FSU Baseball: Legacy of integration for Noles started on the diamond

FSU Baseball will always hold the high honor of being the first program at the school to have an African-American athlete on the roster dating back to 1965.

When most people think about the integration of the athletics programs at Florida State University, the first assumption is that it was the football team who saw the first African-American player on the roster – when, in fact, the FSU baseball team had the first person to have that honor nearly three years before.

While the school had integrated and admitted African-American students for the first time starting in the summer of 1962, it would be a full three years before the athletics program would follow along.

In 1965, a Tallahassee native and freshman name Fred Flowers would be the first one when he suited up for the Seminoles on the diamond – the same season a transfer outfielder from North Carolina named Mike Martin joined the FSU baseball roster.

While Flowers never got a chance to play for the varsity team, he will always be the answer to the trivia question about who integrated the Seminoles. Three years later, the football team followed when they signed Calvin Patterson – one of the top players in the city of Miami – followed by four more players, including future Super Bowl champ J.T. Thomas, the following year.

Last year, the FSU baseball team honored Flowers – who is one of three prominent African-American trailblazers in the school’s history featured on the Integration statue near the student union – on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s death and the creation of the Black Student union.

During that event, Flowers told WCTV in Tallahassee his thoughts where the school was when it came to integration at a time when most schools were still reluctant.

"“I think Florida State University sort of stands alone among all the universities in the country in terms of what they’re doing in terms of racial diversity, it’s just awesome,” said Flowers."

Florida State University has traditionally been known as one of the more diverse schools in the state of Florida as well as across the Southeast – and one of the first names associated with that movement was a local athlete who took the diamond before going on to earn two degrees from the school and become a successful lawyer for decades.

The integration of all the athletics programs for the Seminoles should be celebrated – while remembering that it was the FSU baseball team that made it all possible by starting things off.