Robert Harold Ogle entered the career secretarial field and had the unique privilege of serving as a professional staff member to the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations. He was an African American pioneer in his Capitol Hill position. He proposed the Fraternity s colors and was Alpha Chapter s first secretary. Ogle joined Kelley in working out the first ritual and later became a charter member of Washington s Mu Lambda Chapter. He died in 1936.
“Never before was it as incumbent upon every member to restate loyalty and exemplify fraternal obligation by consistent life and unimpeachable character. But these must be reinforced by a growing consciousness of the responsibilities that Alpha Phi Alpha faces in the world today, where, if ever the problems which beset us are to be solved and a way of deliverance discovered, it must be by the application of those principles upon which we are founded.” — Robert Harold Ogle, March 21, 1936.
Robert Harold Ogle was born on April 3, 1886 in Washington, D.C. to Jeremiah and Mary Ellen Ogle. He attended the public schools in Washington. From 1901-1905, he was a student at the M Street School. The school was considered one of the finest preparatory schools for African-Americans in the city. Most of the students were children of working class parents and admission required the successful completion of grammar school. With only 530 seats, it was very competitive. The students had to pay for books and supplies. Students were required to take English, history, algebra, Latin, and physics or chemistry. Electives included French, German, Spanish, Greek, history, and other advanced courses including geometry and political economy. M Street school had a cadet corps and performed often on the White House lawn, also. Ogle was enrolled in a four year liberal arts program and a two year business education program. Ogle arrived at the end of Robert Terrell s tenure as principal and the beginning of Anna Julian Cooper’s as principal. After graduation in 1905, Robert Harold Ogle entered Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
After graduating from Cornell in 1909, Jewel Ogle returned to his home of Washington D.C., where he entered the secretarial field, finding employment for the United States Senate Appropriations Committee. An authority on Parliamentary procedures, Jewel Ogle received his training while working under the chairmanship of the late Senator Francis E. Warren of Wyoming. In that position, he developed a keen knowledge of fiscal affairs of the Federal Government, and a habit of careful research. He also clerked with two Washington Municipal Judges Brother James A. Cobb and Armond W. Scott. He married the former Helen Moore and moved to Richmond, Virginia for a short period. She died leaving him with two daughters Helen Ogle (Atkins) and Mary Ogle (Wilson). He remarried Marea Scott.
A lifelong resident of Washington, D.C., Jewel Ogle and his family resided at 1721 T Street, N.W. In 1923, he along with Jewel Nathaniel Allison Murray and future historian and General President Charles Harris Wesley chartered the Mu Lambda Chapter, where he was an active member of the chapter until his death.
Jewel Ogle was a dedicated Brother from the start. It was at the home of Archie and Annie Singleton (411 East State Street, Ithaca, New York) in Jewel Ogle s disheveled combination study and bedroom that the fraternity took shape. In December of 1905, as the desire to become a fraternity was growing, Jewel Ogle began investigating a news item he had seen in the Chicago Defender newspaper. He had returned to Washington for the Christmas holidays and saw an article which told of the establishment of the Pi Gamma Omicron Fraternity at Ohio State University. He wrote the registrar for information and received a reply that there was no such organization. They later found out that the fraternity had been at Ohio State but had disintegrated.
At the first initiation banquet, Jewel Ogle spoke on “Welcome Brother,” and it was he who made the motion to establish Beta Chapter at Howard University in December of 1907. It was Jewel Ogle who proposed the colors of “Old Gold and Black” for the organization. Noted for his excellent spencerian penmanship, he served as the first secretary of Alpha Chapter. Also, Ogle and Brother J. P. Boags wrote what was to become the first song for the Fraternity, sung to the tune of “Maryland, My Maryland”:
Sons of Alpha are we,
One in love and charity,
Let our thoughts of sadness fly,
For our own, our Alpha Phi!
Chorus
Courage, Brothers, banded we
All through life to eternity,
Let our hearts in joyous praise
Sing of Alpha through endless days.
In 1927, Jewel Ogle chaired the fraternity’s first Historical Commission with Jewels George Biddle Kelley, Vertner Woodson Tandy, Henry Arthur Callis and Past General Presidents Charles H. Garvin and Roscoe Conklin Giles. In a letter to the Brothers, Jewel Ogle wrote the following plea in the December, 1927 issue of The Sphinx:
“We are familiar with the resplendent record of achievement marking the rapid growth of Alpha Phi Alpha in numbers and power. We know that its fundamental principles are true and strong. We believe that the men of the College world and other citizens of the United States see it in the embodiment of all that is noble in Negro manhood. Let us make our achievements a matter of permanent record. Urge your chapter to reply early to the questionnaire which is being sent out by the Historical Commission. It is your mandate- Help us to put it over.”
His efforts, along with Brother Wesley’s, produced the first edition of The History of Alpha Phi Alpha: A Development in Negro College Life in 1929.
When the Twelfth Annual Convention of the Fraternity opened on December 1927, at the Mt. Zion Congregational Temple in Cleveland, Ohio, the Annual Founder’s Address was delivered by Jewel Ogle. According to the February 1928 issue of The Sphinx, Brother Ogle gave a “heart to heart talk, directing attention to some fundamental prerequisites for the future progress of Alpha Phi Alpha.”
In 1931, Jewel Ogle, along with founders George Biddle Kelley, Vertner Woodson Tandy, Henry Arthur Callis and Charles Henry Chapman, attended the 25th Anniversary Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. Following the convention, he shared some thoughts about the future of the Fraternity:
“Alpha Phi Alpha undoubtedly faces the most challenging test in its history. It is of vital importance that we seriously consider the contribution of every brother may make for the good of our fraternity.”