BALTIMORE _ One of Eldridge Dickey's last meetings before the 1968 NFL/AFL draft was his most nervous. No Black quarterback had played in professional football in 13 years, and for as much as his college coaches at Tennessee State had prepared him, they knew the door would budge only so far. So Tigers coach John Merritt and defensive coordinator Joe Gilliam Sr. told him to sit down.
Dickey was a man of faith; he'd earned the nickname "The Lord's Prayer" in college and, with his rousing voice, had led his Tennessee State teams in prayer before each game. Later in life, he would become a minister. But Merritt and Gilliam wanted to meet with Dickey because they could not say what lay ahead for one of the most accomplished Black quarterbacks in college football history.
It would be difficult, they told him. "Listen, we want you to remember this," Dickey later recalled to Malik Rasheed, his cousin and documentarian. "You've been chosen to do a great work. If you just get there, you would have done your job. We want to let you know, son, you're going to have to bear the cross. But you might not be able to wear the crown."
On Sunday, two of the NFL's best quarterbacks will meet in Dickey's hometown of Houston for a timely tribute. The Ravens' Lamar Jackson and Texans' Deshaun Watson are stars in a league that embraces what it shunned 52 years ago. Ten Black quarterbacks started in Week 1, the most in NFL history. The Kansas City Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes is a defending Super Bowl champion and the sport's richest-ever player. Watson is a former Heisman Trophy winner and now a $39 million-a-year man.
Jackson, the NFL's reigning Most Valuable Player, has long honored his forerunners, the Black quarterbacks who walked so that he could run. Before his first career start two years ago, Jackson spoke with Washington Redskins great Doug Williams, who told him, "Just keep going forward." Growing up, Jackson idolized Michael Vick, the dual-threat icon whom, in many ways, he's already surpassed.
But maybe no quarterback in Jackson's lineage embodied the heartbreak of a lost generation more than Dickey. Over time, he became a cautionary tale for quarterbacks like Jackson: a breathtaking athlete, coveted by future Hall of Famers, only to be told he was needed more elsewhere. The first Black quarterback ever drafted in the first round, Dickey left the sport having never attempted a pass in professional football.
"He would've been a star," said James "Shack" Harris, who played against Dickey in college and later became the first Black player to start a season at quarterback in pro football history. "He would've been a star because he had a good arm, he was accurate, he was smart, he had instincts ... and he never lost his poise. He had the ability. He had pocket awareness and the ability to scramble and run. He was fast."
Added Harris: "There wasn't nothing that he couldn't do."
