Race in Athletics: Trailblazers in Amherst College History

The “feeder-school” phenomena shaped Amherst’s student body for decades. Every year, students flocked from elite institutions in droves, exceptionally attuned to the demands of college life. Yet, one aspect of Amherst’s pipeline tradition stands apart from the typical feeder-school model of affluent, predominantly white institutions.

Throughout the 20th century, Amherst admitted more students from Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, a historically black public school in Washington, D.C., than any other school outside the city.¹ For a time, Dunbar graduates made up the majority – if not the entirety – of black students at Amherst. Despite operating in a segregated and unequal school system, Dunbar created a pipeline to Amherst, and its graduates went on to become household names in US history. 

One alumni can be largely to thank for this connection: William Tecumseh Sherman Jackson, an African American graduate of Amherst’s class of 1892. At Amherst, Jackson excelled in the classroom and on the track and football teams – The New York Times even singled him out as a star player in its coverage of an October 1889 football game against Yale.² After graduating, Jackson spent 38 years as a math teacher, principal, and track coach at Dunbar. There, he encouraged students to follow his footsteps to Amherst and continue with athletics at the collegiate level. Jackson’s college tuition was paid by US Senator George Frisbie Hoar, known for his progressive beliefs.⁴ A recent archival discovery reveals that in 1940, Jackson donated $1,000 in honor of Frisbie Hoar to assist worthy and needy Amherst undergraduates, constituting one of the first significant donations from a black Amherst alumni.

Jackson’s proteges include some of the most well-known black Amherst alumni of the early 20th century. Charles Hamilton Houston (Class of 1915), an athlete at Dunbar, went on to become a prominent lawyer, educator, and civil rights activist.⁵ He laid the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education, and personally mentored Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Charles Drew (Class of 1926) was accepted to Amherst College on an athletic scholarship from the track team, and went on to become a surgeon and medical researcher. He is now famously known as the Father of the American blood bank.⁶

Unfortunately, the undergraduate experiences of both Jackson and following Dunbar student-athletes was marred by a racist athletic culture. During Jackson’s time at Amherst, the baseball team held minstrel shows as fundraisers; flyers proclaimed their efforts to be “all for baseball.”⁶ For Charles Drew, the realities of racism became especially clear when the track team traveled for competitions. He made the team in 1923 with fellow Dunbar graduates Montague Cobb and William Henry Hastie. On a trip to Brown University in 1925, the three were forced to eat alone at the Brown dining hall while the rest of their team dined at the Narragansett Hotel: “The hotel management heard there were ‘colored boys on the Amherst team and sent word that they would not serve them.’ The ride back to Amherst from Providence was shrouded in silence.”⁷

Amherst’s legacy has been shaped by athletics and student-athletes like Jackson, Drew, Cobb, Hastie, and Houston for decades. Inevitably, racism has also shaped the experiences of these trailblazers. Today, this topic is more pertinent than ever as the changing demographic of Amherst and higher education highlights the importance of increasing diversity in athletics. Looking towards the experiences’ of Amherst’s first black athletes highlights the strength and determination needed to fight for diversity despite immense obstacles. With their commitment to thrive at Amherst and continually guide others to do the same, these trailblazing student-athletes created lasting marks on both Amherst and the world.

1. Matthew Alexander Randolph, “Remembering Dunbar: Amherst College and African American Education in Washington, DC,” in Amherst in the World, edited by Martha Saxton, 147–62 (Amherst: Amherst College Press, 2020). ↩︎
2. Evan J. Albright, “Blazing the Trail,” in Amherst Magazine (Winter 2007). ↩︎
3. United States Congress, “HOAR, George Frisbie,” accessed December 09, 2024. ↩︎
4. Amherst College Loeb Center For Career Exploration And Planning, “About Charles Hamilton Houston,” web accessed December 09, 2024. ↩︎
5. Amherst College website, “Black History Month: Honoring Dr. Charles Drew ’26” (February 2023), accessed December 09, 2024. ↩︎
6. Randolph, 151. During Jackson’s time, the baseball team was still exclusively white. Only a couple of years later, James Francis Gregory (class of 1898) would become the first black member of Amherst’s baseball team, and the first black student to be named captain of an eastern college baseball team. ↩︎
7. Randolph, 153. ↩︎