Before 1961, 26 men had won the Heisman Trophy, college football’s most prestigious award. When Syracuse University tailback Ernie Davis became the 27th winner, he was the first black player to achieve the honor.

One of the Top 25 Defining Moments in the first 100 years of NCAA history, Davis’s landmark selection over Ohio State fullback Bob Ferguson marked significant change for the game of football.

Forty-four years have passed and in that time, 24 black players have earned the Heisman, including Ohio State University’s Archie Griffin, who won it in 1974 and 1975.

"Like many barriers that have been broken in society, there’s got to be a first to be a second. Ernie Davis winning the Heisman was a significant milestone," said Peter Roby, director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

The Washington Redskins selected Davis with the first overall pick in the 1961 NFL draft and promptly traded the two-time all-American to the Cleveland Browns, where he was to join former Syracuse legend Jim Brown in the backfield.

Davis, however, never made it onto an NFL gridiron, dying of leukemia in May 1963.

"When I heard he had passed away, I called (Syracuse coach) Ben Schwartzwalder right then and there," said former Syracuse and NFL great Floyd Little, who at the time was deciding where to play collegiate football. "My decision was made."

Little, who like Brown and Davis is black and wore the number 44, was personally recruited to the university by Davis.

Schwartzwalder and Davis showed up at Little’s New Haven home to take the recruit out for a nice dinner on the Yale campus. After arriving at the restaurant, Davis took Little aside to speak with him privately.

"We went into the men’s bathroom," Little said. "We talked in there through dinner and when I got back, my food was cold. He told me he had the best time of his life at Syracuse. He said he was treated with respect and was given every opportunity to succeed."

When Little’s mother met Davis for the first time, she was convinced Syracuse was the place for her son.

"He impressed my sisters when he came back to the house after dinner," Little said. "It was like Elvis Presley walked through the door. My mother said that if Syracuse could produce a gentleman like that, that’s where I should go. My sisters concurred."

Little said there wasn’t a more fitting individual to break the racial barrier than Ernie Davis, who was one of the most popular students on the Syracuse campus.

"He was an icon and a guy on campus that everybody knew," Little said. "He was approachable and was just a class act. He could have been class president."

While Davis may have enjoyed immense popularity on the Syracuse campus, other areas of the country weren’t as accepting of Blacks in the 1960s.

David Lattin, a member of the 1966 Texas Western College men’s basketball team that became the first program to win a national championship with five Blacks in the starting lineup, said that the South was completely different than the northern part of the country at that time.

"I grew up in Houston and everything was segregated," Lattin said. "I didn’t have any white friends because that’s the way people wanted it. It was total separation — we didn’t go to school together, we didn’t live in the same neighborhoods, we didn’t drink from the same water fountains."

While Lattin was just a teenager when Davis won the Heisman, he remembers the significance of when the Syracuse star won the award.

"Everything positive that happened certainly made a difference (in changing things)," Lattin said. "You leave an imprint on history and it helps everybody move along and follow those footsteps."

Racial tensions continued to flare after Davis won the Heisman. In Abilene, Texas, Grant Teaff recruited the first black player to a predominantly white institution as head coach at McMurry University.

After finishing a road game, Teaff and his team had arranged for a postgame meal at a restaurant between Sherman and Abilene. The group walked into the restaurant, and the owner quickly told Teaff that Kenneth Decker, the team’s lone black player, wouldn’t be able to eat with the rest of the traveling party.

Teaff turned around and walked out the door, followed by Decker and the rest of the McMurry team. Nobody said a word about not being able to eat a postgame meal.

"When Ernie was winning the Heisman, there were still minority players who weren’t allowed into restaurants with their teams," Teaff said.

The longtime coach and current executive president of the American Football Coaches Association credits Davis’ Heisman win as a major reason that changes began to take place.

"It was a landmark event that signified the coming change in sports across the board, particularly in football," Teaff said. "Ernie’s emergence and recognition as one of the great players of all time brought very positive focus to the changing time."

The impact was felt outside the world of athletics as well.

"Sport was having an impact on society then and that continues today," Roby said. "It makes people think differently about the assumptions they had about certain classes of people and their abilities. We saw it with black quarterbacks, with black catchers in baseball and with black coaches."

Just as Davis served as a mentor to Little, the Heisman winner was recruited to Syracuse by Brown, who is often referred to as the greatest running back of all time.

Brown finished his career in orange in 1956, finishing fifth in the Heisman balloting, well behind Notre Dame senior quarterback Paul Hornung.

"It was pretty obvious that Jim Brown was the best college football player, and maybe the best athlete, in America," Roby said. "I don’t think many people would argue with the fact that he was the best player of all time. It’s likely that race had a lot to do with him not winning the Heisman."

Five years later, the country anointed another black athlete as college football’s king. It was only fitting that it was Ernie Davis, who continued the great tradition started by Jim Brown at Syracuse.

"There was a lot of debate about why Jim Brown didn’t win the Heisman," said current Syracuse Director of Athletics Daryl Gross. "For Ernie to win it and be productive right after Jim Brown was very significant to our history and started the whole legend of 44 at Syracuse."

The university officially retired the uniform number in November 2005 at a halftime ceremony during a game against the University of South Florida. Brown and Little attended the ceremony, along with Davis’ mother, Marie Fleming.

"As a new athletics director, I felt it was appropriate to honor that in the way Major League Baseball honors Jackie Robinson," Gross said. "Ernie was a great character, an all-American, and from what I’ve been told, just a wonderful human being."

Since December 1961, a lot has changed in the game of football, as well as in the United States. Much of that has to do with Ernie Davis’ achievements on the gridiron, but also the way he carried himself during his 23 years.

"It had a big impact not only on football, but on segregation issues that were prevalent during that period of time. It’s been a wonderful change in our society," Teaff said. "In my opinion, the football field has become the most diversified of all places in America."