provide for individual and family support and sustainability.
Such was the case in the city of Philadelphia, with a population of black citizens in 1900 of approximately 63,000. Here, in his home city of Philadelphia, Henry McKee Minton and a small group of his colleagues founded Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the nation’s first black Greek-letter Fraternity.
Minton was acutely aware of the rather isolated professional and social world in which Philadelphia’s small but slowly escalating number of black professionals existed. He had no doubt witnessed the camaraderie and support members of fraternities enjoyed during his years as a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and at the University of Pennsylvania, although invitations for membership in them were not an option for black Americans. As well, he was aware of the support members received within selected non-professional secret societies and fraternal groups within the black community of Philadelphia. Thus, he reasoned that a special fraternity could effectively serve as the means through which desirable professional and social support for black professionals would be provided and maintained. Minton shared his vision of such a fraternity with a small group of his colleagues consisting of Algernon B. Jackson, MD, Edwin C. J. T. Howard, MD; and Richard J. Warrick, Jr., DDS.
Meeting on Sunday, May 15, 1904, at the home of Dr. Howard, the group discussed and agreed on establishing a fraternity and its purpose as envisioned by Minton, along with the prerequisites of membership: educational and professional achievement, commitment to addressing needs in the black community, and congeniality, cultural compatibility, and the potential to engage in good fellowship. Additionally, membership would be by invitation only. With these prerequisites agreed upon, the group elected to meet again in two weeks to discuss and approve the Fraternity’s ritual and its constitution. During that interval two other distinguished men were added to the initial group: Eugene T. Hinson, MD, and Robert J. Abele, MD. Together, the foregoing six men -- Henry M. Minton, PhG; Algernon B. Jackson, MD; Edwin C.J.T. Howard, MD; Richard J. Warrick, Jr., DDS; Eugene T. Hinson, MD; and Robert J. Abele, MD -- are the founders of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, whose purpose then as it is now is expressed in the words of the preamble to its constitution:
Whereas it seems wise and good that men of ambition, refinement and self respect should seek the society of one another, both for the mutual benefit and to be an example of the higher type of manhood,
Be it resolved that a Society be organized for the purpose of binding men of like qualities into a close, sacred, fraternal union, that they may know the best of one another, and that each in this life may to his full ability aid the other, and by concerted action bring about those things that seem best for all that cannot be accomplished by individual effort.
Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity is also known as the Boulé, which in Ancient Greece was a council of chiefs. The meaning of the words Sigma Pi Phi, the titles given to its members and their wives, its officers and the names of its local units are derived from Greek history and tradition as well.