Dr. Melvin Evans, the First Elected Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Was a Member of Phi Beta Sigma

Did you know that Dr. Melvin H. Evans, the first elected governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, was a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.? Evans was initiated through the Alpha Chapter at Howard University, the fraternity’s founding chapter.

Melvin Herbert Evans was born on August 7, 1917, in Christiansted, St. Croix, just months after the United States purchased the Virgin Islands from Denmark. He graduated as valedictorian of his high school class and went on to Howard University, earning a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in 1940 and a medical degree in 1944. A trained physician, he later studied cardiology at Johns Hopkins and earned a master’s in public health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Evans first served his islands through medicine. As the Virgin Islands’ commissioner of health from 1959 to 1967, he oversaw a dramatic decline in infant mortality and the elimination of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the territory. His record of public service opened the door to politics, and in 1969 President Richard Nixon appointed him governor of the Virgin Islands, the last person named to the office rather than elected.

The following year, Evans made history. After Congress granted the territory the right to elect its own governor, he won the 1970 election and, on January 4, 1971, was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, becoming not only the first elected governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands but the first Black person ever elected governor in the United States. He led the territory until 1975.

Evans continued to serve long after leaving office. In 1978, he was elected as the Virgin Islands’ delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, and President Ronald Reagan later appointed him United States Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. Dr. Melvin Evans died on November 27, 1984, in his hometown of Christiansted. The Virgin Islands named a major St. Croix highway in his honor and marks his birthday each year as Melvin H. Evans Day, a lasting tribute to a life that embodied the Phi Beta Sigma motto, “Culture for Service and Service for Humanity.”

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