Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team That Changed the Game

by Maya Washington

it’s important to note that a series of events occurred almost 100 years before they were born that made a pipeline from Texas segregation to Michigan State possible. Their alma mater started as a land-grant institution called the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan in 1855. The simple college pretty much looked like a giant farm with a handful of buildings. It would be another hundred years before what is now known as Michigan State University could become a football powerhouse. Around the turn of the 20th century, the institution began enrolling women and a small handful of African American students. Months after a group primarily consisting of white women marched in the Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington, DC, the college started a Black football player, Gideon Smith, in 1913.