A flood of purple filled the 1600 block of West Jefferson Street on Saturday.
Members of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc. gathered in North Philadelphia to celebrate the unveiling of a Pennsylvania historical marker in honor of Oscar James Cooper, a medical doctor and cofounder of the historically Black fraternity.
They were also there for the renaming of Jefferson, between 16th and 17th Streets, to Dr. Oscar J. Cooper Way.
A few hundred men, members of the Greek letter fraternity, were dressed in purple sweaters, purple hoodies, and purple business blazers.
The fraternity members had come in the traditional purple and gold of Omega Psi Phi to celebrate the unveilings at 11:17 a.m., a time set to mark the date the fraternity was founded on the campus of Howard University, on Nov. 17, 1911.
The marker was unveiled outside Cooper's former home and medical office at 1621 W. Jefferson St. Purple and gold balloons fluttered in the wind at the corner of the residence, at Jefferson and Willington Streets.
The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission and Philadelphia City Council worked with Mu Omega, the Philadelphia chapter of the international fraternity, to install the marker.
Cooper, born in Washington in 1888, cofounded the fraternity at Howard when he was a college junior with two fellow junior students, Bishop Edgar Amos Love and Frank Coleman, and their faculty adviser, Ernest Everett Just, a noted biologist.
After completing college and medical school, Cooper moved to Philadelphia and established a 50-year practice. He died in 1972.
Caption: Philadelphia Inquirer 2021
Video By: Bro. Todd Inman