A nervous Hill dropped the opening kickoff against N.C. State, only to pick it up and return it to midfield. The home fans neither booed nor cheered when he did something impressive.
"They were very cold to me," he remembered.
That changed in the fifth game of the season when he caught a 36-yard touchdown pass to beat undefeated Air Force. The Maryland fans charged the field and never treated him indifferently again.
Road games were another story.
At South Carolina - his first game in the South - fans waved nooses, white hoods and Confederate flags in the stands.
A fan poured a drink on Hill. Others barred the way as he and his teammates tried to leave the field at halftime. Some Terps removed their helmets and swung them to fight their way through the mob.
"It was so shocking," Fishman said of the scene. "You think these people have to be kidding, but they weren't. It was terrifying."
At Clemson, Hill's mother arrived with a ticket in hand but was turned away. Rather than leave her to push through hordes of racist fans, drunk from homecoming celebrations, Hill left the game to look out for her. Word of this reached Clemson President Robert Edwards, who insisted that Hill's mother walk with him to the presidential box. Hill re-entered the game and set a conference record with 10 catches, despite constant double and triple teams.
He noticed that the bigotry came from fans and coaches, not from opposing players. Many apologized for the harsh environments. The Clemson captains assured Hill he would receive no cheap shots. At Wake Forest, star halfback Brian Piccolo put his arm around Hill and turned to stare down his own fans, who were hooting racial epithets. They shut right up.
"That took courage," Hill said.
He caught 43 passes and led the ACC in kickoff returns that year. Despite an injury-plagued senior season, he earned camp time with the New York Jets and Washington Redskins. But that was the extent of his NFL playing days.
A last, unexpected football thrill came when he watched Clemson, one of the schools that had treated him most harshly, win a national championship in 1981 ... with a mostly black starting lineup.
Hill went on to a fascinating life after football, working for minority business development in the 1970s, running an energy company in California in the 1980s, setting up a timber business in Siberia after the Iron Curtain fell. Hill was the only American, and his Russian partner told him he had a lot of guts.
"I'm used to being the first," he replied.
If he needed a reminder of his pioneering role, he got a letter recently, thanking him for the groundwork he laid. It was signed by Barack Obama.
"When I look at a day that I thought I would never see," he said, referring to Obama's election, "I feel humbled. Maybe I did have something to do with that. Maybe what I did was a bigger achievement than I realized at the time."
Gary Steele integrated Army's team. sports 11
