Wisconsin recognizes athletic pioneers

Every institution of higher learning has a hidden history regarding the involvement of African Americans on their intercollegiate sports teams. UW–Madison has made an effort to retrieve this illustrious history of Wisconsin’s path-breaking black players through the efforts of Gregory Bond, a Ph.D. researcher in American history at UW–Madison.

Bond’s research, 1900-1970, is being showcased in a new feature on the Web site at uwbadgers.com called “Celebrate UW’s Black History.” Posted in honor of Black History Month, the section highlights eight African Americans who were the early pioneers in intercollegiate sports. One, LaCrosse native George Poage, was the first African American ever to win an Olympic medal. Poage took home two bronze medals in the sprint competition at the 1904 Olympics.

The University of Wisconsin has produced more than its share of pioneering African-American athletes, Bond says. From the earliest black Olympic medalist and the Big Ten’s first black team captain to the conference’s first black starting quarterback, UW’s black athletes blazed a trail for others to follow.

Unfortunately, piecing together their history at UW has not been an easy task, particularly for those who played before 1940. Like most schools, Wisconsin did not regularly record the race of its students for much of the 20th century, making the identification of African Americans athletes on campus a difficult process.

Of Wisconsin’s pre-WWII black athletes, only Olympian Poage turns up in the standard reference works on blacks in college athletics. Accordingly, campus publications and team photographs yielded most of the information on the earliest African-American athletes on campus. Other pioneers may have been overlooked because of these limited resources. More information is available concerning the much larger contingent of black players who have represented Wisconsin since World War II. University of Wisconsin Sports Information Department archives provided valuable material on these players. Nevertheless, several heretofore unheralded pioneers – including the first African Americans to participate in basketball, wrestling, and fencing – are recognized on the site.