Karen Vaughn sits down with her uncle Martin Vaughn for this weeks feature of LOCAL HISTORY MAKERS for our Black History Month series. They talk about his local history, family, values learned from football, and some beneficial financial tips!
Watch the full interview above!
Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick, Steve McNair. These NFL stars of today are gaining recognition for being great quarterbacks. They are not great black quarterbacks but just great quarterbacks. Period.
But in the late 1960s and early 1970s the very term “black quarterback” was fairly new. The reason? It might have been that many were denied the opportunity to play quarterback growing up. It could have been the lingering effects of prejudices that the Civil Rights Movement had hoped to abolish. Regardless, not too many collegiate quarterbacks were men of color, yet several Ivy League student-athletes were on a course to change that.
The Ivies boasted four starting African-American quarterbacks between the years of 1969 and 1974 — Rod Plummer of Princeton, Rob Foster of Harvard, Marty Vaughn of Penn, and Dennis Coleman of Brown. Additionally, two others, Bob Dubose of Columbia, and Barrett Rosser from Cornell, saw time behind center for their respective squads. Although this occurred at a time when each season saw the number of black quarterbacks in the Division I ranks hover around single digits, all the players agree that the changing climate in the Unites States at this time created an unprecedented situation for each of them.
More Local History Makers
- Local History Maker: Julius Dr. J Erving
- Local History Makers: The First Black Quarterback To Start At Penn University Martin Vaughn
- Local History Makers: Oshunbumi Fernandez – West (CEO of ODUNDE, INC)
