Last Friday marked the 149th anniversary of the end of slavery here in Maryland, but the Free State’s problems with race hardly ended there.
Indeed, one chapter in race relations comes to an end this Saturday, 76 years after the fact.
The sports website Deadspin reports that in a pre-game ceremony Saturday before the Maryland-Syracuse game, College Park athletic department officials will recognize the surviving family of former Orange football player Wilmeth Sidat-Singh. The recognition comes three quarters of a century after officials stopped Sidat-Singh from playing in a game. The Terps and the Orangemen, as they were called then, were scheduled to play a game in Baltimore in October of 1937. Sidat-Singh, who played the modern day equivalent of a running quarterback, was a two-sports star from New York and had led Syracuse to an unbeaten season to that point. At the time, people believed that Sidat-Singh was Hindu, but a story published the day before the game in the Washington Tribune revealed that he had been born 19 years before to Black parents.
Sidat-Singh, whose birth name was Wilmeth Webb, was adopted by an Indian doctor after his birth father died in 1925 and his birth mother married the doctor.
The story was broken by Sam Lacy, who would go on to greatness as a chronicler of the exploits of Jackie Robinson for, among other newspapers, the Baltimore Afro-American. While Black athletes weren’t barred from playing at Syracuse, Maryland didn’t allow Black students until 1951, and didn’t allow an African-American athlete to play there until 1962.
On game day, Maryland officials threatened to call the contest off if Sidat-Singh played. Unfortunately, Syracuse knuckled under to the intimidation and kept Sidat-Singh out. The Terps won that day 13-0, though Sidat-Singh returned a year later when the two teams met at Syracuse. The Orangemen prevailed that day 53-0.
Though he was a gifted player, Sidat-Singh was unable to play in the NFL, which blacklisted people of color in the late 1930’s and early 40’s. He went on to play what passed for professional basketball at the time until he signed with the Army after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He became a fighter pilot and was assigned to the unit that would become the Tuskegee Airmen. WilmethSidat-Singh died in the spring of 1943 when his training flight crashed in Lake Huron in Michigan.
Writer Dave McKenna wrote about this issue five years ago in an article for the Washington City Paper, but it stayed dormant until a relative of Sidat-Singh’s became the chief diversity officer at Maryland and brought it to the attention of athletic director Kevin Anderson. Anderson, who is African-American, promised to have a ceremony to recognize the wrongful treatment WilmethSidat-Singh whenever the Orange next played the Terps in College Park, which happens to be Saturday.
It took nearly eighty years for Singh’s name to be called in a Maryland stadium. Make of that what you will.