1888 Starting with Yale's 9-4 loss on May 9, 1888, at least five Ivy teams played against the Cuban Giants, the first professional African-American team. Based on Long Island and later Trenton, N.J., the Cuban Giants played against major league teams before the color line was set by the St. Louis Browns in 1887. Along with Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell and Dartmouth each squared off with the Giants.

1949 Levi Jackson, a Branford, Conn. native, was named the first black captain of the Yale football team in 1949. Upon his graduation in 1950, Jackson held or shared 13 Yale football records. He would go on to become the first black executive at Ford Motor Company.

1964 Yale sprinter Wendell Motley became the first black from Yale to earn a significant league-wide honor, when he was selected as the Athlete of the Meet at the Heptagonal Indoor Championship. Motley would claim a silver medal for Trinidad in the Tokyo Olympics later that summer in the 400-meter dash. No Ivy Leaguer has won an Olympic medal in an individual race shorter than 10,000 meters since.

1969 Calvin Hill was named the NFL's NFC Rookie of the Year for the Dallas Cowboys.

1972 Calvin Hill became the first African-American Ivy Leaguer to win a Super Bowl.

1982 Patricia Melton became the first African-American female to be named the Heptagonal Games Indoor Track Athlete of the Meet.

1983 After completing his senior football season, Roosevelt Thompson of Little Rock, Ark., is selected as one of the nation's 32 Rhodes Scholar recipients. Sadly, Thompson was never able to study in England. He was killed in an auto accident returning to Yale after spring break prior to graduation. There are now scholarships, awards and even a library named for him.

1984 Earl (Butch) Graves, Jr., perhaps Yale's best basketball ever, scored his 2000th point. He is Yale's all-time leading scorer with 2090 points. He is one of three Ivy Leaguers and the only African-American male to reach the 2000 point milestone. Graves is now the President and Chief Operating Officer of all print and electronic publishing for the Graves Publishing Company, which includes Black Enterprise Magazine and its website. Black Enterprise Magazine is a business news source for African Americans. It provides essential business information and advice for professionals, corporate executives, entrepreneurs and decision-makers. The monthly publication provides more than three million readers with information on financial management, entrepreneurship and careers.

1987 Footballer Kurt Schmoke was elected the Mayor of Baltimore City on November 3, 1987. He was the first African-American elected to the office of mayor of Baltimore. Schmoke is a 1971 graduate of Yale University and was a varsity letterwinner on the 1968 Ivy Champion squad. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and received his law degree in 1976 from Harvard Law School.

1998 Sophomore Ayo Griffin claimed Yale University's first-ever NCAA Championship in fencing by winning the foil crown in South Bend, Ind. Griffin needed to get by another Ivy Leaguers -- Penn's Yaron Roth -- in the final. Injured most of his junior season, Griffin was a two-time All-Ivy and two-time Academic All-Ivy choice in his career.

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. Patricia Melton '82, a standout athlete on the track and field team, was honored.

2000 Rashad Bartholomew broke Dick Jauron's career rushing record with 3,016 career rushing yards. ••• Andia Winslow, from Seattle, Wash., becomes the first African-American golfer in Ivy League history.

2001 Two Ivy League African-American football players - Princeton's Cameron Atkinson and Yale's Billy Brown - are named second-team Academic All-America by Verizon. With those selections, the number of times a black Ivy League footballer has been named Academic All-America has risen to ten. Brown is the first black Yale athlete to be named Academic All-American in any sport.

2002 Yale senior Thomas Hocker earned academic honors in addition to his success on the track. A recipient of the William Neely Mallory Award, the most prestigious athletic award given to a senior male at Yale, Hocker was awarded the prestigious Churchill Scholarship, an annual award given to 11 American students by the Churchill Foundation in Britain. He was also named as a first-team Academic All-American by the College Sports Information Directors of America.

2003 Yale freshman Joslyn Woodard shook up the Heps Indoor Championships by winning three events -- the 60-and 200-meter dashes and the long jump -- and being named the 2003 Performer of the Meet. In both events she knocked off Cornell's Katy Jay, the defending champion in each. In the 60, Woodard set a new meet record of 7.59 seconds, besting the old mark of 7.62 seconds, set only in 2002 by Jay.

2004 One of the former Ivy League athletes who qualified for the Olympic Trials in wrestling came from a sport that doesn't seem compatible with grappling -- women's soccer. Tina Pihl, a 33-year-old former All-Ivy goalkeeper at Yale, played both soccer and football after college before discovering wrestling •• After nearly drowning at Candlewood Lake in Connecticut over the Fourth of July weekend, Yale senior running back Robert Carr, of Baytown, Texas, put together a memorable senior season that put him firmly in the recordbooks. Carr ran for nearly 1,200 rushing yards and more than 1,700 all-purpose yards. He closed his career with all-time Yale records for career rushing yards (3,430, fourth all-time in the Ivies) and all-purpose yards (4,566). Carr, also an Academic All-Ivy pick, also scored 31 touchdowns in his days in New Haven.

2005 Junior Joslyn Woodard of Irvine, Calif., won the 60- and 200-meter dashes, as well as the long jump, to move within one title of the indoor Heps record of eight, held by Nicole Harrison and Dora Gyorffy. Woodard also won three indoor Heps titles in 2004.