First Black in old Big 12 passed away today | |
Harold Robinson, the first black scholarship athlete in what would become the Big 12 Conference, has died.
Robinson, a former football center for Kansas State, was 76 when he died Tuesday at his home in Wharton, N.J., the school said in a news release. The release did not list a cause of death.
It was 1949, and there were no blacks on the Wildcats' squad or any of the teams in what was then the Big Seven Conference.
When Robinson began playing, the U.S. Supreme Court was still five years away from issuing the landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision that ended segregated education. Jim Crow laws were commonplace.
While his teammates stayed in hotels during away games, Robinson often was forced to stay in private homes. He told the student newspaper he missed only one game during his time at Kansas State.
Other black athletes followed in Robinson's footsteps. Among them was golfer Tiger Woods' late father, Earl Woods, who became the first black baseball player in the conference when he joined Kansas State's squad in 1952.
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