1880 Brown undergraduate William Edward White played a single game for the Providence Grays in 1880, thus becoming the first African-American to play major league baseball. White's biracial ethnicity was discovered by researchers in 2004 and the result has spurred continuing research into his life.

1916 After several attempts to find a college where he could get a quality education and play football, Frederick 'Fritz' Pollard ended up in a Brown University football uniform. He was accepted by his teammates quickly when he scored more than 10 touchdowns in his first season. Probably the greatest player to perform for Brown, and considered as one of the greatest African-Americans to perform in the college ranks, Pollard led the Bears to the first official Rose Bowl game (1916). The 1916 team also posted an 8-1 record, which is among the University's best. Pollard, a halfback, received accolades from several national newspapers and was selected to the Walter Camp All-America team. Walter Camp said of Pollard: "He is one of the greatest runners these eyes have ever seen." In 1916, Pollard scored all three touchdowns as Brown handed Yale its lone defeat of the season. When the National Football League was organized in 1920, Fritz Pollard was one of its original stars, and was one of only two African-American players that inaugural season. He played for the Akron Pros, the Milwaukee Badgers, and the Hammond Pros and finally ended up back in Providence with the Steamrollers. Pollard became the first African-American head coach in the NFL when he became co-coach of the Akron Pros in 1921. He was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame in October of 1954. Pollard also was a standout on the Brown track team. Born in Chicago on Jan. 27, 1894, Fritz died on May 11, 1986.

1938 Against the customs of the day, Wallace Wade, a 1916 grad, took his unbeaten Duke team to Syracuse to face an integrated football team. In the following years, Wade would hire an African-American architect to design Cameron Indoor Stadium and would host Pittsburgh in the first integrated major college football game in the state of North Carolina.

1956 Augustus A. White III -- in playing for the Bruins' football team -- discovered his career path -- orthopedics over psychiatry. Seeing many an injury that was not prevented by the inferior equipment of the day, White became a world-renowned expert on spinal cord injuries.

1973 When Brown lined up against Penn at Franklin Field on Oct. 6, 1973, something that had never happened in the more than 100 years of major-college football took place. It was the first matchup ever between two starting black quarterbacks as Penn's Marty Vaughn and Brown's Dennis Coleman took to the field. Vaughn struck first with a touchdown scamper, but Coleman led his Bears to 20 unanswered points. It was then Vaughn's turn to get hot, connecting on one touchdown pass and leading the Quakers to another to take a 21-20 halftime lead. Penn scored the only touchdown of the second half to go onto a 28-20 victory in the historic game before 10,991 fans. Vaughn threw for 200 yards while Coleman ran for more than 10 yards a carry as the two went down together in history. Coleman, who grew up in the Philadelphia area and now lives in the Providence area, serves entertainment and sports clients as a partner in a law firm and still works closely with the Brown athletic department.

1980 Basketball standout Peter Moss became the first African-American in school history to be named as an Ivy League Player of the Year.

1981 Yvonne Goldsberry became the first black women's soccer player selected to first-team All-Ivy League.

1984 Basketball star Michelle Smith became the first African-American to be named the Ivy League women's basketball Player of the Year.

1990 Maia Baker became the first African-American to be named the Ivy League women's basketball Rookie of the Year.

1991 Teri Smith became the first -- and only -- Ivy Leaguer to sweep to victory in the 100-, 200- and 400-meter dashes in a single Heptagonal Games.

1992 Steve Jordan was named All-Pro for the NFL's Minnesota Vikings for the sixth straight time. Only Concrete Chuck Bednarik (eight) was named All-Pro more often among Ivy graduates.

1994 Gary Nelson became the first black men's lacrosse player named first-team All-Ivy League.

1999 The Ivy League celebrated its 25th year of women's championships during the 1998-99 academic year. In honor of the many women who have excelled in their sport, the League announced its Silver Anniversary Honor Roll. Twelve African-American women were named to the list. Track and field standout Teri Smith '91 was honored.

2000 School recordholder and NCAA qualifier Dawn Chuck became the first African-American swimmer from the Ivy League to compete in the Olympic Games, representing her homeland of Jamaica. She repeated the feat in Athens in 2004 • • • It would be hard to imagine the Taylor twins having a better year than this. Brenda, competing for Harvard, and Lindsay, competing for Brown, combined to win eight individual events at the 2000 Indoor and Outdoor League Championships and both were named Academic All-Ivy! Brenda would win a national title in the 400m hurdles the following year and qualify for the World Championships while Lindsay would claim her fourth straight Indoor Pentathlon title.

2003 Cory Gibbs was added to the U.S. national team's January men's soccer roster. Gibbs is among the finest athletes in Ivy history. As a senior in 2000, he led the Bears to the Ivy Men's Soccer title and then to the Elite Eight of the NCAA College Cup as the League's Player of the Year and First-Team All-American. In addition to being a three-time All-Ivy performer, Cory also was a high achiever in the classroom and was a member of the Academic All-Ivy Team. A native of Plantation, Fla., Gibbs is now playing at the highest level of professional soccer in Germany's Bundesliga. In the fall of 2001, the then-21-year-old Gibbs became the youngest American ever to score a goal in the German First Division • • • Brown basketballer Earl Hunt of Rockville, Md., became just the fourth Ivy Leaguer to amass 2,000 career points in leading the Bears to their first National Invitation Tournament. Hunt broke Arnie Berman's 31-year-old school career scoring record as a junior in 2002 • • • Brown soccer standout Adom Crew closed his career as Ivy Player of the Year, first-team All-America and third-team Academic All-America as his Bears won the Ivy League title for the third time in his career. Crew was also drafted in the fifth round of the Major League Superdraft by the Colombus Crew.

2004 Ivy Player of the Year, junior Jason Forte of Rockville, Md., accomplished the Ivy League's first 'Tiny.' In honor of Nate 'Tiny" Archibald, the only NBA player to achieve the feat, the 'Tiny' is bestowed upon those who lead a League in both scoring and assists. Forte averaged 21.4 points and 5.8 assists a game in League play as the surprising Bears went 10-4 to tie Penn for second place. In his three years, Brown is 30-12 in Ivy play and, with a 10-win season in 2005, could become the first team other than Penn and Princeton to win 40 in a four-year span since Columbia turned the trick in 1971. In 2005, Forte became one of just 24 Leaguers in the Ivy’s storied basketball history to be named first team All-Ivy three consecutive seasons, joining the likes of Bill Bradley and the League’s last NBA player, Yale’s Chris Dudley. • • • J. Mayo Williams, a standout teammate of Fritz Pollard at Brown and in the NFL, is inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in Memphis, Tenn. Williams, who was in the music business for nearly four decades, was a key figure in bringing the blues to the world.

2005 The National Football Hall of Fame and the Ivy League rang in the 2005-06 season in style, as Fritz Pollard received his long overdue induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Pollard was the first African American to play football in the Rose Bowl with Brown in 1916, the first to be named an All-American and the first African American to coach in the NFL, with the Hammond, Ind., Pros. He was the first African American elected to the National College Football Hall of Fame, in 1954, but had to wait 51 years for the same honor to be bestowed by the NFL. • • • Uchenna Omokaro, a community health major from Hercules, Calif., was one of the most dominant softball pitchers in the Ivy League in 2005, limiting opponents to a .200 batting average while posting a 1.52 season earned run average. In Ivy play, Omokaro pitched 26 innings, held opponents to a .181 batting average and surrendered just one earned run for a 0.35 ERA. A two-time first-team All-Ivy selection and former Academic All-Ivy choice, Omokaro was honored as Brown's 2005 Female Athlete of the Year.