Morse, Leonard Frederick

Impact on the world

Co-founded Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity at Howard University in 1914, personally naming the new organization using his training in Greek language and writing its first constitution while serving as the founding president of its original Alpha Chapter; he became the last surviving of the fraternity's three founders, living to see its growth from a small Howard University organization into a fraternity with chapters spanning the United States, Africa, and Europe.

Life & background

Born in 1891 to a distinguished New England family in Boston, Morse was raised and educated in New Bedford, Massachusetts, graduating valedictorian of his integrated high school before enrolling at Howard University, where his particular skill in Greek language led directly to his selection of the name Phi Beta Sigma for the fraternity he co-founded with A. Langston Taylor and Charles I. Brown in January 1914. In 1915 he became the first person to graduate from Howard with two degrees, an AB and a Bachelor of Education, in just three years, later adding a Bachelor of Divinity from Wilberforce University's Payne School of Divinity, a master's degree from Northwestern University, and doctoral degrees in metaphysics and psychology from the College of Metaphysics in Indianapolis; he was ordained as a minister. He married and raised five children, two of whom became members of his fraternity, and decades after his own founding role he wrote candidly in 1949 that he and his fraternity brothers still lived in daily hope of one day learning the fate of their long-missing co-founder, Charles I. Brown. Morse died in 1961, having outlived both of his fellow founders and remained, until that point, the fraternity's last living founding member.

Sources

1. Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. official history; BA1935 founders page; Epsilon Psi Sigma chapter history