(SPORTS FOOTBALL) Schumacher photographer Photograph of the

Sale 2420 - Lot 288

Unsold

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(SPORTS--FOOTBALL.) Schumacher, photographer. Photograph of the integrated University of Southern California football team. Albumen photograph, 7 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches, on original mount with faint photographer's imprint on recto; mount quite worn with only slight loss to photograph, minor soiling, slightly misleading later caption on verso placing the date as 1901. Los Angeles, CA, circa November 1897

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Additional Details

A photograph of the 1897 University of Southern California football team. The team won its first four games by a combined score of 90-0 according to the college yearbook, which explains the football painted "90-0" in the center of the picture. The players are unidentified in the image, but unmistakable coach Lewis Ransome Freeman (1878-1960), best known as an explorer, stands in the center rear. Other well-known players include Charles Alfred Holland (1872-1940), rear, second from left; Charles Bennett Christy, front, second from left; and actor Purnell B. Pratt (1879-1941). The African-American player standing on the left has been identified as halfback Bob Jones. Coach Freeman later recalled Jones as "an amiable but powerful Negro . . . pushing out to daylight after carrying most of the enemy team' (see Freeman's letter to the editor of the Southern California Alumni Review, 4 May 1954, in the USC Special Collections). Brice Taylor, a star of the 1925 team, is regarded as one of the school's first African-American players, but Jones had him beat by almost 30 years.