Football, Collegiate

By: Alonford James Robinson

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Football, Collegiate

American college team sport at which African Americans have excelled, despite a history of exclusion from predominantly white colleges and universities.

For many years, black college football in the United States centered on historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). African American football players were not welcome on white campuses until the late 1950s, and not until the late 1960s in the Deep South. Before that time, Jim Crow segregation meant separate teams and leagues for black players.

The first black college football game took place in North Carolina in 1892; Biddle College defeated Livingston College. Thereafter, black college football became a major social event on campus, bringing students and alumni together. By the beginning of the twentieth century, several major school rivalries had developed, including Virginia Union-Virginia State, Tuskegee Institute-Talladega College, and Fisk University-Meharry College. The intensity and popularity of these rivalries persuaded several colleges to form a conference in 1912. That year Howard University, Lincoln University, Hampton University, and Shaw University of North Carolina formed the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA). Within a few years, several more black conferences were formed to showcase black college football, including the Southwest Athletic Conference (SWAC), the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC), and the Midwestern Athletic Conference (MWAC).

Premier Black College Programs

These regional conferences brought national exposure to several outstanding black college football programs. In the 1920s, Tuskegee Institute was dominant, winning nine SIAC titles between 1924 and 1933. Tuskegee's team featured one of the most exciting running backs of that era, Ben Stevenson. Although Tuskegee captured most of the attention during this time, another university dazzled crowds with an athletic running back: Franz “Jazz” Bird, who played at Lincoln in the early 1920s. Bird was nicknamed “the black Red Grange,” a reference to famous white football star Red Grange.

In the 1930s, Morgan State in Maryland succeeded Tuskegee as the nation's premier black college football program. Coached by Edward Hurt, Morgan State won seven CIAA championships between 1930 and 1941 with teams led by running backs Otis Troupe and Thomas “The Tank” Conrad. In the Midwest Athletic Conference, Kentucky State consistently fielded standout players throughout the 1930s, including tight ends William Reed and Robert Hardin, running back George “Big Bertha” Edwards, and quarterback Joseph “Tarzan” Kendall.

Despite dwindling resources, black colleges continued to attract many of the finest players after World War II (1939–1945). In the late 1940s, members of the black press named Morris Brown College running back John “Big Train” Moody and Kentucky State guard Herbert “Lord” Trawick All Americans. During the following decade, Morgan State sent several players to the National Football League (NFL), among them Roosevelt Brown, Leroy Kelly, and Willie Lanier. Florida A & M stars Willie Gallimore and wide receiver Bob Hayes also had successful professional careers.

Grambling State in Louisiana has produced more professional players than any other black college. Under the leadership of coach Eddie Robinson, Grambling sent more than 200 players to the NFL, including the league's first black player, running back Paul “Tank” Younger, and its first African American quarterback, James Harris. Grambling graduates also include halfback Sammy White; defensive backs Everson Walls, Roosevelt Taylor, and Willie Brown; defensive tackle Junious “Buck” Buchanan; defensive end Willie Davis; and the first black quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, Doug Williams. Robinson, the grandfather of black college football, paved the way for other coaches, such as Ed Hurt and Earl Banks at Morgan State and Jake Gaither at Florida A & M.

Of all the black college graduates who have played professional football, Walter Payton, Jerry Rice, and Art Shell may be the most famous. Payton, a graduate of Jackson State University in Mississippi, was one of the most gifted running backs in NFL history. He finished his career with the Chicago Bears as the league's career rushing leader and a member of the NFL Hall of Fame. Jerry Rice, a graduate of Mississippi Valley State, is arguably the best wide receiver ever to play the game. He joined the San Francisco 49ers in 1985 and earned an NFL record for most career touchdowns. Art Shell, a graduate of Maryland State, was an NFL Hall of Fame lineman before becoming only the second African American to be named a professional football head coach.

Stars at Predominantly White Schools

While historically black colleges and universities gave African American athletes a place to develop and showcase their athletic talents, a few black football players were standouts at predominantly white schools. As early as 1889, William Henry Lewis and William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson were among the first blacks to play collegiate football at such schools. Both attended Amherst College in Massachusetts from 1889 to 1892. Lewis later graduated from Harvard Law School and in 1903 became the first African American to serve as U.S. assistant attorney general.

By the 1890s, a few predominantly white schools had begun recruiting black players, such as George Jewett at the University of Michigan in 1890 and George Glippin at the University of Nebraska in 1892. Other black athletes also earned spots on predominantly white football teams in the 1890s. William Arthur Johnson was a running back at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Howard Cook played at Cornell, Howard Lee at Harvard, George Chadwell at Williams, William Washington at Oberlin, and Alton Washington at Northwestern. By the turn of the century, black players at predominantly white colleges were gaining national attention for their athleticism.

One of the first to become a star at a mostly white school was Robert Marshall, a standout at the University of Minnesota from 1903 to 1906. In 1904, Marshall scored 72 points in one game; he was a Second Team All-American in 1905 and 1906. Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard, who enrolled at Brown University in Rhode Island in 1915, also gained national attention. Pollard was an exceptional running back, defensive back, and kicker. He led Brown to the Rose Bowl in 1916 and was named an All-American the same year. A third standout player was Paul Robeson, a four-sport athlete at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Robeson, the first black player to be named First Team All-American, was an intimidating presence on the football field, a dominant lineman who was also recognized as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society.

Throughout the 1920s, black players excelled at schools in the Northeast, West, and Midwest. Fred “Duke” Slater was a star tackle at the University of Iowa from 1919 to 1921. Charles West and Charles Drew were running backs at Washington and Jefferson in Pennsylvania; Drew later became a doctor and gained international recognition for his discovery of a technique to preserve blood plasma. At Duquesne, Ray Kemp played tackle, and at New York University, David Myers was a defensive end. During the 1930s, the teams of Iowa, Northwestern, and Ohio State included black players such as Oze Simmons, Homer Harris, William Bell, and Bernard Jefferson. These players managed to succeed in environments that were often hostile to blacks.

During his career at Rutgers, Paul Robeson suffered numerous injuries, including a broken nose and a separated shoulder, all as a result of dirty play by opposing white players. In 1923, Jack Trice of Iowa State died from internal bleeding after an excessively rough game against the University of Minnesota. At most white schools, blacks were barred from living in white dormitories and discouraged from playing quarterback, usually considered the team's star position. They were excluded from Southern schools altogether. Between 1918 and 1937, no African American was named a First Team All-American, despite blacks' dominance at schools such as the University of Iowa, Ohio State, and the University of California at Los Angeles. The second black player to be named First Team All-American was Jerome Holland, a tight end at Cornell in 1937. That year Syracuse bowed to Southern tradition by keeping quarterback Wilmeth Sadat-Singh on the bench when the team traveled to the University of Maryland. Boston College followed the example set by Syracuse when its team benched Louis Montgomery during the 1937 Cotton Bowl against Clemson.

Breaking Racial Barriers

Although racism continued to segregate blacks and whites in the United States throughout the 1940s and 1950s, several African American college football players managed to break racial barriers. In 1948 Denny Hoggard and Wally Triplet of Penn State became the first African Americans to play in the Cotton Bowl. A year later, Levi Jackson was the first black to be named captain of the Yale football team. In 1956 Jim Parker of Ohio State became the first black to win the Outland Trophy, an award recognizing the best lineman in the nation. By 1960 some of the most racist Southern universities found themselves on the losing sides of battles with integrated teams. Still, the head coach at one Southern school, the all-white University of Alabama, swore he would never let a black man play on his team. Today, however, that team has many black players.

African Americans have made a significant mark in college football. Black players have won a majority of the annual Heisman trophies since 1970, as well as several recent Outland trophies. Today, most of the country's top programs, including those with long-standing histories of racial discrimination, such as the University of Alabama, the University of Georgia, and the University of Tennessee, have predominantly black football teams. One area of concern, however, is black coaching. In 1980, Dennis Green became the first African American head coach at a predominantly white school. He led Northwestern from 1981 to 1985 and Stanford University from 1989 to 1991; he then became the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League. Black coaches such as Ronald Cooper, Ronald Dickerson, and Jim Caldwell have made strides at the Division I-A level as well. But in 2003, when forty-three percent of college football players were black, only four of 117 major colleges had black head coaches. In response to the lack of African American presence in the coaching ranks, the Black Coaches Association, a national group for coaches of all sports, launched a three-year program to increase the hiring of black coaches and assistant coaches.

See also Football, Professional.

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