December 4th

On this day – 4 December 1906 – Alpha Phi Alpha was founded

Alpha Phi Alpha is the first African American, inter college Greek lettered fraternity. The first chapter was founded at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The founders are known as the "Seven Jewels". Their names were Henry A. Callis, Charles Henry Chapman, George Biddle Kelley, Nathaniel Allison Murray, Robert H. Ogle, Vertner Woodson Tandy, and Eugene Kinckle Jones. The aims of the fraternity were "manly deeds, scholarship, and love for all mankind" and it was founded as a study and suport group for minority students who faced racial prejudice. In 1945 Alpha Phi Alpha was opened for men of all races and the first non-black member was Bernard Levin who joined in 1946.

Alpha Phi Alpha spread to other american universities soon after its founding at Cornell University. There are 290,000 members and 730 active chapters today. Some famous members includes Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr., the former president of Jamaica, Norman Manley, the first African American supreme court judge, Marshall Thurgood, musician Duke Ellington and singer  Lionel Richie. Member W. DuBois started The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1933 member Belford Lawson Jr started the New Negro Alliance (NNA) that fought a landmark case against discriminatory hiring practices (New Negro Alliance vs Sanitary Grocery Co). Alpha Phi Alpha have clearly contributed to a more equal society in the US and to giving black people in the US a voice. 

Delegates of the fourth annual convention 

December 3rd

On this day – 3 December 1967 – The first human-to human heart transplant

The first heart transplant from a human to another human was conducted by the South African Surgeon Christian Barnard. This was not the first heart transplant to a human, but the first human to human heart transplant. Three years earlier had Dr. James Hardy performed a heart transplant from a chimpanzee to a human, but the patient had died only 90 minutes later. Barnard’s surgery in 1967 was more successful and his patient managed to self sustains the new heart. The patient, Louis Washkansky, sadly died of pneumonia 18 days after the surgery.  

The surgery was at the time highly experimental. Barnard had practiced on animals previously, but this was the first human to human heart transplant. The operation had taken a total on 9 hours and it was a 25 year old car crash victim which was the donor. It took only three days from the first heart transplant were conducted to a new one was tried, this time a pediatric heart transplant in the US. Although this was not a successful transplant either continued surgeons to build on the work. Today is heart transplant considered a fairly common surgery, and around 3000 are done each year.

We would like to urge everyone to sign up as a donor so that more people can be saved. 

Christian Barnard, the first doctor to do a human heart to heart transplant