Swarthmore Athletics celebrates Black History Month by recognizing a few of the countless African Americans who have contributed to the rich history of our programs and made their marks on and off the playing fields. Each week in February, we will tell the stories of these remarkable individuals, past and present.

Ruffin James "Ruff" Herndon was a man with many admirers, which becomes clear when reading through the thick stack of letters lovingly preserved for the occasion of his retirement ceremony on April 16, 1966.

To quote Bob Trudel '43, he "was one of a very small group of men who can count their friends in the hundreds—maybe even several thousand."

As James Kelly '34 noted, "Few among us will pass the test of time as well as Ruff. A man of decency, dignity, and intelligence—one of the rare ones with true stature—whose influence has continued to widen throughout the years."

Herndon's remarkable 62-year tenure as the College's athletic trainer spanned four Swarthmore presidents, seven deans, 11 athletic directors, and 73 head coaches, as noted by the Delaware County Daily Times in its article from June 4, 1996. According to the paper, he boasted the longest record of service in American intercollegiate athletics at the time and only a select few have surpassed him in the intervening years.

When Herndon came to Swarthmore in 1902, the College was still 40 years away from admitting African-American students and 68 years from hiring its first African-American professor. He was drawn to athletics through his background as a high school football and baseball player in Richmond, Virginia. At the suggestion of a Swarthmore team doctor, he took two years of night school and became the College's athletic trainer in 1904. The rest is history.

His accomplishment is all the more significant given the prevailing climate of racial tension and discrimination against African Americans in much of the twentieth century. Jim Crow laws imposed segregation in Southern states and brutal lynchings terrorized black communities.

While race relations were better in the North, systematic discrimination remained ever-present. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in his 1899 study The Philadelphia Negro, "Presumably the first impulse of the average Philadelphian would be emphatically to deny any such marked and blighting discrimination…Careful inquiry will convince any such one of his error."

Thanks to a letter from Mark Gross '39, we know that Herndon experienced these injustices firsthand. The letter recounts that Herndon was not allowed to eat with a team on a road trip to Easton, Pennsylvania because of his skin color. Gross credits the event as the catalyst of his lifelong pursuit of integration in his community and writes, "I was acting because I had seen an unusually fine gentleman unfairly treated, and I was suddenly sure there must be thousands of good people being unfairly treated."

For Gross and many others, Herndon taught countless spoken and unspoken lessons through his unwavering decency and dedication to his work. Though he has long ceased to be part of the College, he remains, to paraphrase the 1964 Halcyon dedication, the personification of Swarthmore's sensible and knowing spirit.

Click here to read a selection of the letters sent to Ruff