William Henry Lewis, who entered Virginia State University in 1883 at the age of 15 and later became the first African-American college football all-American, will be among the 2009 class of inductees into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame.

As a coach, Lewis helped Harvard compile a 22-2 record during his career with the Crimson.

Born in Virginia, Lewis started college when he was 15 at Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (now Virginia State University), the state’s first college for African-Americans, in 1883. He then transferred to Amherst College, where he played three seasons before attending Harvard Law School. Named Harvard’s first African-American team captain, he became an all-American center even though he weighed only 175 pounds.

After his playing career, Lewis coached at Harvard for 12 years. During that time he proposed the “neutral zone” rule that is still used today to lessen the brutality of the game at the line of scrimmage before the snap.

Walter Camp even asked Lewis to contribute a chapter on defense to his book “Spalding’s How to Play Football.”

Lewis was elected to the legislature in 1901 and named assistant U.S. attorney for Boston in 1903. President William Howard Taft later appointed Lewis as an assistant U.S. attorney general, a position for which he was recommended by Booker T. Washington.

Lewis served as assistant attorney general from 1911 to 1913, making him the first African-American to hold a sub-cabinet position.

Lewis died January 1, 1949, at the age of 81.

Lewis and 17 other members of the 2009 College Football Hall of Fame Football Bowl Subdivision class will be inducted December 8 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. They will be officially enshrined at the Hall in South Bend, Indiana, during ceremonies in the summer of 2010.

− Courtesy of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association