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presidential commission on American race relations.

      In the pre-World War II period, black students often found a modicum of acceptance at Ivy League universities and colleges as athletes. In higher education in general and the Ivy League especially, athletics translated to privilege in terms of one’s mobility on campus. There is a long history of black athletes entertaining predominantly white audiences in the United States. William Rhoden, author of Forty Million Dollar Slave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete (2007), described black sportsmen in the period of enslavement having to perform to meet the expectations of their masters. If good enough, those chosen few athletes received elevated treatment. During the period of Jim Crow, white Americans loved black sportsmen—as long as they performed their duties on the field or court. Once back in society, however, black athletes faced the same kind of racism that nonathletic citizens confronted. Scholars have called this the “key functionary theory.”55 When applied to race and sports, as long as black people performed their roles in entertaining and amusing white people, they could be applauded and even admired. In the early twentieth century, this was true for athletes racing horses and bicycles as well as boxing and playing football. Perhaps a clear example of the key functionary theory was Jesse Owens. White Americans cheered the gold medal winning Olympian, but he could not stay on campus at his northern predominantly white university.

      The Ancient Eight got the name “Ivy League” because of football. During the early part of the twentieth century, some of the Ivy institutions were more renowned for their sports wins than their academic rigor. For some time, the Ivy League led the way in football competition.56 The names of black players could be found on rosters at most of the Ivies, but Princeton, which did not enroll black students, often refused to even play against teams fielding black athletes. Historian Charles Martin, in Benching Jim Crow: The Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sports, relayed a story of a Dartmouth black player who took the field against Princeton only to have his collar bone broken within the first minutes of the game, effectively ending his season. After the incident, a Princeton player said, “We’ll teach you to bring colored men down here. You must take us for a gang of servants.”57 The animosity that the Dartmouth player experienced was not unusual for black athletes, especially when playing teams throughout the South. Princeton was not in the South geographically, but it was well known as a haven for southerners who had a predilection for oppressing black people.58

      In most of the Ivy League, however, black players had a chance to display their talents on the field and court. In the early 1890s, William H. Lewis became the first black football player in the league. Lewis has the distinction of being the first in a number of other categories as well. He was the first black player selected for Walter Camp’s All-Time All-America team. Enrolled in the law school, he played center for Harvard University. There, he also became the first black player to be named captain of the Harvard team. His leadership on the field portended his career as the first black coach in the Ivy League, when he spent eleven years on the coaching staff of the Harvard team. As if his football exploits were not enough to fill a lifetime for Lewis, President William Howard Taft appointed him U.S. assistant attorney general in 1910.59 After his term as a federal appointee, he spent his life fighting against lynching and other forms of racism.

      Joining Lewis in the Ivy League were footballers like the Pollard brothers. Leslie and Frederick “Fritz” Pollard represented Dartmouth and Brown respectively. Fritz Pollard was also a Walter Camp All-American, graduating Brown with a degree in chemistry in 1919. While on the field he met with hardnosed players and racist taunts from the crowd. At one game against Yale, the white students in the crowd sang the tune “Bye Bye, Blackbird.”60 Despite the jibes, Pollard had a successful college career and went on to play and coach professionally. Incidentally, Fritz Pollard also pledged Alpha Phi Alpha while at Brown. While the athletes played football and joined fraternities, black people throughout the United States tried daily to escape racial violence. In spite of their acclaim, black athletes had to keep in mind the threat of lynching and the blatant disrespect of racism in the same way that other black men and women did.

      Cornell University was competitive in football during the depression years. In the 1930s at Cornell, the students, staff, and administration adored Jerome “Brude” Holland, who was the first black varsity football player there. Born in upstate New York, he played offense and defense, with his presence affecting much of the game. Off the field he was a member of black Greek organization Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., and the Booker T. Washington Club, which students started on campus to debate the utility of Washington’s philosophy. Holland also mentored black youth at a newly established community center in Ithaca founded by the Francis Harper Society. Although he was black, because he was a beloved football player he enjoyed a Cornell experience that was not available to students who were not standout athletes. For instance, Holland was selected to a very exclusive honor society, Aleph Samach. White people at Cornell were generous in granting Holland the distinction of the honor society, but at the very same time black women, who did not play football, faced rejection for the housing that was supposed to be compulsory for women. Ater graduating, Holland earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and eventually became the president of two HBCUs and an ambassador to Sweden during President Richard M. Nixon’s administration.61 He also accepted an appointment as trustee of Cornell University.

      Black students also excelled in other sports in the Ivy League. At Columbia, George Gregory received national commendations for his play on the basketball court from 1929 to 1931. He was the first black player at Columbia and he remained in New York City after graduating, taking posts in civil service leadership roles.62 On the lacrosse field, Lucien Alexis of Harvard gained acclaim in 1941. That year, he and his white teammates played against the University of Maryland in College Park, making that the first integrated athletic competition of the twentieth century in the state. Harvard coaches were egalitarian enough to field a black player, but they were not above accommodating other teams’ racist culture. That was the case when, in 1941, Harvard was set to play the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. The academy maintained a rule that its teams would not host black players. Rather than cause controversy, the Harvard coaches benched Alexis and played the game. Black athletes at Ivy institutions may have been revered on their campuses, but when they traveled, the sportsmen met with traumatic circumstances.

      The concession of Harvard in 1941 was especially hurtful because, in 1916, the university had righteously canceled a track meet with the naval academy because it would not allow a black long jumper to participate. The wavering on principles that Harvard displayed was the source of a great deal of embarrassment, disillusionment, and frustration for Alexis and black onlookers. The rights of black people to participate fully in society or to be fully human largely depended on the unpredictable integrity of even the most well-intending white people. Fortunately, fair-minded students pressured Harvard to establish a policy of competition regarding race, and the university responded with a statement indicating that it would not reenact the Alexis scenario.63

      The spirit of a “unified” nation and the observation of black men sacrificing themselves in defense of the country influenced some Ivy officials to put black athletes in play. The estranged relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States that led to the Cold War helped to called into question ideas of race and American democracy within institutions. Additionally, the re-desegregation of the National Football League in 1946 and of Major League Baseball in 1947 may have provided some outside societal pressure for the elite colleges to allow black students to play as well. At Yale, a black basketball player, Jay Swift, graced the court, helping the team to win. Soon after, Levi Jackson became the first black football player at Yale; the team selected Jackson to be the captain, making history again.64 In addition to being chosen to lead the team on the field, he was selected to join the secretive Skull and Bones society. The military and the Ivy League’s athletic teams found utility in black men, as long as they could help the institutions win.

      World War II and the Cold War made it possible for an evolution in race relations to take place at Ivy League institutions. The V-12 Navy College Training Program that called on universities to provide education to sailors so that the navy could increase its pool of officers did not restrict itself to white servicemen.65 That made it possible for black men to attend an institution like Princeton, which had traditionally rejected black applicants. There, Arthur Wilson, one of the

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