Photo shows the football team in practice position.
Back: Postcard has brief message from “Bates” and is addressed to “Mr. Harold (Pape) Shindan, New Sharon, Iowa” and is postmarked “Iowa City”.
At the bottom someone has handwritten in pencil, “Nov 12, 1910 Iowa vs Drake”
Alphonso Alexander was a star lineman on the University of Iowa’s football team. In this photo, Iowa football players preparing to face Drake University, game to be on November 12, 1910.
Born in Ottumwa, Iowa and raised in Des Moines, Alexander, at 6-2 and 180 pounds, was an imposing figure on the football field and an award-winning lineman. Alexander was also an African-American – the second black player to suit up for the Hawkeye varsity – and his race was directly responsible for the century-long football drought between these two schools from neighboring states. Iowa and Missouri – which would not admit any African-American students until after World War Two – had long wrangled over the subject of black players, and Mizzou’s absolute refusal to allow Alexander to take the field was the final straw for Iowa athletic officials.
Archie Alexander was the son of a janitor and coachman. And he was the first African-American to receive a civil engineering degree from the UI in 1912. In later years, Archie Alexander was the engineer for the Tuskegee air field, and Alexander was appointed Governor of the United States Virgin Islands by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954.