SALISBURY, North Carolina - The first ever black college football game took place in 1892 at Livingstone College. On November 9, Livingstone College and Johnson C. Smith University, the two opponents in that game, will meet again in the rivalry game fittingly known as the Commemorative Classic.
The Commemorative Classic was started in 2009 as a way to pay homage to the anniversary of the birth of black college football, as well as to acknowledge the sport's present and look forward to the promise of its future. In the sport's earliest days, the teams wore uniforms made by the women of the school's industrial department and drove nails into their shoes to create makeshift cleats. Today, the school's uniforms are sponsored by Under Armour. Johnson C. Smith (then known as Biddle college) traveled by horse and buggy to get to Livingstone's campus in 1892. This year, they'll be traveling by bus. The contest took place on the campus's front lawn. On November 9, it will take place in front of a packed house at the beautiful Alumni Memorial Stadium.
"The football that they played with, they came together and shared their resources," Livingstone College president Anthony Davis told ESPN's Bill Rhoden in 2021. "They didn't have much but they did so much with so little, and that's the story of self-reliance, determination and the story of HBCUs."
Livingstone College is 5-4 (3-3 in conference play), with four of their wins having come at home this season. Their largest margin of victory came September 7, when they clobbered Virginia University of Lynchburg 37-9 . Their most recent home win came against Fayetteville State University October 12, when they won 24-19 during Homecoming weekend.
But regardless of how this game goes, fans in attendance shouldn't downplay the game's significance. At a time in our nation's history when black Americans were turned away from playing football at many of the country's top universities, they came together and pooled their resources to create their own beautiful game—a game that remains a fixture in its community more than a century later.
