Unsung: Jim Crow and the Rise and Fall of UMES Football

Princess Anne, a little-known town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, is home to the nation’s most successful college football team in history that most sports fans have never hear of. From 1946 to 1970 the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) Hawks football team had a 76.4 percent winning percentage and was especially dominant among Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Under the leadership of their legendary coach Vernon “Skip” McCain, the Hawks sent over twenty players to the National Football League (NFL), including a future Hall of Famer, multiple Super Bowl champions, and the NFL’s first black coach in the modern era. UMES holds the distinction of having more players play in a Super Bowl Championship game than any other single institution. In spite of this success football was dropped at UMES in 1970 causing the school’s legacy to be forgotten outside of the state.

This essay traces the history of the UMES Hawks and attempts to bring football back to the campus over the last decade. It analyzes the impact of the team on race relations in an area that was better known for one of the nation’s most horrific lynchings and a plantation housing twenty slaves. The essay discusses UMES’s success in relation to Jim Crow’s impact on college sports in the South. The essay also explores the role integration played in the team’s demise and the unsuccessful attempts of former players to bring football back to campus.