Biddle College (Johnson C. Smith College) and Livingstone College football teams
131 years ago on On December 27, 1892 these two North Carolina Black colleges, (HBCU’s) played the first Black College Intercollegiate football game. The game was the Cricket Celebration Bowl and the trophy commemorates the inaugural game the players.
Left Image: Biddle College football team. The college is now named Johnson C. Smith University. Year unknown.
Right image: Livingstone College football team. Year unknown.
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The Livingstone Bears of Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, were formally organized in the fall of 1892. The team included J.W. Walker (captain), W.J. Trent (manager), R.J, Rencher, Henry Rives, C. N, Garland, J. R. Dillard, J.B.A. Yelverton, Wade Hampton, Charles H Patrick, and J.J. Taylor, and F.H. Cummings.
As documented in the college's newspaper's 1930 edition, The two teams put their money together to purchase a regulation football and the players equipped their street shoes with cleats, taking them off after practice.
The young women of the school's industrial department made the players' uniforms for the first game.
The teams played two 45-minute halves on Livingstone's front lawn. W.J. Trent scored Livingstone's only touchdown on a fumble recovery. By then, the snow had covered the field's markings, and Biddle argued that the fumble was recovered out of bounds.
Biddle won the contest 5-0.
In 1956, an athletic marker was erected at Livingstone in honor of the historic game.
Source: Courtesy AAREG
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Here's a different article about this historic football game.
The 1892 Biddle football team represented Biddle University—now known as Johnson C. Smith University—in the 1892 college football season as an independent.[1]
On December 27 of 1892, Livingstone College and Biddle College, (Johnson C. Smith) University played in the snows of Salisbury, North Carolina, just two days after Christmas.
A writer of a story in the 1930 year-book of Livingstone College provided a glimpse of that December experience when the team from Biddle Institute traveled to Livingstone's Old Delta Grove campus in Salisbury to play while writers recorded the results of a historic moment in sports history.
According to historian T.M. Martin, the men of Biddle spent two years studying and practicing the sport of football. In 1892, they challenged the men of Livingstone, whose team was formally organized in the fall of that year.
"It is doubtful that when Biddle University and Livingstone College teed it up on Dec. 27, 1892, in what was described as little more than a cow pasture, no less, if the contestants in this momentous occasion had the slightest inkling of the legacy they were about to give birth to.
Games of monumental historical significance, coaches of legendary proportions and players of extraordinary brilliance ultimately emerged from the mother lode that was to become known as the historically Black colleges and universities.
The teams played two 45-minute halves on Livingstone's front lawn. W.J. Trent scored Livingstone's only touchdown on a fumble recovery. By then snow had covered the field's markings and Biddle argued that the fumble was recovered out of bounds.
The official ruled in Biddle's favor, allowing them to keep the 5–0 lead that they had established early on and giving JCSU the historic 1st victory! And the rivalry continues."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1892_Biddle_football_team