Ernie was loving the college life at Syracuse university. Ernie was one of the few black players on his team and even the entire NCAA. Erine lead the 1960 team to a 11-0 season winning the cotton bowl. Some of his teammates did not respect him even though he was the best player on the team. The worst part is at the banquet, when Ernie won the MVP of the 1960 Cotton Bowl, with a 23-14 win over Texas, he after he accepted the award, he would have had to leave because the building he would have received it in was segregated. There were two other african american players on the team who also had to leave. His teammates wanted to leave with Ernie, but if they left it would cause a problem, so they stayed.
In the south, racial tension was high. Many people showed large amounts of hatred to african americans. When it came time to vote for the heisman winner, there were 10 final candidates to vote for. Ernie was one of those finalists and he was african american. In the south he came in third out of ten in voting. This is very surprising because of the hatred that the southerners showed to the african americans. This region helped Ernie in the polls and in total it helped him become the first african american to win the Heisman Trophy.
In 1961 Ernie Davis became the first african american to win the Heisman, and the 27th person to ever win the award. The award is the most prestigious award college football has to offer. Ernie beat Bob Ferguson by 53 points to win the award. After 26 years of the award, he became the first african american to win the honor. In the east, he was the favorite, and won the region. He came in third in the south, west and midwest regions, and came in 4th in the southwest region.
Davis then broke another barrier after becoming the winner of the Heisman. Entering the draft, he was a favorite to be a top three pick. Then he became the first person that was african american to be picked first overall in the draft. He got drafted by the Washington Redskins, a team whose coach was a known racist, and kept the team an all white team, even after the Nfl had been integrated. After being told to sign a black player or have to get a new stadium, the team drafted Ernie. Ernie refused to sign with the team though and demanded a trade. He got traded to the Cleveland Browns and then started to negotiate a contract.
After being traded to the Cleveland Browns, Ernie went through negotiations, accepted and signed his contract. His contract was a total of 200,000 dollars. Ernie got 80,000 dollars for playing football, 60,000 dollars for his image, 60,000 dollars for the off season. Davis topped it all off with a 15,000 dollar signing bonus. His contract was one of the biggest ever at the time, not just for african americans, but for whites also. Sadly, Ernie Davis never got to play a single second in an NFL game because soon after joining the Cleveland Browns, he contracted the deadly disease of Leukemia which was incurable at the time.