Football Brainiacs - Ou Edition - University Of Oklahoma Edition (2024)

FAQs

Who was the first black football player at the University of Oklahoma? ›

Prentice Gautt (February 8, 1938 – March 17, 2005) was an American football running back for the University of Oklahoma football team from 1956 to 1959. Gautt was the first black football player at the University of Oklahoma where he wore #38. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.

Beginning in the fall of 1955, OU was finally open to all African American students, regardless of degree program. The same year, President Cross decided to do away with segregation at football games.

Willie Thrower made history for the Chicago Bears as the modern NFL's 1st Black QB. 70 years later, his family hopes for recognition.

OU's first Black quarterback was Kerry Jackson, who arrived in 1972, the same year the NCAA made freshmen eligible for the first time in 20 years. The late Steve Davis, who was white, was quarterback of Switzer's first three OU teams, which went 32-1-1 (. 956) and claimed national championships in 1974 and 1975.

The Washington Redskins were the last NFL team to integrate. Owner George P. Marshall ran a southern-focused media empire.

The Oklahoma–Texas football rivalry is a college football rivalry game between border rivals Texas and Oklahoma. The two teams first played each other in 1900, and the rivalry has been renewed annually since 1929 for a total of 119 games as of 2023.

1950 OU desegregated graduate and law schools after Supreme Court decisions in the Sipuel and McLaurin cases. 1955 Bass Collection in Business History donated to the University Libraries. Undergraduate colleges desegregated. 1957 OU School of Library Science began teaching classes in Tulsa.

McLaurin (September 16, 1894 – September 4, 1968) was an American professor, and the first African-American to attend the University of Oklahoma. He was the successful plaintiff in an important civil rights case against the university, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950).

That's what George McLaurin became Oct. 14, 1948, when he began classes at OU: drifting alone, one dark face in a sea of 12,173 white ones. Oct. 14 was a hopeful moment for McLaurin, the first black student at a previously all-white institution.

Fritz Pollard and Bobby Marshall were the first black players in what is now the NFL in 1920. Pollard became the first (and until 1989, only) black coach in 1921; during the early-to-mid-1920s, the league used player-coaches and did not have separate coaching staffs.

Who had the first black college football player? ›

William Henry Lewis and William Tec*mseh played and excelled at Amherst and Harvard in late 1889. Also, George Jewett was the starting fullback at the University of Michigan in 1890. The first Black college football game occurred in North Carolina in 1892 when Biddle College defeated Livingston College.