From Bates History: Stories of Six Pre-WWII Black Student-Athletes

In honor of Black History Month, Bates Athletics shared a few stories on Facebook and Instagram about Black students at Bates in the early years of the college who participated in athletics. Here are six notable examples from between 1899 and 1938:

William Allen Saunders, Class of 1899
1870–1963

A hero who delivered a win in the 1898 Bates-Bowdoin football game, cementing a historic rivalry, William Allen Saunders went on to a distinguished college teaching career.

Born in Louisa Court House, Va., Saunders came to Bates after attending Storer School, later Storer College, in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., a historically Black institution founded just after the Civil War with the help of Bates founder Oren Cheney. 

In 1898, Saunders was the hero of the Bates-Bowdoin football game, scoring the game’s only touchdown in a victory the Bates Student said was “universally admitted to be the greatest contest ever held between Maine colleges.”

Throughout the game, “time and again, the giant guard, Saunders, went into the line and always for a gain,” said the Student. “Saunders played like a fiend,” reported the Lewiston Journal. “It always took two men to bring him down.” (Though not big by today’s standards, Saunders, at 5-foot-10 and 173 pounds, was among the tallest and heaviest Bates players.)

Saunders also competed in track and field at Bates, in the hammer and shot put. He also served as librarian of one of the literary societies, Eurosophia.

Following graduation, Saunders taught public school in Coaldale, W.Va., and served as a grade-school principal in Hagerstown, Md., before joining the faculty at Bluefield Colored Institute, now Bluefield State College.

In 1907, he joined the faculty of Storer College in 1907, teaching math, natural sciences, religion, and Latin. He married Inez Johnson and they built a home near the Storer campus, which today is a bed and breakfast.

Saunders retired from Storer in 1951 and he died on June 27, 1963 of cardiovascular disease. A Bates oral history tells the story of a classmate, George Parsons, who visited Saunders in the 1950s, when both were in their 80s. Parsons wanted to take Saunders to dinner but Saunders demurred — no white restaurant in town would serve a Black man.

Thomas Seth Bruce, Class of 1898
1871–1913

Thomas Seth Bruce, Class of 1898, is standing third from left in this team photo of the 1897 Bates football team. Bruce was a standout right guard on the football team and, in track and field, set a Bates record in the hammer in his senior year with a throw of 98 feet. His brother, Nathaniel Coleman Bruce, graduated in 1893.

He and left guard William Allen Saunders — profiled above and standing third from right — were a powerful duo. The Lewiston Evening Journal described their line play against Bowdoin this way: “Just how a battering ram might fare, I don’t know, but so far as the average rush line of flesh and blood is concerned, [Bruce and Saunders are] invincible. Bowdoin rebounded from them like a rubber ball.”

A powerful orator, Bruce delivering a speech on “The Race Problem” at the Senior Exhibition in April 1898, in which he called out the failure of Reconstruction, asking if “a great country like ours afford to deny, absolutely deny, to more than one-tenth of its citizens an equal opportunity to grow, while it is encouraging and protecting the other nine-tenths in its growth?”

Bruce earned a divinity degree from Newton Theological Institution and was ordained at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Boston in 1901. That year, Bruce successfully pursued legal action against a Harvard Square barber who refused to shave him. In court, the barber said he was too busy to shave Bruce, but the judge didn't buy it, fining him $20 for discrimination. 

Rather than accepting a pastorate in the North, Bruce chose to become a pastor and teacher in North Carolina and Virginia. He described the difficult work in football terms:

"I am playing the game hard; tackling low, but at times advance the ball just a little. Sometimes I get injured a little and call for time — sometimes I get offside and lose several yards, but I am not discouraged." He died in 1913.

He often described his work in football terms. "I am playing the game hard; tackling low, but at times advance the ball just a little. Sometimes I get injured a little and call for time. Sometimes I get offside and lose several yards — but I am not discouraged." He passed away in 1913.

Birtill Thomas Barrow, Class of 1919
1894-1980

Born in Barbados in 1894, Birtill Thomas Barrow, Class of 1919, attended Boston Latin School before coming to Bates. He was one of three Barrows who attended Bates in the second decade of the 20th century. All three earned the nickname “Doc” from their peers, but Birtill was the only Barrow who competed in a varsity sport at Bates. 

A two-year letterman in varsity track and a three-year class officer, Barrow was originally a member of the Class of 1918. He left campus before graduation to serve in World War I, joining the famed 325th Field Signal Battalion, the U.S. Army’s only Black signal unit, whose members were known as highly educated experts in radio and electronic communications. He earned his degree in 1919.

Barrow’s excellent hand-eye coordination and scientific mind was mentioned by the 1918 Mirror yearbook, which stated that “Doc will always be remembered as the first man who completed the course in Qualitative Analysis, without staining his hands with the sulfides or nitric acid.” 

After serving in World War I, Barrow went on to earn a master's degree at Columbia University, embarking on a long career in education. He taught for some time in Macon, Ga., before establishing himself as a teacher and coach in Covington, Ky., at William Grant High School.

Barrow retired to New York state and died in 1980 at the age of 85. 

Roscoe “Mac” McKinney, Class of 1921
1900–1978

The first Black American to earn a Ph.D. in anatomy, Roscoe "Mac" McKinney, Class of 1921, led a life that soared with the elevating possibilities of education. In this sports photo, he’s with the Class of 1921 relay team in their sophomore year. The portrait is from the Mirror yearbook in his senior year.

Born in Washington, D.C., McKinney attended renowned all-Black Dunbar High School, as did several other Black students at Bates in his era, winning a scholarship to attend Bates.

McKinney’s first priority at Bates was academics, which according to the Mirror yearbook meant eight-hour days in the zoology laboratory. But he found time to run track, making an impression on the Mirror, which declared “we must not forget how Mac can get off with the crack of the gun and tear down the cinder path” in dash races.

In 1920, The Bates Student said McKinney was “robbed” of a win in the 100-yard dash vs. Bowdoin due to incompetent judging. “Out of all the spectators who happened to be placed opposite the finish line,” only two thought McKinney finished second, but “these two happened to be judges.”

McKinney also participated in class football, class track, and the Bates Outing Club.  And he was entrepreneurial, posting an ad in the Student offering to have “Ladies' and Gents' Clothes Neatly Cleaned, Pressed, or Repaired,” in his room in Parker Hall.

After graduation, he taught zoology at Morehouse College, then returned to his hometown to teach biology at Howard University. He let nary an educational opportunity go to waste, spending five straight summers doing graduate work at the University of Chicago, receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in Anatomy in 1928 and earning a Ph.D. in 1930. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, his was the first doctorate in anatomy earned by a Black American. 

In 1930, McKinney was appointed as Howard’s first professor of anatomy and taught there for nearly 40 years, including service as department chair and vice dean of the college of medicine. He is credited with founding the first tissue-culture laboratory in the D.C. area, and his tissue samples were included in the reference text Gray’s Anatomy. In addition to his Howard career, he had visiting teaching appointments worldwide, including Fulbright awards.

Outside of his work, a Howard profile noted that “he has many interests: swimming, tennis, ping-pong, bicycling, and candid photography, but names the latter as his primary source of relaxation.” He died in 1978.

Charles Barrington Ray, Class of 1927
1904–1985

As both a young man at Bates and as a seasoned high school teacher and coach, Charles Barrington Ray, Class of 1927, helped pave the way for Black opportunity.

At Bates, he was the first Black sports captain, of the football team, in 1926.

In the 1950s, he integrated the all-white faculty at Freehold (N.J.) High School, becoming a beloved mentor and coach. 

Known as “Charley” at Bates, Ray was remembered in the 1927 Mirror as “a worthy student, a clean sportsman, and a perfect gentleman.” Standing just 5-7 and weighing 150 pounds, he was named All-Maine three times and All-New England once.

As a halfback on offense, he was a passer, receiver, and ball carrier. On defense, he was a ballhawk, who made a name for himself as a freshman in 1923 when he sparked a 12-7 victory over Bowdoin by knocking down pass after Polar Bear pass.

In baseball, Ray was the Bates center fielder for three seasons — two decades before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the Major Leagues — and was named All-Maine in that sport, too. He was voted “Most Athletic” of his class.

After Bates, he taught science and coached, serving for 28 years at the now-closed Bordentown (N.J.) Manual Training School for Colored Youth, a residential high school for Black students, serving as athletic director and coaching championship teams in football, basketball and baseball.

In 1955, Ray became the first Black teacher at nearby Freehold High School and also joined the coaching staff of the school's football team. The man nicknamed “Fess” soon became “the most popular teacher at the school and held the honor until his retirement” in 1963, according to a colleague.

After his death in 1985, a columnist for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press celebrated Ray’s career for its excellence in teaching and progress in the name of racial integration. The columnist lamented the lateness of Freehold High’s first hiring of a Black teacher, quoting Ray’s colleague: “Every town had its bigots those days, and we had ours.” (Bruce Springsteen, who graduated from Freehold High in 1967, wrote about the racial tension there in the 1960s in “My Hometown.”)

Ellen “Kay” Craft Dammond, Class of 1938
1916–2007

Ellen “Kay” Craft Dammond ’38 — seen in her senior Mirror portrait and seated second from right with her tennis team — was a leader in Bates women’s athletics as a student and in civil rights work as an alumna.

In 1970, Dammond, by then a YWCA board member, challenged the association to adopt the elimination of racism as its prime goal.

“We are solidly united in determination to close the gap between YWCA ideals and YWCA practices,” said Dammond, chair of the group’s National Conference of Black Women. “We will no longer tolerate false liberalism.

At Bates, Dammond was as active as possible in the era long before Title IX, when women’s college athletics emphasized wide participation over intercollegiate competition. The motto of the Bates Women’s Athletic Association was “a sport for every girl and a girl for every sport."

But there was some competition, in the form of a variety of intramural sports. Dammond played basketball, tennis, and volleyball, earning her WAA letter and, as an experienced athlete, serving as a coach and judge for competitions.

Dammond, who came to Bates from the Sugar Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, was also an active debater and vice president of the Christian Association and the Politics Club. She won the Freshman Speaking Contest in 1935 in her first year.

The third Black woman to graduate from Bates, she was “the first colored girl,” as she once described herself, to live in a Bates dorm. At the time, it was common for colleges that admitted Black students to prohibit Black female students from living on campus. 

After Bates, Dammond had a successful career as the personnel counselor at B. Altman, the New York City department store; she was one of the few Black female retail executives, according to The New York Age in 1955. She was a prominent figure in the “Wednesdays in Mississippi” advocacy group that brought Northern and Southern women together to work on issues significant to the Black community.