May 18, 1963, 60 years ago: Ernie Davis, the 1st black football player to win the Heisman Trophy, dies of leukemia in Cleveland. He was only 23 years old.
Ernest Davis (no middle name) was born on December 14, 1939 in New Salem, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. His father was killed in an accident shortly thereafter. When his mother remarried, they moved to his stepfather's hometown of Elmira, New York, in the Finger Lakes region. At Elmira Free Academy, he starred in football, basketball and baseball. He was a college prospect in all 3 sports, but Syracuse University, about 90 miles to the northeast, sent their star running back, Jim Brown to recruit him. It worked, and, like Brown before him, he became a Syracuse running back wearing Number 44.
In 1959, led by head coach Ben Schwartzwalder, with Davis, "the Elmira Express," the Orangemen went 11-0 and won the National Championship, including their 1st bowl win, the 1960 Cotton Bowl. In 1960, Davis' junior year, they went 7-2, and were not invited to a bowl game. (There were considerably fewer bowls back then.) In 1961, they went 8-3, and won the Liberty Bowl over Miami at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.
That season, Davis became the 1st black player to be awarded the Heisman Trophy. The 2nd-place finisher, running back Bob Ferguson of National Champions Ohio State, was also black. Prior to Davis, the closest a black player had come was in 1956, when Brown finished 5th.
In those days, the NFL Draft was held in the December of the preceding calendar year. On December 4, 1961, the Washington Redskins made Davis the 1st pick. They had to, as part of an agreement with the federal government, which owned the District of Columbia's new football stadium: They were the last NFL team that hadn't desegregated, and they had to in order to be allowed to play there. They promised to pick a black player in 1st round, and did. Two days later, the Buffalo Bills made Davis the 1st pick in the American Football League draft.
There was no question in Davis' mind that he wanted to play in the NFL, not the AFL. But he wouldn't play for the Redskins' owner, George Preston Marshall, the League's most notorious racist. A deal was quickly arranged: The rights to Davis would go to the Cleveland Browns, where his Syracuse roommate John Brown and Jim Brown -- no relation to each other, or to the team's white head coach and general manager, Paul Brown -- were already playing, in exchange for Bobby Mitchell and the Browns' 1st-round draft pick, Leroy Jackson, who became the Redskins' 1st black players in the coming season.
But Davis never played for the Browns, either, or for any other professional football team. He was diagnosed with leukemia. He was given uniform Number 45, as defensive back Jim Shofner was already wearing 44. Only once did he take the field wearing a Browns uniform, before a preseason game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium on August 18, 1962. A spotlight was put on him, and he received a standing ovation.
After a brief remission, his leukemia returned, and, on May 18, 1963, Davis died at Cleveland Lakeside Hospital. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in his hometown of Elmira.
Just 17 days after his death, on June 4, the Browns lost another player, due to a work accident, at a time when most athletes were paid so little that they needed off-season jobs. Don Fleming, a safety, and a fellow construction worker, Walter Smith, were operating a crane on a construction site in Winter Park, Florida, outside Orlando, when it hit an electrical transmission line, and they were electrocuted. The Browns retired both Davis' Number 45 and Fleming's Number 46 before the next season.
Davis was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979. On November 12, 2005, Syracuse University retired Number 44 to honor the legacy of those who wore it as well as the number itself, which has become so associated with Syracuse that the University's ZIP Code, 13244, was requested by university officials to remember those who wore 44 for the Orange, including Brown, Davis, and Denver Broncos Hall-of-Famer Floyd Little.
In 2008, Rob Brown played Davis in the film The Express: The Ernie Davis Story. In 2009, on the 50th Anniversary of the National Championship he helped win, the field at Syracuse's new stadium, the Carrier Dome, was named Ernie Davis Legends Field. In 2014, Davis' high school, the Elmira Free Academy, was renamed the Ernie Davis Academy.