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Every Stick has a S


How an eBay purchase brought Harvard’s great race awakening to light — 75 years later


BY COREY MCLAUGHLIN Y


ou never know what you will learn. An eBay purchase took Jason Ellison, an avid lacrosse stick collector, on a


journey of discovery. Of a man he quickly learned to respect. Of a game, played 75 years ago this month at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., that ultimately carried more significance because of the one Harvard student who was told he could not take the field. “Undergraduates Protest Action of Barring Negro from Lacrosse Contest,” read one newspaper headline after a 1941 game between Harvard and Navy. Lucien Alexis Jr. was on a train bound north of the Mason-Dixon Line because of a decision made south of it. A stick Ellison found online, decades later, revealed the story.


There it was, being auctioned off last spring as part of an estate sale. The wooden stick, circa 1930s or 40s, was part of a pair. Ellison is a former Hobart player who owns Tama Lacrosse stores in Colorado and Illinois. He loves lacrosse history and old artifacts. He linked the stick listing with another of an early 20th century Bacharach Rasin leather helmet. Crimson and white. Could the seller tell him whom they originally belonged to? Yes, a man named W.W. Fenn. Googling ensued. William Wallace


“Wally” Fenn died on Jan. 7, 2014, at the age of 93 in New London, Conn. Fenn's obituary described him as a 1942 Harvard graduate who played


14 LACROSSE MAGAZINE »April 2016


WILLSON APPROACHED HARVARD COACH DICK SNIBBE TO SAY THAT MIDSHIPMEN WOULD NOT PLAY ON THE SAME FIELD AS A BLACK MAN.


A Publication of US Lacrosse


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