Monthly Archives: September 2014
Jack Trice’s lost jersey
When Jack Trice died of fatal injuries suffered in his first major game as Iowa State University’s first Black football player in 1923, he left behind a letter written to himself on the eve of the game. The full letter, which was discovered before his funeral, has become an iconic symbol of determined hope and effort triumphing over ugly discrimination. Today, Jack’s famous words sit in a thick vault at Iowa State as the beating heart of an entire campus.
The other prominent symbol of Jack’s brief life remains his distinctive football uniform with five vertical strips. When Jack walked onto the Minnesota field wearing his gold jersey, he was the only Black man on the field surrounded by a crowd of over 20,000 Minnesota fans waving colorful pennants and chanting. At that moment, the words of his letter were surely reverberating through his heart to do big things. When Iowa State finally created throwback uniforms in 2013 to honor his story, they used pictures of his jersey as reference. No trace of what happened to Jack’s jersey has ever been found and it was probably thrown out at some point, but what if it wasn’t?
We set out to find Jack Trice’s lost jersey.