Corey White stepped onto the University of Chicago campus prepared for a four-year commitment. But that was small shakes compared with the commitment he also was prepared to make to Alpha Phi Alpha. That would be for a lifetime.

He's about two years in, having joined the group's Theta chapter as a freshman in spring 2008. That's just a blip in the chapter's 100-year history, which will be celebrated with a Saturday gala at the South Shore Cultural Center.

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Pioneering publisher John H. Johnson (left) and advertising guru Thomas Burrell were members of Alpha Phi Alpha.
(Scott Stewart/Sun-Times/AP)

It's a major deal for a frat chapter.

"It's a big source of pride," said White, incoming president of the Theta chapter, in which pioneering publisher John H. Johnson and advertising guru Thomas Burrell were initiated as students. "We continue to stay strong and do our mission throughout the Chicago area."

The chapter mentors youth and regularly stages voting, clothing and food drives and anti-violence marches.

It's the eighth chapter chartered within Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., the nation's oldest college-based predominantly black Greek-lettered organization.

Alpha Phi Alpha was founded as a support group by seven students at Cornell University in 1906.

The fraternity has since initiated more than 180,000 men -- including major players in the civil rights movement such as Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young and Whitney M. Young Jr., as well as former Chicago mayor Eugene Sawyer -- in more than 680 chapters.

The local chapter came on the scene four years after the national organization was founded.

Theta had such cachet that students at other schools with Alpha chapters would transfer to Chicago colleges for summer terms in order to pledge at the chapter, then return to their campuses in the fall.

Chartered as a statewide chapter to include the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and the University of Illinois Feb. 21, 1910, the group hosted the fraternity's 7th then-annual national convention in 1914.

Theta was the first black greek-lettered organization (BGLO) to buy a fraternity house in Chicago, as it took ownership of 4104 S. Vincennes Ave. in 1923.

It was the first chapter of any BGLO to initiate a white member when University of Illinois student Bernard Levins joined in 1946.

Theta was Alpha's 2005 National College Chapter of the Year. And, for the past 20 years, it's maintained a 100 percent graduation rate for its members.

The fraternity's reputation for scholastic achievement was most impressive to White, who was ready to sign up as soon as he hit campus. His dad had pledged Alpha in 1981, and many of his father's friends were members of the frat.

"I think more than any other organization, Alpha focuses on academics," said White, an economics major. "Everybody that comes into this chapter graduates."

Member Richard Nettles said: "The same work I'm doing now, only one year into the organization, I'm expected to do 20 or 30 or 40 years from now."