‘An Important Message to Share with Children’.
In 1947, Chester “Chet” Pierce broke racial barriers when he became the first African American to play in a college football game against an all-white university team in a former Confederate state. A member of the Harvard University Crimson football team, he competed against the University of Virginia, ending the widely accepted “gentleman’s agreement” in collegiate football, in which racially integrated teams would leave behind their black players during visiting games against non-integrated teams in the South, and the opposing team would bench players of equal talent.