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3 Black Iowans who shaped history
Get to know Jack Trice, Nicole Hannah-Jones and George Washington Carver.
Jack Trice
The night before his second game as an Iowa State football player, Jack Trice was ready to get on the field.
“The honor of my race, family, and self are at stake,” he wrote in a letter in 1923. “Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will!”
Trice was the first Black athlete to ever play for Iowa State, running track and playing football. Born in Ohio, he moved to Iowa to follow his high school football coach and five of his high school teammates. According to Iowa State University Archives, Trice studied animal husbandry in hopes of helping Black farmers in the South.
During that game in 1923, a group of opposing players forced Trice to the ground, crushing him. Days later, he died of his injuries.
Fifty years later, Iowa State fans started a campaign to name the school’s new football stadium after Trice. Advocates pushed for many years, and finally Jack Trice Stadium became the official home of the Cyclones in 1997.
It is the only major college football stadium name after an African-American person.
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious award in American journalism, for her work on the The 1619 Project. (Invision/AP)
New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn't take things at face value.
As a journalist, she digs deeper into the history behind issues of civil rights and racial injustice. That's what she did for the “1619 Project,” a series that examined the history and impact of race — and racism — in building America. The project is named for the year the first enslaved Africans were brought to what would later become the United States.
Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on the project, the most prestigious award in American journalism.
She also has written about racial segregation and schools, an interest dating back to when she was a young student herself. Her first letter to the editor was published around the time she was in middle school, Hannah-Jones told the Waterloo Courier in 2017. She shined a light on injustices she saw in both her middle school and high school.
— originally published in Nov. 2020
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver went down in American history as one of the first prominent Black scientists and an important figure in the history of agriculture. However, Carver faced many barriers to getting an education as a Black man in the late 1800s.
Carver was born enslaved in Missouri about a year before slavery was abolished. As a boy and young adult, Carver traveled many miles to find schools that allowed Black students.
Carver eventually came to Iowa because colleges in Missouri and Kansas would not accept him. Carver was the first Black student ever to enroll at Iowa State University, and he later became the first Black teacher at ISU.
Carver's research would lead to the creation of more than 300 peanut products and more than 100 sweet potato products.
— originally published in Nov. 2020
Iowa State University football player Jack Trice in 1923. (ISU Library/University Archives)
Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious award in American journalism, for her work on the The 1619 Project. (Invision/AP)
George Washington Carver earned his master's degree in agriculture from Iowa State College in 1896. His research on peanuts, sweet potatoes and other crops helped improve the lives of poor southern farmers. (Library of Congress)
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