List of Alpha Phi Alpha members

Its membership includes two premiers; four governors; a vice president, four senators; a Supreme Court justice; two presidential candidates; Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Lenin Peace Prize, Kluge Prize, Golden Globe, Academy Award, Grammy Award, and Emmy Award winners; French Légion d'honneur and Croix de Guerre laureates; at least four Rhodes Scholars; eighteen diplomats; fourteen Presidential Medal of Freedom, seven Congressional Gold Medal, and seventeen Spingarn Medal recipients; and eighteen Olympians.

Buildings, monuments, stadiums, arenas, courthouses, and schools have been named after Alpha men, such as the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the Thurgood Marshall Public Policy Building at the University of Maryland, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge, the Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium, the Paul Robeson Plaza at Rutgers University, the Jack Trice Stadium at Iowa State University, the John H. Johnson School of Communication at Howard University, the Oscar W. Ritchie Pan-African Cultural Arts Center at Kent State University, the Arvarh E. Strickland General Classroom Building at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the G. Larry James Memorial Stadium, the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse, the John H. Stroger Cook County hospital, the John Hope Franklin Memorial Plaza in Tulsa Oklahoma, the Stephan P. Mickle Sr.

When speaking about the poem in 1981, Brown cited his experiences with Beta (Washington, D.C.), Theta (Chicago), Xi Lambda (Chicago Alumni), and Eta Lambda (Atlanta Alumni) as collective inspirations for the poem.

The statement has become a manifesto for the national fraternity and chapters, as each may symbolically be referred to as a "House of Alpha".

The scholarships have been awarded to applicants annually since 1902 by the Rhodes Trust in Oxford based on academic qualities, as well as those of character.

Charter for Alpha Phi Alpha's Alpha chapter with signatures of founders, Cornell University, circa 1906
Floyd Flake
Norman Francis
Charles S. Johnson
Louis Sullivan
John Franklin
Kelly Miller
Cornel West
Westley Moore
Alonzo Herndon
Gerald Albright
Duke Ellington
Lionel Hampton
Lionel Richie
Noble Sissle
Hill Harper
Paul Robeson
Hubert Humphrey
Thurgood Marshall
Lee Brown
Samuel Pierce
Louis Sullivan
Don R. Cravins Jr.
William Dawson
Ron Dellums
Julian Dixon
Chaka Fattah
Harold Ford Sr.
William H. Gray
Ralph Metcalfe
Adam Powell Jr.
Robert Scott
Charles Turnbull
Frederick Douglass
Marion Barry
Byron Brown
Willie Brown
David Dinkins
Kwame Kilpatrick
Marc Morial
Norm Rice
Joe Brown
Robert Carter
Countee Cullen
Walter E. Gaskin
Samuel L. Gravely Jr.
Benjamin Hacker
Winston E. Scott
Johnnie Wilson
Cain Hope Felder
Martin Luther King Jr.
Garrett Morgan
Frederick Douglass
W. E. B. Du Bois
Dick Gregory
Charles S. Johnson
Martin Luther King III
Joseph Lowery
Marc Morial
Whitney Young
Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe
Mike Powell
John Woodruff
Donald Driver
Rosey Grier
Paul Robeson