The University of Wisconsin began competing in intercollegiate athletics in 1889 and it was 11 years later that the first Black student-athlete took the field wearing the school's cardinal and white uniform. When Julian Ware and teammate Adelbert R. Matthew suited up for the Wisconsin baseball team in the spring 1900 a new era of integrated athletics began at UW.
The very next season George Poage would help integrate the Wisconsin track & field team, becoming the first Black athlete to win an Olympic medal, earning a pair of bronze medals in the 1904 games in St. Louis. What would unfold over the next 100+ years is a rich tapestry of Black success at Wisconsin, featuring NCAA champions, Olympians and pioneers in Black athletic history.
From the earliest Black Olympic medalist and the Big Ten's first Black team captain to the conference's first Black starting quarterback and first Black men’s basketball head coach, Wisconsin’s pioneering Black athletes frequently blazed a trail for others to follow. This vibrant community has produced some of the greatest athletes in UW history and have helped create the legacy of what it means to be a Badger.
Unfortunately, piecing together their history at UW has not been an easy task, particularly for those who played before 1940. Like most schools, Wisconsin did not regularly record the race of its students for much of the 20th century, making the identification of Black student-athletes on campus a difficult process. Of Wisconsin's pre-WWII Black student-athletes, only Olympian George Poage turns up in the standard reference works on Black persons in college athletics. Accordingly, campus publications and team photographs yielded most of the information on the earliest Black sportsmen on campus. These are both, at best, imperfect sources, and there may be other overlooked pioneers.
More information is available concerning the much larger contingent of Black players who have represented Wisconsin since World War II. The Wisconsin Athletic Department archives provided much valuable material on these athletes. Nevertheless, several heretofore unheralded pioneers, including the first Black student-athletes to participate in basketball, wrestling, and fencing are being recognized here.
This web site is (and may always be) a work in progress, as we uncover more information about the history of Black student-athletes at Wisconsin. Please contact us regarding any errors on these pages, or if you have new material to add to our knowledge of Black Badgers.
Special thanks to Greg Bond (MA’99, PhD’08, MA’14) for his work on this project. These pages are dedicated to the memory of Julian Ware, Adelbert Matthews, and George Poage, the first three Black student-athletes to play varsity sports at the University of Wisconsin.
