ABSTRACT
In December of 1892, in the midst of a rare North Carolina snowstorm, the football teams from Livingstone College and Biddle University took part in a historic eventthe first-ever football game between black colleges. Livingstone students had chipped in to buy a football, fitted their shoes with temporary cleats, and padded their clothes with rags for practice sessions. Barely three years later, at the other end of the country, basketball teams from Stanford University and the University of California staged the nation's first interscholastic contest between college women's teams. The Blue Stockings became part of the major league American Association in 1884, making Fleet Walker the first African American to play for a major league team. They paid particular attention to William Henry Lewis, who played football for both Amherst and Harvard, and who in 1893 earned the honor of being the nation's first black All-American football player.
