Nick

Ernie Davis' father died in an accident shortly after he was born. His mother could not raise him on her own, so when he was 14 months old she left him in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, with her parents. His grandfather was a coal miner. He raised the boy until he was 12. Then Ernie went to Elmira, New York, to live with his mother and his stepfather. At Elmira Free Academy he earned eleven varsity letters. His basketball team won 52 straight games over his last two years and he scored 1,605 points. About thirty schools offered him a scholarship. He said he picked Syracuse because it gave him the best chance to carry the football. They gave him number 44. That was Jim Brown's number. He broke most of Jim Brown's records with it. 2,386 rushing yards. 6.6 yards a carry. 35 touchdowns. As a sophomore he scored 16 points in the Cotton Bowl against Texas, finished the season undefeated, and Syracuse was the best team in the country. In 1961 he won the Heisman Trophy. He was the first Black player ever to win it. President Kennedy asked to meet him and shook his hand. Then comes the part of this story most people do not know. The Washington Redskins took him first overall in the 1962 draft. Their owner had kept that roster all white long after the rest of the league integrated, and the Secretary of the Interior had just told him to sign a Black player or lose the lease on his stadium. Ernie Davis refused to play for them. He was traded to the Cleveland Browns for Bobby Mitchell and a first round pick, and he was going to line up in the same backfield as Jim Brown. In July of 1962 his neck swelled up. Doctors thought mumps, then mononucleosis. On August 1 they told him it was acute monocytic leukemia. He went to Johns Hopkins. He got into remission for four or five months. He came to the facility and practiced without contact and sat with Paul Brown working on game plans. On August 18, 1962, Cleveland put him on the field at a preseason game, in a spotlight, in uniform, and let the crowd see him. That was it. That was the only time Ernie Davis ever stood on that field in front of people. He died at two in the morning on May 18, 1963, at a hospital in Cleveland. He was 23. Both houses of Congress stopped to eulogize him. More than 10,000 people came through the wake in Elmira. A message from President Kennedy was read at his funeral. He is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Syracuse retired number 44 in 2005. He is the only man to win the Heisman Trophy, go first overall in the NFL draft, and never play a single professional down. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap