First Annual Dr. A. B. Xuma Black and Gold Scholarship Dinner

The First Annual Dr. A.B. Xuma Black and Gold Scholarship Dinner is being organized by Rho Phi Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated to commermorate the Chapter's 15th Anniversary in concert with one of the Chapter's two charitable organziations, the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Africa, who is also celebrating 15 years of impact in delivering educational and social development support to youths across Johannesburg. The dinner is also being organzied with support from The World Youth Clubs.

The charitable event is proudly named after Dr. A.B. Xuma who is recognized as the first South African member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated having become a member of the organization in 1919 when he was a student at the University of Minnesota. After his studies in the U.S., Alfred Bitini Xuma went on to become a pioneering black South African medical doctor, activist, and President-General of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1940 to 1949. Educated in the US and Europe, he became the first black South African to qualify as a medical doctor and the first to practice in Johannesburg.

Rho Phi Lambda Chapter (The South Africa Alphas) is the first chapter chartered in Africa in the 21st century, and the second chapter ever chartered on the continent of Africa (Eta Epsilon Lambda was the first chapter chartered in Africa in Liberia in 1958) of the oldest black collegiate fraternal organization in the world, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated, which was founded on December 4, 1906 on the campus of Cornell University in Ithica, New York. In addition to Dr. A.B. Xuma, illustrious past and current members of the organization include: Dr. W. E. B. Dubois, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, Jesse Owens, U.S. Chief Justice Thurdgood Marshall, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Andrew Young, current U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, and billionaire and philanthropist, Robert F. Smith.