Nathaniel "Nate" Northington, born in 1947, holds a significant place in the history of college sports as the first African-American to play college football in the Southeastern Conference (SEC). His debut for the University of Kentucky Wildcats in 1967 marked a pivotal moment in the integration of athletics in the South.
Breaking Barriers at the University of Kentucky
Northington was a member of Kentucky's 1966 freshman team along with African-American teammate Greg Page. At the time, freshmen were not allowed to play on NCAA varsity teams. He became the first black scholarship athlete to play in an athletic contest of any kind in the SEC when his University of Kentucky Wildcats opened their 1967 season against Indiana in Bloomington, Indiana on September 23 of that year.
There were four black football players on that Wildcats team: Northington, Greg Page, Wilbur Hackett and Houston Hogg. Kentucky has erected bronze statues of all four players.
Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey opened football media days talking about integration of sports in the league and the upcoming 50th anniversary of that moment. Sankey talked at length about Nate Northington’s debut on Sept. 30, 1967 for Kentucky against Mississippi. The commissioner gave a history lesson on the timeline of integration in the league, including when Northington, then a sophomore, becoming the first African-American to play in a varsity SEC football game. Sankey said by playing in a football game, “Nate Northington affected us all.”
Tragedy and Perseverance
Before the 1967 season, Page became paralyzed after suffering a spinal cord injury during an August practice. Immediately after returning from Page's funeral a few days later, Wildcats head coach Charlie Bradshaw put the team through a three-hour practice. Northington only played three minutes before dislocating his shoulder, and Kentucky would go on to lose 26-13. Page had been Northington's roommate and pillar of support as they had jointly become the first two African-American men to play on a Kentucky football team. Northington was griefstricken about the loss of his best friend and missed some classes over the ensuing weeks.
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Sankey said the SEC has invited Northington, Hackett, Hogg and Page’s family to the league championship game in December “to join us in remembering, honoring and celebrating what they helped change 50 years ago.”
The Significance of a Scholarship
The "scholarship" distinction is important here because Northington was not the first African-American athlete to play in the SEC. In March 1966, more than a year before Northington's Kentucky football debut (and also nearly six months before Northington initially enrolled at Kentucky), Tulane baseball player Stephen Martin had become the first African American to play any sport in the SEC. However, Martin was then a walk-on who was attending Tulane on an academic scholarship.
| Athlete | Sport | School | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Martin | Baseball | Tulane University | 1966 | First African-American to play any sport in the SEC; walk-on with academic scholarship |
| Nate Northington | Football | University of Kentucky | 1967 | First African-American to play football in the SEC; first black scholarship athlete |
Hackett went on to become the SEC’s first black team captain in any sport.
Sankey also listed the first black varsity athlete to compete for each current SEC member. Then he recited lyrics from the U2 song “All that You Can’t Leave Behind”.
“What once was hurt, what once was friction, what left a mark no longer stings, because grace makes beauty out of ugly things,” he said, quoting the song.
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“Our journey is certainly not complete,” Sankey said. “There’s hurt.
WKU Libraries’ Kentucky Live! series hosted Nathaniel Northington, the first African American football player in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), on the evening of Thursday, March 19 at Barnes & Noble bookstore. In 1965 Northington signed an athletic scholarship to play football for the University of Kentucky, making him the first African American athlete to play any sport in the SEC.
Nate Northington's football legacy in Kentucky
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