The story
Founded by John Heath on Dec 5, 1776, in College of William & Mary.1
Origins
The Phi Beta Kappa Society had its first meeting on December 5, 1776, at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, by five students, with John Heath as its first President. The society established the precedent for naming American college societies after the initial letters of a secret Greek motto.
The group consisted of students who frequented the Raleigh Tavern as a common meeting area off the college campus. A persistent story maintains that a Masonic lodge also met at this tavern, but the Freemasons gathered at a different building in Williamsburg. (Some of the original members of Phi Beta Kappa did become Freemasons, but later in life).
Whether the students organized to meet more freely and discuss non-academic topics, or to discuss politics in a Revolutionary society is unknown. The earliest records indicate only that the students met to debate and engage in oratory, and on topics that would have been not far removed from the curriculum. In the Phi Beta Kappa Initiation of 1779, the new member was informed,
here then you may for a while disengage yourself from scholastic cares and communicate without reserve whatever reflections you have made upon various objects; remembering that everything transacted within this room is transacted sub rosa,... here, too, you are to indulge in matters of speculation that freedom of inquiry which ever dispels the clouds of falsehood by the radiant sunshine of truth.
Latin letter fraternal societies
Older fraternal societies existed at College of William & Mary. The F.H.C. Society (nicknamed "the Flat Hat Club"), founded in 1750, is the first collegiate secret society recorded in North America; unlike the newer Phi Beta Kappa, the F.H.C. was a Latin-letter society, its name taken from the initial letters of a Latin motto (perhaps Fraternitas, Humanitas, Cognitioque).
A second Latin-letter fraternity at William & Mary, the P.D.A. Society, was publicly known as "Please Don't Ask". John Heath, chief organizer of the Phi Beta Kappa, according to tradition earlier sought but was refused admission to the P.D.A., though he may instead have disdained to join it (much later, his friend and fellow student William Short wrote that the P.D.A. "had lost all reputation for letters, and was noted only for the dissipation & conviviality of its members").
Secret fraternal society
The new society was intended to be "purely of domestic manufacture, without any connection whatever with anything European, either English or German." The founders of Phi Beta Kappa declared that the society was formed for congeniality and to promote good fellowship, with "friendship as its basis and benevolence and literature as its pillars." Before the British attempt at reclamation of the sovereign American colonies, including Virginia, there was a temporary closure of the College of William & Mary and disbandment of Phi Beta Kappa in early 1781. Elisha Parmelee, an alumnus of Yale College and Harvard College, passed through Williamsburg and took charters from the Phi Beta Kappa to establish branches of the society at these schools. A second chapter was founded at Yale College in late 1780; a third, at Harvard College in 1781; and a fourth, at Dartmouth College in 1787.
Phi Beta Kappa was a secret society to protect its members and to instill a sense of solidarity. The new society was given the motto Φιλοσοφία βίου κυβερνήτης (Philosophíā bíou kybernḗtēs), which means "The love of wisdom is the guide to life". Greek was chosen because it was the language of science in Roman times. Later, in May 1777, a new sign of recognition was devised: "A salutation of the clasp of the hands, together with an immediate stroke across the mouth with the back of the same hand, and a return with the hand used by the saluted". This new complex of gestures was created to allow the mutual recognition of members "in any foreign country or place."
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Transition to academic honor society
Further chapters appeared at Union College in 1817, Bowdoin College in 1825, and Brown University in 1830. The original chapter at William & Mary was re-established. In 1831, the Harvard chapter publicly disclosed the fraternity's secrets during a period of strong anti-Masonic sentiment. The first chapter established after Phi Beta Kappa became an "open" society was that at Trinity College in Connecticut, in 1845. University of Alabama established in 1851. In the pre-Civil War period, Society chapters frequently sponsored addresses by distinguished speakers. Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 address at Harvard, "The American Scholar", is the best-known of those addresses, but there were dozens of others at schools such as Bowdoin, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Union, and Yale.
As the first collegiate organization of its type to adopt a Greek-letter name, the Phi Beta Kappa is generally considered a forerunner of modern college fraternities as well as the model for later collegiate honorary societies. Ironically, it was partly the rise of true "social" fraternities modeled after Phi Beta Kappa later in the nineteenth century which obviated the social aspects of membership in the organization, transforming it into the honorary society it is today. By 1883, when the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa were established, there were 25 chapters. The first women were elected to the Society at the University of Vermont in 1875, and the first African-American member, George Washington Henderson, was elected at the same institution two years later. In 1885, however, Phi Beta Kappa eliminated those majoring in engineering from eligibility. This practice continues today.
Each chapter is designated by its state and a Greek letter indicating its position in the order in which that state's chapters were founded. For example, Alpha of Pennsylvania refers to the chapter at Dickinson College, founded in 1887; Beta of Pennsylvania, the chapter at Lehigh University (founded later that same year); Gamma of Pennsylvania, the chapter at Lafayette College (1890); and Delta of Pennsylvania, the chapter at the University of Pennsylvania (1892). By 1920, a total of 89 chapters existed at a variety of schools. Phi Beta Kappa was one of six honor societies that co-founded the ACHS on December 30, 1925. Its participation was short-lived, with the decision to withdraw and operate again as an independent society made just over a decade later, effective December 15, 1937.
Post-war era
In the 1960s, Vanderbilt University professor Donald Davidson claimed that Phi Beta Kappa was under the influence of Communists. In 1988, the United Chapters of Phi Beta Kappa officially changed its name to The Phi Beta Kappa Society, recalling the name under which the organization had been established in 1776.
In 1996, The New York Times reported declining rates of Phi Beta Kappa membership acceptance at state universities. Phi Beta Kappa officers have attributed this to the increasing numbers of "first-generation college students, students who do not consult their parents on such matters, and students who have gone to public schools, all of whom are less likely to have heard of the society". Earlier, in 1970, Robert Reinhold had reported that recipient students at the University of California at Berkeley expressed a mix of distaste and shame about the honor. Other members expressed a lack of satisfaction with the society for its significance.
A 1997 article from The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education criticized the society for under-representation at historically black colleges and universities. The authors wrote that "Only 3 of the nation's 100 black colleges and universities are members of Phi Beta Kappa" due to a rule that 10 faculty members at a university must be existing members, for which Black faculty would be socially disadvantaged due to a historic lack of admittance into relevant universities. Additionally, they created a list of "Predominantly White But Second- or Third-Tier Colleges and Universities That Have Been Awarded Phi Beta Kappa Chapters," which included Allegheny College and Millsaps College.
In 2008, the Phi Beta Kappa Society was awarded the Arts and Sciences Advocacy Award from the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CCAS). CCAS bestows this award upon an individual or organization demonstrating exemplary advocacy for the arts and sciences, flowing from a deep commitment to the intrinsic worth of liberal arts education.
Phi Beta Kappa participates in a more loosely coordinated lobbying association of four of the nation's oldest and most prestigious honor societies, called the Honor Society Caucus. Its members include Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, and Omicron Delta Kappa.
From Wikipedia’s article on Phi Beta Kappa, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3