Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. was founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C.,on Jan. 9, 1914, by three African American male students. The founders, Honorable A. Langston Taylor, Honorable Leonard F. Morse, and Honorable Charles I. Brown, wanted to organize a Greek-letter fraternity that viewed itself as one with a greater brotherhood devoted to the "inclusive we" rather than the "exclusive we."

From its inception, the founders also conceived Phi Beta Sigma as a mechanism to deliver services to the general community. Rather than gaining skills to be utilized exclusively for themselves and their immediate families, the founders of Phi Beta Sigma held a deep conviction that they should return their newly acquired skills to the communities from which they had come.