When a college football player first scores a touchdown before the home fans, it should be a moment of unfettered joy, of promise fulfilled.
For Darryl Hill, who integrated the U.S. Naval Academy's football program, then became the ACC's first black football player, it was more complicated.
After he caught his first touchdown pass at the University of Maryland's Byrd Stadium, the traditional cannon shot sounded. Hill threw up his arms and discarded the ball in fright. He had been told by school officials that someone had threatened to shoot him from the top of the stands. So all he could think was, "They got me."
It's easy for him to look back after 45 years - after a distinguished football career, after the many tributes to his courage, after a successful business career that took him to California, Siberia and China - and laugh at that moment.
But put yourself in the shoes of a teenager who has been told he's a target, and it's not so funny. It reminds you that in 1963, you couldn't just be a kid who wanted to play ball. Not if you were black.
Hill clung to his basic desire to compete throughout that season. It kept him sane as he listened to the vicious taunts from crowds in the Atlantic Coast Conference's southern outposts. In fact, Hill played his best games in the worst environments.
"I think I was more determined when I played down [South]," said Hill, now 65 and the director of major gifts for the UM Athletic Department. "I understood that just like Jackie [Robinson], all eyes were on me, and if I failed, it might happen eventually, but it might be set back several years."
Hill's story is a major part of the HBO documentary Breaking the Huddle, which tells the story of college football's integration and will debut Dec. 16.
"Most Terp fans have probably never heard of Darryl Hill," said his former teammate, Jerry Fishman. "But he opened the door for thousands of black athletes in the South."
Hill grew up in Northeast Washington. His father's trucking business served white customers but other than the occasional brush with one of them, he rarely encountered whites. That changed when he enrolled at Gonzaga for high school. There, for the first of many times, he was one of a small group of black students in a sea of white faces.
The precocious Hill skipped two grades, so he was only 15 years old and 155 pounds as a senior at Gonzaga. His age and size didn't stop him from making All-Metro as a speedy halfback but diminished his appeal to recruiters. And he had no designs on shattering racial barriers.
