During the late 19th and early 20th centuries football is spreading throughout the country gaining widespread popularity. While there is a well researched history of African Americans participating in organized baseball leagues during this time, little is documented about football.
William Henry Lewis was one of two black players on an integrated football team at Amherst
College in 1891 becoming the first black player to captain an integrated football team. He later
attended Harvard College and was the first black player to be selected as an All-American.
There is documentation of other black players on primarily white college teams toward the end
of the 19th century but the list is sparse and far from complete.
The first HBCU football game was played between Biddle College and Livingstone College on
December 27th 1892. Other contests between HBCU’s began to sprout up toward the end of
the 19th phiacentury and even more into the 20th century. Trying to find images and information
about these games is very difficult due to the lack of resources they had and major newspapers
not covering them.
I recently came across an image of an all black football team labeled Collegiate Foot Ball Team
Phila. PA with a photographer stamp of Hansen photo. At first glance I figured based on the
uniforms and equipment it was an HBCU team around 1905-1910. Most of the early black
football team photos around this time show them using older equipment around the late 1890s
so it isn’t always easy to date these photos. As I began to look closely at the photo I noticed
that many of the players were older and had letters on their uniforms not matching a single
school. I began to wonder if this could be a post collegiate segregated team? Pennsylvania
became a prominent area for early semi pro and professional football teams during this time, but
I had never heard of a post collegiate segregated team.
Common search engines pulled up no information about a possible team in this area so I turned
to some of the newer research technology out there. By pulling articles from the earliest black
running newspaper the Philadelphia Tribune I was able to find out my image was a match with a
cropped image from the December 3, 1910, Philadelphia Tribune with the caption “The
Collegians, champions of the colored elevens, who humbled the mighty Bethlehem Steel
eleven, 12 to 5, before 3,000 at Shibe Park.
” Below the caption was a second line identifying
the front-row players. This was an exciting discovery because I now had a name of the
Philadelphia Collegians.
The Collegians were organized in 1908 by Prof. Charles A. Lewis a principal of the Robert Vaux
Consolidated School. According to the April 19, 1908 tribune “The object is to promote clean,
scientific football among colored young men of education and character, and to demonstrate
that colored athletes can compete with the best.
” The first game was scheduled against the
Pythians, who were primarily an early organized baseball team. The article went on to list the
starting football team with some notables being J.B.A. Yelverton and Henry Rives who were on
the 1892 Livingstone team who played in the first HBCU football game.The Collegians would go on to play from 1908 to 1915. Their main rivals were the Philadelphia
Pythians who were known for their baseball team and the Smart Set AC of Brooklyn famous for
their early black basketball presence. They would also play all white athletic club and semi pro
teams and other HBCU squads. Their home field was Shibe park or whatever park was
available but would travel to other states playing similar teams. The 1910 win over the
Bethlehem Steel team was a huge upset during the time for an all black team to defeat a
prominent white athletic club. Bethlehem Steel had players such as John “Big Jack” Kelly who
later won olympic medals in rowing and other pay to play athletes.
The collegians continued to play after their upset of Bethlehem Steel until 1915. This coincided
with the beginning of WW1 and the end of the Collegians. This is a team that has seemingly
disappeared from the history books. Thanks to a chance encounter with a photo and a little
help from modern technology linking articles from the Philadelphia Tribune, I was able to help
bring the Collegians back to light
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