Notre Dame football’s first Black player, Wayne Edmonds, broke barriers and paved paths

In the autumn of 1952, when Wayne Edmonds arrived at Notre Dame to study and play football, he wasn’t so much daunted by the fact that the university had never had a Black player on the squad.

The western Pennsylvania native was worried about his mother.

“In the end, the biggest hurdle to my going to Notre Dame was my mother, Grace Edmonds, who was afraid Notre Dame would turn her Baptist son into a Catholic,” Edmonds wrote last year when he penned an essay for the university.

Then-Irish coach Bob McBride, Edmonds wrote, had promised her that her son would attend Baptist services every Sunday. “….(A)nd that was good enough for Mom,” he wrote.

Edmonds, then a 6-foot, 210-pound versatile two-way player, sealed his legacy not only as a bruising blocker for the Fighting Irish, eventually attracting the attention of the Pittsburgh Steelers, he paved the way for other Black players, breaking down barriers and shining light on critical social issues of his time.

Edmonds, a native of western Pennsylvania coal town of Canonsburg, who went on to have a career as a social worker and educator, passed away on September 17 at Hershey Medical Center. Hooper Memorial Home is handling the arrangements. The 88-year-old had been a resident of Harrisburg for decades.

By the time he was a high school senior in 1951, Edmonds, the son of a Black coal miner, had attracted the attention of programs like Penn State, Penn, and Colgate. He even had a full ride offer from the University of Pittsburgh.

But a call from McBride sealed his future with Notre Dame. The coach invited Edmonds – and another young Black player from western Pennsylvania, Dick Washington – to South Bend.

The two became the first Black players on the team; and Edmonds the first to earn a varsity letter.

Their experiences on and off the field read like a historical account of a young Black athlete’s experience in an America at the cusp of a racial justice awakening.

In his essay from last year, for instance, Edmonds recounts the 1953 Notre Dame–North Carolina game, memorable not because it was a close game, but because he and Washington were the first Black players to appear at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill.

“The Black fans, seated in a segregated section of the stands, roared as the two young Black men ran onto the field with the Notre Dame team,” Edmonds wrote last year.

Later that season, Notre Dame was to play Georgia Tech, which had a 31-game winning streak and the number-one ranking at the time. Georgia Tech, which was hosting, said Notre Dame couldn’t bring Edmonds or Washington onto the field in Atlanta.

“Our Lady stood strong,” Edmonds wrote. “If Georgia Tech wanted to play Notre Dame, Frank Leahy said, it would have to come to South Bend and play the entire Notre Dame team. They came. Notre Dame won, 27–14.”

Notre Dame describes Edmonds as a versatile player, “able to excel at the tackle, guard and end positions. A bruising blocker on offense and devastating speed rusher on defense.” Edmonds evoked gushing praise from one writer for being ‘a veteran smoothie who specializes in smothering quarterbacks as quick as a whistle … with speed and savvy,’” a 2012 Notre Dame essay noted.

Edmonds played a crucial role in the unbeaten 1953 season (9-0-1) for the Irish, and went on to earn two more varsity letters.

His experiences off the field were as pivotal and groundbreaking.

“I recall walking back to campus one day with another Black student when one of the Notre Dame priests, known as Father Mac, stopped his car and told us we were in a ‘restricted’ part of town where Notre Dame students weren’t supposed to be. (In other words, we were in the Black section of town.) I replied, ‘We went to get a haircut—you know the campus barbershop only cuts white hair.’ That got us off the hook with Father Mac, but the Notre Dame barbershop did not change its discriminatory policy for many years after that,” Edmonds wrote in his essay.

He and Washington were assigned housing at the campus firehouse and experienced the onslaught of racial discrimination on the road. But Edmonds last year said he and his teammate faced minimal hardships on campus.

“I actually experienced more racial issues in high school than I did at Notre Dame,” Edmonds wrote. “Leahy was the law of the land and nobody questioned him. I had a lot of great teammates at Notre Dame and it was not a situation where you would have to deal with any racial issues.”

In the autumn 1955, Edmonds returned to campus disturbed, as was most of America, over the murder in Mississippi of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black boy from Chicago. Edmonds recalled that no one on campus was talking about it, so he gave a speech about it for a class, and even helped to raise money to benefit justice for Till.

The $50 Edmonds raised he donated to the NAACP, and thus he embarked on his lifelong involvement with the organization, eventually serving as chair of the Canonsburg chapter.

Edmonds garnered the interest of the Green Bay Packers, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Chicago Bears, and his hometown team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was the second of eight players from the 1956 Notre Dame team to be drafted. The Steelers took him in the ninth round, making him the first lineman to receive a signing bonus of $500.

Fate had other plans for him: admission to Pitt’s School of Social Work.

Edmonds left training camp and began his career as a social worker and educator.

Edmonds received a graduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1950s. He spent five years as a social worker for the Veterans Administration at University Hospital. He served as dean of students at Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work from 1967–71 and then spent several years helping oversee the United Mine Workers health care programs in the midwest.

Prior to his retirement in 1992, Edmonds worked for the state Department of Health as a public health executive, helping to pattern the state’s programs after the President’s Council for Physical Fitness and Sports.

Edmonds is survived by his wife Dorothy (Fulton) Edmonds; his four daughters, Kim Higgins, Kathy Adderly, Gina Edmonds-Colon and Laurel Ardle; 10 grandchildren; and many more great-grandchildren.