Inspired by Charles H. Wesley

Charles Harris Wesley (December 2, 1891 – August 16, 1987) was an American historian, educator, writer and author. Wesley was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the only child of Matilda and Charles Snowden Wesley. He attended local schools as a boy, and went on to graduate from Fisk University in 1911. Wesley was an ordained minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. After serving as the Dean of the Liberal Arts and the Graduate School at Howard University, in 1942 he was called to serve as President of Wilberforce University (an AME affiliated university) in Wilberforce, Ohio until 1947. It was in that year that he went on to found Central State University across the street from Wilberforce University and where he would serve as president until he moved back to Washington, D.C. in 1965. In addition, Wesley was the 14th and a five-term General President and later National Historian for seven decades of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter- fraternity established by and for African Americans. He wrote The History of Alpha Phi Alpha in 1929, and many new editions.