{"id":181232,"date":"2022-02-01T13:01:25","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T18:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=181232"},"modified":"2022-03-21T09:03:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T13:03:03","slug":"honoring-harrison-honey-fitch-star-athlete-uconn-trailblazer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/02\/honoring-harrison-honey-fitch-star-athlete-uconn-trailblazer\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring Harrison \u2018Honey\u2019 Fitch: Star Athlete, UConn Trailblazer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Jesse Owens won four gold medals for the United States in his groundbreaking performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.<\/p>\n

Before Jackie Robinson broke through the color barrier in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n

Before the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education<\/em> found racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, and long before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.<\/p>\n

Before UConn was called UConn, when the beloved Huskies were still the Aggies, and well before UConn became known as the academic and athletic powerhouse of today, a young man and three-sport star athlete from New Haven named Harrison Brooks Fitch enrolled at the Connecticut State College.<\/p>\n

Fitch could hardly have known that his would become the story of a UConn trailblazer and the university community that rallied behind him in a way that was almost unheard of in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

On February 19, 2022, the University will memorialize Fitch and his story by inducting him posthumously into the Huskies of Honor<\/a>, where he will take his rightful place amongst Husky basketball greats like Ray Allen, Kemba Walker, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore, and coaches Geno Auriemma and Jim Calhoun.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Right Person at the Right Time\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe story is about Harrison Fitch, and his character, but also about the students at University of Connecticut, or Connecticut State at the time, how they stepped up,\u201d says Fitch\u2019s son and UConn alum Harrison Brooks Fitch, Jr. \u201964 (CLAS), who goes by the middle name Brooks. \u201cIt was a very, very good story at a very challenging time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
From the 1933 Nutmeg yearbook.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was 1932, and Fitch had been a standout player at New Haven\u2019s Hillhouse High School, excelling at guard on the basketball court, as first baseman on the baseball field, and at end in football. His athleticism earned him the nickname \u201cHoney\u201d Fitch for just how smooth he played.<\/p>\n

When Fitch enrolled at what was then Connecticut State College, the school hosted only about 700 undergraduates in its entire student body, but only one of them \u2013 Harrison Brooks \u201cHoney\u201d Fitch \u2013 was Black.<\/p>\n

He was the first Black basketball player in the University\u2019s history, and Fitch was enormously popular with both his teammates and his peers at the school. He was voted best athlete by the student body in 1933 after playing on the football team and the freshman basketball team in his first year, and also made the varsity basketball team as a sophomore in 1933.<\/p>\n

The college community\u2019s embrace of Fitch was remarkable, explains Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar \u2013 a professor of history with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences who studies the 20th century United States, with a focus on African American history \u2013 because of how systemic segregationist policies were in the United States at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the South, every single flagship university refused to admit students based on merit alone,\u201d says Ogbar. \u201cOne had to be white. All professional sports, and even the U.S. military, were segregated. That UConn admitted Fitch and played him is one thing. But that he won accolades, and critical support, from his peers on and off the team is significant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had a high level of character, a state of dignity about himself, and also a high level of strength and perseverance \u2013 those were the key components that were critical for his being able to endure what he endured in 1932 and 1934,\u201d Brooks Fitch says. \u201cSo, he was prepared in terms of not just being an athlete, but having the character and the perseverance and the dignity to really make it through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fitch was voted favorite athlete in the state of Connecticut in 1933 and was named best athlete on campus for a second time in 1934. But for all of the support he felt in Storrs, the opposite was true when it came to other teams.<\/p>\n

Fitch regularly faced racist harassment and abuse from rival teams \u2013 their players, coaches, and fans. He endured it all with the support of his teammates, and with an unwavering personal grace, Brooks Fitch explains, because of who he was.<\/p>\n