Gridiron Pioneer - Higher Education: In 1963 the Civil Rights Movement was reaching its peak. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. The nation saw firehoses and police dogs being used on peaceful demonstrators. An NAACP field secretary, Medgar Evers, was murdered outside his home in Jackson, Miss., and four young girls were killed in an Alabama church bombing.
Another milepost in the struggle for equality didn’t garner the same attention that year, yet it carried as much social and cultural significance as anything else: Darryl Hill, a wide receiver for the University of Maryland, became the first African-American athlete to play in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
“College football in the South was god,” says Hill, who was honored at several events marking the 50th anniversary of the breakthrough. “The stadiums where those teams played were like temples where fans worshipped this god. When a Black man came on the field, it was like desecrating the temple, and they hated that.”
