As February is Black History Month, this is as appropriate a time as any to crack open the archives and take a look at the history of black athletes at the University. I was recently inspired to research this topic for a sports column after Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., a research archivist at the University, delivered a guest lecture in my "History of Mr. Jefferson's University" seminar about the history of African-Americans at the University.
Jordan's research served as the main source of information as I wrote this column, and I also pulled some interesting tidbits from old Cavalier Daily issues I examined at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Putting all of that together, I've compiled a list of important dates chronicling the integration of athletics at the University. By no means is this an exhaustive list of milestones or momentous achievements, but the following timeline provides a brief history of black athletes at Virginia:
1819: The University of Virginia is founded as an all-white, all-male school.
1947: Chester Pierce, a football player at Harvard University, becomes the first black athlete to play against Virginia in any sport. Virginia wins the Oct. 11 game 47-0 in front of a crowd where the seating is segregated, but for the first time, the game is not.
1964: George King becomes the first black athlete to play a sport for Virginia, walking on to both the wrestling and lacrosse teams.
1969: A Cavalier Daily column calls for the athletic department to increase its recruiting of black athletes, noting that no black players had ever been on scholarship at Virginia. The Dec. 16 piece, titled "Black Athletes" and written by sports editor Steve Giannini, mentions that there were only four black athletes competing for Virginia: Lee Pringle and James Small on the basketball team, Buzzy Jones on the football team and Nat Lucas on the track team.
1970: Virginia extends scholarships to black athletes for the first time in football and basketball, the only two scholarship sports at the time. Al Drummond becomes the first black scholarship athlete to play basketball at Virginia, while the football team signed four black recruits to scholarships: Harrison Davis, Stanley Land, Kent Merritt and John Rainey.
1978: Basketball player Deborah Stroman becomes the first black woman to earn a scholarship to play a sport at Virginia.
1983: Ralph Sampson wins his third consecutive Naismith College Player of the Year Award, capping off a career in which he led Virginia to an NIT Championship as a freshman and an NCAA Final Four appearance as a sophomore. The four-time first team All-American ties former UCLA center Bill Walton as the only three-time winner of the award. No player has won the award more than once since Sampson's three-peat.
1992: Dawn Staley wins her second consecutive Naismith Award, finished a career in which she becomes Virginia's all-time leader in points, scoring average, assists and free throws made. Staley led Virginia to two ACC titles and three Final Four appearances during her career, including an appearance in the NCAA finals.
2001: Craig Littlepage becomes the University's first black athletic director in August.
2005: Dave Leitao is hired as the University's 10th men's basketball coach and becomes the first black head coach of any sports team in Virginia's history.
2009: Mike London becomes the first black head football coach at Virginia since the sport was first played at Virginia in 1888.
2010: It's been 191 years since the University was founded, and Virginia has come a long way in many areas, including athletics. To the football players in 1947 who voted in favor of allowing Pierce to play against Virginia and the students during the late 1960s who called for the University to recruit more black athletes, you were miles ahead of your peers at other Southern schools and deserve much credit for pushing the University to fully integrate its athletic endeavors.
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