.jpg)
About the Author
Alois Ricky Clemons
Ricky Clemons serves as Lecturer in the Health Human Performance and
Leisure Studies department at Howard University teaching courses in Sports
Management, Sports Marketing, Sports and Media, Facilities and Event
Management and Sports Management Internship.
He began teaching as an adjunct professor in the School of Communications,
where he also served as Director of Development. Clemons served as Assistant
Professor of Public Relations in the Journalism and Mass Communications
department at North Carolina A&T State University.
Clemons is President of ARC Connections, Inc., a marketing communications
agency and former host of The Sports Insider Show on Sirius XM Channel 141
hurvoices.com.
About the Book
INBOUNDS is a reference book listing the more than 1,200 players from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) who played in the National Football League from 1949 to 2020, including 30 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees. In 1906, Charles Follis became the first Black player to play professional football with the Shelby Athletic Club (OH). Ray Kemp was the last Black player in the NFL with the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Pittsburgh Steelers) in 1933. Black players were banned from the NFL from 1933 to 1945 before Marion Motley broke the color barrier in 1946 with the Los Angeles Rams. In 1949, Tank Younger from Grambling College became the first player from an HBCU to play in the NFL with the
Los Angeles Rams.
INBOUNDS includes the bios and images of the 30 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees from HBCU including recent members Michael Strahan (Texas Southern) and Aeneas Williams (Southern). More than 50 HBCU sent players to the NFL, including traditional football powers Grambling State, Jackson State, Southern, and Texas Southern from the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) and Morgan State, North Carolina Central, and North Carolina A&T State of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and players from the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) and the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA).
INBOUNDS also includes an essay on the evolution of Black players in professional football from
1906 to 1933, before the color ban and how Black players created teams to continue to play professional football. Most notable was the New York Brown Bombers organized and coached by Pro Football Hall of Fame member Fritz Pollard, from 1936 to 1942.