Are you in a sorority or fraternity? Are you considering joining one? Check out this list of famous people who once pledged Greek!
Bill Clinton: We’re kicking off the list with a pair of U.S. presidents (with more to come). President Clinton started his academic career at Georgetown University before studying at Oxford and Yale, and it was at Georgetown that he became a member of Alpha Phi Omega, the biggest fraternity in the United States. (It boasts chapters at more than 350 schools with close to 17,000 current active members, not to mention hundreds of thousands of alumni.) Interestingly, APO is a co-ed service fraternity, open to men and women.
George H.W. Bush: The 41st president of the United States, George H.W. Bush studied at Yale after serving in the military during World War II. While there, he became a brother in Delta Kappa Epsilon, and he also served as president of the fraternity. The organization has multiple ties with the presidency, including Bush’s son, George W. Bush, who was also a member.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Alpha Phi Alpha is the first Greek-letter organization created by African-American students, and it was founded at Cornell University in December 1906. Dr. King earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Morehouse and was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. In 1956, for its 50th anniversary, fraternity members gathered at Cornell, where King delivered a keynote address on social justice and integration.
Thurgood Marshall: Thurgood Marshall was a pioneer: the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, he’s also known for successfully arguing multiple cases before the Court as well as his landmark victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He was also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha and studied at Lincoln University and Howard University School of Law.
Condoleezza Rice: National Security Advisor during George W. Bush’s first term and Secretary of State during his second, Condoleezza Rice studied at the University of Denver before earning a master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame. She’s a member of Alpha Chi Omega, a woman’s group dating back to 1885 that now has more than 130 chapters nationwide.
Theodore Roosevelt: Teddy Roosevelt took the office of the presidency while his cousin Franklin was in college. He was active in Alpha Delta Phi and Delta Kappa Epsilon.
Ronald Reagan: Tau Kappa Epsilon was created in 1899 at Illinois Wesleyan University and now has chapters throughout the country and in Canada. When Ronald Reagan attended Eureka College before graduating in 1932, he was a member of TKE and active in a variety of campus activities.
Neil Armstrong: He’s the first person to set foot on the Moon, as well as one of the first U.S. citizens to make a space flight. As mission commander of Apollo 11, he made history by landing on the Moon, and he received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. He studied engineering at Purdue University, where he was in two fraternities: Phi Delta Theta, founded at Miami University in 1848, and Kappa Kappa Psi, a national honorary band fraternity.
Warren Buffett: Warren Buffet, who studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest people on the planet. He’s also a member of Alpha Sigma Phi, a fraternity founded at Yale University in 1845, making it one of the oldest in the nation.
Ann S. Moore: Ann Moore currently serves as the chair and CEO of Time, Inc., and is the company’s first female CEO. She did her undergrad studies at Vanderbilt University and is an alumna of Pi Beta Phi, which began at Monmouth College in Illinois in 1867. Pi Beta Phi has more than 130 active chapters throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Eli Manning: The New York Giants quarterback led his team to an upset victory in Super Bowl XLII in 2008 against the previously undefeated New England Patriots. He started his amazing career at Ole Miss, where in addition to football he also was a devoted member of Sigma Nu, a frat founded in 1869 by a trio of cadets at the Virginia Military Institute.
To see the rest of this list, read more at Online College!