Epsilon Chi

In the summer of 1964, Ellis Bullock, a student at the University of Kentucky was initiated into Alpha Phi Alpha through the Alpha Lambda Chapter. He along with Brother Bradley Watkins, initiated at Clark College, became the Chapter Founders. Civil Rights laws were not enforced until 1964, and the campus of the University of Kentucky was partially off limits to the few black students that were enrolled. With only about 100 Black students at UK, only 12-15 residing on campus, they were not permitted to go to any of the restaurants that were right across from campus or the theatre downtown.

Despite these harsh conditions, with Jim Crow Laws still mysteriously lurking, members from the Alpha Lambda Alumni Chapter in Louisville, Kentucky and the Beta Mu Undergraduate Chapter at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Kentucky, were interested in chartering a chapter at the University of Kentucky. The charter line was initiated into the Alpha Lambda Chapter in the fall of 1964, with the charter being granted to the eight University of Kentucky students in the Spring of 1965.