October 24, 2025
The last remaining members of two Black Greek-letter organizations at Yale are working to preserve their fraternities’ histories on campus.
Two Yale University students are working to preserve the legacy of their Black Greek-letter organizations as the last remaining members on campus.
Alejandro Rojas ’26 of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., and Keith Pemberton ’27 of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. are the last remaining members of their organizations at Yale. With the university’s limited records on the fraternities and the history of early Black scholars at the school, the two students are working to preserve their organizations’ legacies before they graduate.
“A lot of our history has been lost because of the lack of documentation from Yale University,” Rojas told Yale Daily News. “Fundamentally, it was an issue with whether or not Yale recognized the status of these students. I feel this responsibility to make sure that this history is honored despite how Yale might not have honored it in the past.”
According to Rojas, Alpha Phi Alpha first established a presence at Yale in the 1970s, predating the founding of the Afro-American Cultural Center. During the 1980s and ’90s, the fraternity—chartered under the citywide Eta Alpha Lambda, which Rojas now leads as president—had nearly 20 members on campus.
As the oldest continuously active Black organization at Yale, the fraternity’s history has been challenging to trace, Rojas noted, due to the university’s limited documentation. Before 1970, many Black students didn’t live on campus and were listed in New Haven city records rather than Yale’s enrollment logs. Additionally, several chapter members were not recorded in yearbooks or class archives, leaving gaps in the historical record.
Since becoming chapter president, Rojas has been on a mission to uncover as much of the chapter’s history as possible, even exploring archives at other universities, such as Cornell and Howard. He cites other schools like Brown and Harvard that each has only one Alpha member as well.
“I don’t think a lot of students are aware of that nor do they have the same imperative to do so,” Rojas said. “I think our role is to encourage people to acknowledge our history in terms of denied history and in terms of Black history.”
Pemberton shares Rojas’ commitment to preserving his fraternity’s legacy. As the sole member of Omega Psi Phi at Yale, he represents the citywide Epsilon Iota Iota chapter, founded in 1922. Since its founding, about nine Yale students have joined the chapter, but before Pemberton, it had gone 15 years without a Yale initiate.
He hopes his role as the only Omega on campus will create a pathway of achievement and scholarship for other Black men at Yale and in New Haven, a mission that aligns with Rojas.
“We’re definitely not looking for people just to increase numbers,” Rojas said of himself and Pemberton. “For us, it’s really important to have a certain quality of student who’s dedicated to honoring the history in the same ways that we seek to bring our own perspective to it.”
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