In September 1957, as the nation’s attention turned to Little Rock, Arkansas to watch a showdown between Arkansas’ Governor Orval Faubus and President Eisenhower battle over the integration at Central High School, college football fans fixed their focus 700 miles away to Madison, Wisconsin, where a Black man from Little Rock stood poised to break a racial barrier.
After three long years of hard work, Sidney Williams had finally earned the starting quarterback job for the Wisconsin Badgers, making him the first Black quarterback to start the season in the Big 10.
With the civil rights battle unfolding in Little Rock, it seemed so trivial that this quarterback would garner the nation’s attention as a sign of racial progress.
But in the modern Civil Rights Era, Williams’s starting position had special meaning. Ebony observed, “The Little Rock fiasco and his [Williams] conduct under fire in a difficult and demanding position have made him something of a hero to many Americans.”
At a time when many doubted that integration would or could work, and many still questioned Black leadership and intelligence, Williams proved otherwise.
Gordon Graham, a white reporter, said, “If you are at peace with your own feelings on the subject, you should not be guilty of dodging it.”
“It” was the belief that Black men weren’t meant to play the position.
But Graham noted it was time for a change in the old ways of thinking.
“It has been our opinion for some time now that a Negro with the physical and mental equipment can play quarterback in football just as Roy Campanella could catch for the Brooklyn Dodgers…”
“Should Williams fail” Graham suggested, “some other Negro will make good as a quarterback in the future. It is inevitable. But with Sid hailing from Little Rock, his opportunity in the staid, but reasonably fair Western Conference is the most significant item of the entire week’s tour for the Big Ten writers.”
Williams had something to prove not just for himself, but for Black America.
Williams migrated to Madison in 1954 to escape the South. A three-sport star athlete, and national honor society member, at the all-Black Dunbar High School, Williams tried out for the team his freshman year, but the Badgers had no use for a Black quarterback. After being cut as a freshman, he begged the coach for another opportunity the following year.
They switched him to secondary, just like most white coaches had done to other fast Black quarterbacks. During the 1956 season, he played safety until his big break came.
With the offense sputtering, the Badger’s new coach, Milt Bruhn, got desperate and decided to give a Black man a chance at quarterback. Remembering that Williams played quarterback in high school, Bruhn inserted Williams in as the field general to inject life into the offense. The Badgers offense responded and Williams led the team to back-to-back ties against Illinois and Minnesota, two games experts expected them to lose.
Williams’ initial success was a valuable lesson in patience over prejudice.
Wisconsin ran the T-formation and Williams, a former single-wing quarterback had no experience in that set, so he struggled. According to reports he “fumbled too much, his ball handling lacked the crispness that a T-quarterback must have and his passing was helter-skelter.”
At this point, most white coaches would have been done with the racial experiment, but Coach Bruhn gave him a chance.
And with that chance, Williams won the starting job in 1957.
