• DOI:10.2307/41172364
• Corpus ID: 163683574

Sport History, Race, and the College Gridiron: A Southern California Turning Point

@article{Demas2007SportHR,
  title={Sport History, Race, and the College Gridiron: A Southern California Turning Point},
  author={Lane Demas},
  journal={Southern California quarterly},
  year={2007},
  volume={89},
  pages={169-193}
}

• Lane Demas
• Published 1 July 2007
• History
• Southern California quarterly

December 3, 1898, the season-ending banquet to honor Harvard's football team was a raucous affair.1 Having completed an unbeaten season, the squad celebrated surprise victories over several Ivy League rivals, including the University of Pennsylvania and Yale. The evening's featured speaker, Theodore Roosevelt, proved to be a boisterous, energetic orator and a huge football fan. Roosevelt, a Harvard alum and newly elected governor of New York, received a warm ovation from an audience of influential administrators, students, and boosters. Yet the evening's largest cheer came with the introduction of assistant coach William Henry Lewis. While a student at Harvard's law school, the popular Lewis had become one of the first African Americans to integrate a college squad when he joined the team in 1892. 2 Upon graduation, Lewis was named an assistant coach also a first for a black man.