From the book "The Talented Tenth" by Skip Mason Callis’s youth was filled with memorable experience:    “I had heard first hand tales of slavery, the Underground Railroad and the War. I had lived in a former 'Station,' I had eaten with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. I had heard the spirituals sung spontaneously after the regular Sunday morning service. I had known well of General Greenleaf of the Louisiana Campaign which in 1863 complemented Grant’s seizure of Vicksburg. I had seen scars of the lash on the backs of women... lynching, disfranchisement and peonage seared my soul. Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Nat Turner and Toussaint L’Overture were my refuge. And a new hope was being born! W.E.B. DuBois had called the Niagara Conference.”     While at Central High School, Callis recited Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” speech that Washington had given at the 1895 Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta. His peers at Central even referred to Callis as a “second Booker T. Washington,” an honor he called “doubtful.”     A friend of Callis, Edward Brooks informed him of a state scholarship and encouraged him to compete for it. He did and won a scholarship to Cornell University, fulfilling a dream that occurred when he was a small boy. In 1892, at the age of six years, Jewel Callis had chosen Cornell University as the school of his choice when he had the opportunity to visit the campus with his aunt and younger brother.     His years at Cornell are also documented in the book “Henry Arthur Callis: Life and Legacy” by Charles Harris Wesley. While he was a student, Jewel Callis worked as a waiter at various fraternity houses including Theta Beta Phi and he also tutored students. In the fall of 1905, he was forced to drop out of school. Roscoe Conkling Giles, one of the first initiates, recalled that Callis returned because of his indefatigable determination. Giles referred to as “setting an example to the faint hearted who gave up the fight without a struggle.” Callis returned in the fall of 1906 and was very active in the social club that had been formed by C.C. Poindexter, an older student at Cornell. Callis was elected as Secretary of the Social Study Club. He joined Charles Chapman, Kelley, and Tandy on the Committee of Initiation.     Callis along with Eugene Jones helped to rationalize and come up with the appropriate Greek letters for the club. Callis would remark years later that he had trouble with the last letter of the fraternity because he could not find in Latin what the Greeks called Africans. He often said that he was not a student of Greek and “wanted that changed in the history book.” In a letter to Brother Wesley on October 14, 1959, Jewel Callis writes:     "I had hoped that minor errors of fact would be suggested by living participants. There now is probably no way of unearthing evidence...All of us were commissioned to seek a temporary name. At the March meeting I returned with “Alpha Phi Alpha.” It was adopted informally. These events occurred at 411 East State Street. During the Spring of 1906, we advertised ourselves in Ithaca as A.Phi A. Under that name we gave a dance in town before the closing of school and the first initiation on October 30, was held under the name 'Alpha Phi Alpha.' "