Documentary Shows Pioneering Path

When he first arrived on the University of Maryland campus in 1962, Darryl Hill never really saw himself as a football pioneer, even if he was the first African-American ever recruited by the Terrapins to play in the still lily-white Atlantic Coast Conference.

He'd been a talented running back at Gonzaga High School in the District and played a year on scholarship at Xavier University at Cincinnati before his mother Palestine, a long-time teacher in the D.C. public schools, convinced him to transfer to the Naval Academy, her lifelong dream. Hill starred on the 1961 Plebe team with a rangy young quarterback with a big arm, a kid named Roger Staubach, but soon realized that "being a Naval officer was not a burning objective I wanted to achieve."

Hill began looking around at other schools, most of them north of the Mason Dixon line. Eastern powers like Penn State, Syracuse and Pittsburgh had long since integrated their football programs with talented black athletes, and all of them were very interested in signing a 170-pound speedster who had run wild in a freshman game between Navy and Maryland, including a 98-yard touchdown on a kickoff return.

Lee Corso, now an ESPN icon and back then the Maryland freshman team coach on head coach Tom Nugent's staff, had a very up close and personal look at Hill that day. He also knew the talented youngster with the blazing speed was shopping around for another school.

Corso "called me one day and said 'we'd like you to come play for Maryland,'" said Hill, who's college football career is among several fascinating stories included in another brilliant HBO documentary, "Breaking The Huddle: The Integration of College Football" that airs for the first time tonight and will be repeated numerous times over the next few weeks.

"I said to him, 'I think you forgot what conference you play in. As far as I know, the ACC is still segregated," Hill continued. "He said 'that's the point. Maryland wants to break the color barrier in the conference, and we think you're the guy to do it.'"

Hill initially was reluctant, telling Corso, "I'm not that interested in being Jackie Robinson. But he just wore me down. He told me they wanted me because I was a good student and one of the best players they'd seen. I knew they had a great quarterback in Dick Shiner, with a wide open passing game. They played two split receivers, and I was a little guy, 5-10, 165 pounds. They wanted me to move out to receiver, and that was fine with me, especially after I visited Syracuse and saw how big Ernie Davis was."

As he was making up his mind, Hill said several African-American civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who later formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called his home and urged him to go to College Park for all the obvious reasons.

"I wasn't that interested in being a pioneer," Hill said in an interview last week. "Yes, I do feel like one now. But back then I was a kid who just wanted to play, and I was more interested in football issues than I was the pioneering issues."

Because he had transferred twice, Hill had only two years of remaining eligibility at Maryland. After a brilliant junior year, leading the conference in receiving, he played sparingly as a senior because of a foot injury that plagued him all year. His presence in his first year on the varsity in 1963 obviously made Maryland a lightning rod for abuse all around the conference, and occasionally on his own campus, as well.

"When I first hit the campus (in 1962), somebody painted KKK on my car," he recalled. "When football started in 1963, there was a noose hung on my dormitory floor. At my first home game, they didn't actually boo me, but they didn't cheer me either. I fumbled the opening kickoff, but I picked it up and ran it to midfield, and I guess they liked that."

Hill said his teammates were overwhelmingly supportive, and he quickly struck up a friendship with Jerry Fishman, an All-ACC linebacker and fullback who roomed with him on the road. Fishman, a Connecticut native, was the only Jewish player on the team, and they bonded almost instantly, a close relationship that endures to this day.