University of Alabama Kappa Alpha Pledge Register and Alumni Directory

Kappa Alpha Order is a social fraternity founded at Washington College (later Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, in 1865. James Ward Wood, William Archibald Walsh, and brothers William Nelson Scott and Stanhope McClelland Scott originally named the organization Phi Kappa Chi, but the local Virginia Beta chapter of Phi Kappa Psi protested that the name was too similar to theirs. Wood and the others changes the name to KA. In the years that followed, the fraternity spread throughout the Southern states, as well as California, Arizona, and New Mexico. As of 2014, Kappa Alpha lists 122 active chapters in at least twenty-four states.

In June 1885, when the stringent anti-fraternity laws which had been formulated and executed by the authorities of the University of Alabama were repealed, three UA law students (Phares Coleman and James Henry Webb of the KA chapter at Birmingham-Southern, and Jack E. Long of the Vanderbilt chapter) immediately secured a charter for the University. The Alpha Beta chapter of the Kappa Alpha Order was founded on the UA campus on June 17, 1885.