When Morgan State beat Grambling at Yankee Stadium, more than the score was at stake

Five months after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a football game between two historically black colleges opened another field of play in the civil rights movement.

The Sept. 28 battle between what were then Louisiana’s Grambling College Tigers and Baltimore’s undefeated Morgan State Bears at Yankee Stadium marked the first time two historically black colleges or universities (HBCUs) had played in New York City.