First African-American varsity football player at Indiana University
Preston Eagleson became Indiana University’s first African-American letter winner as a member of the 1894 football team. In that season, Eagleson was denied service at a Crawfordsville hotel restaurant when IU played at Wabash College. His father, Halson Eagleson, a Bloomington barber, filed suit in Montgomery County Circuit Court under an 1885 public accommodations law on behalf of his son and won a judgement of $50. Two teammates approached Eagleson prior to his senior year at IU and told him that members of the team would do anything it took to hurt him on the field. Eagleson quit before playing a game that season, but he continued his studies and graduated in 1896. He became the first African-American to receive a post-graduate degree from IU in 1906. The Eagleson-Bridgwater family that descended from Halson Vashon Eagleson, Preston's father, produced more than 20 IU graduates. Preston Eagleson became a school principal in Bloomington, then in St. Louis. Ordained into the ministry, he pastored a church in Spencer but died at age 35.