Our History

KAPPA SIGMA HISTORY

Kappa Sigma was founded originally in the year 1400 in Bologna, Italy. According to history, the corrupt governor of the city, Baldassare Cossa, took advantage of the students at the University of Bologna by sending his men to assault and rob them. One of the scholars of the University of Bologna, Manuel Chrysoloras, decided to create a secret society of students for mutual protection against the governor of the city.

Kappa Sigma came to the United States on December 10, 1869, when five students at the University of Virginia decided to found the fraternity in America. William Grigsby McCormick, George Miles Arnold, John Covert Boyd, Edmund Law Rogers Jr. and Frank Courtney Nicodemus, also known as the Five Friends and Brothers, established the fraternity based on the traditions from the original fraternity in Bologna. In 1872, Kappa Sigma initiated Stephen Alonzo Jackson, the brother who would transform a struggling local fraternity at the University of Virginia to a strong international Brotherhood.

Today, the headquarters for the Kappa Sigma Fraternity still resides in Charlottesville, Virginia. Holding to the pillars of Fellowship, Leadership, Scholarship, and Service, the Kappa Sigma Fraternity has serviced the community and created lifelong bonds for over a century. Kappa Sigma stands as one of the oldest, largest, and most successful fraternities in the world, with over 350 chapters and more than 250,000 brothers.