Coronado's Trailblazing Football star, Edward "Puss" Thompson, Coronado High Class of 1920
Edward Thompson was the first African American football star in Southern California collegiate history. In 1923 he was called the greatest African American athlete from the Pacific Coast.
Edward Thompson was born in his parents home at 832 C Avenue in the small island community of Coronado, California in November of 1900. His father, Gus Thompson, was born enslaved in Cadiz, Kentucky in 1862, and as a child moved into with his sister in Henderson, Kentucky. In 1886, Gus Thompson and other African Americans would follow Elisha S. Babcock to Coronado seeking opportunities as town co-founder Babcock and others would build the new town and hotel on the previously uninhabited island. Gus Thompson would become Babcock’s coachman, and would carry the Hotel Del’s first guests to the hotels front steps in 1888. Gus Thompson would meet and later marry the brilliant Emma Gardner in San Diego in 1892 and they would choose to start their family in Coronado.
The Thompson Family were one of the most prominent, successful and respected African American families in all of San Diego County, not just in Coronado. They raised three remarkable children in the Crown City of Coronado. The eldest, Walter, served in France with the US Army in World War I and later married and settled in the Bay Area. Edythe would attend boarding high school in Kansas and graduate from Wilberforce College in Ohio in 1918, becoming one of the first African American college graduates from San Diego County. Edward Thompson, the youngest, would attend the newly opened Coronado High School and in 1920 would become the second African American graduate in Coronado High School history (the first being his cousin Leo Ellis in 1919).
Breaking the “Color Rule”
In late October of 1939, Whittier, California sportswriter Murray Gregory recognized the historic relevance of UCLA’s newest football roster and its connection to a pioneering Southern California football player who conveniently also lived in Whittier. That particular UCLA Bruins football team of 1939 had broken an unwritten “color rule” of the time by fielding a football team with four African American players. At this time in Jim Crow America there were no more than a few dozen black players on “non-HBCU” collegiate football rosters nationwide. The UCLA coach’s decision to start three of these players in the same backfield was historic, but what these three players did later was even more historic. Two of these players would go on to break the NFL’s color barrier in 1946 when they were signed with the Los Angeles Rams (Kenny Washington and Woody Strode), but it was the third player in the UCLA backfield that the writer was most interested to discuss, Jackie Robinson.
Gregory reached out to the first African American star player to break the color barrier in collegiate football history in Southern California, Edward “Puss” Thompson. Thompson had starred at Whittier College on teams between the Fall of 1920 and 1925. After college, Thompson remained in Whittier and worked as a supervisor for the Southern California Gas Company.
Gregory wanted to know Thompson’s opinion about this new phenomenal halfback at UCLA. This of course was the same Jackie Robinson who would later break Major League’s color barrier in 1947 and go down in history as one of the most historically important and iconic athletes in US history.
The writer described Jackie Robinson as the “dusky Pasadena grid wizard” and then introduced Edward “Puss” Thompson as “the colored boy who made Whittier College grid history as far back as 1921. He was used mostly as a blocker…but Thompson himself was a remarkable running back, with a smooth, deceptive stride that carried him for great chunks of yardage on many occasions.” He then described Thompson’s view of Robinson, “Puss says that Robinson is without doubt the greatest runner with a football that he has ever seen, and before his college career is out will have established himself with the game’s immortals who hail from this coast. Robinson is so quick at starting and stopping that no tackler can get him by leaving his feet.”
Thompson was also a special talent. While he was famously known at Whittier for running “interference” on offense as a blocking back for All American (and Coronado High alum) Ed Suggett, he also regularly broke free for long runs himself. He played on both sides of the field and was a punishing defender whose tackles were described as decidedly painful for the opposition. He had enrolled at Whittier College in the Fall of 1920 after starting four years at Coronado High School. Thompson’s Coronado teams won the San Diego regional championship every year, and they played for the state semi-finals against Long Beach Poly High School in 1919. Edward and seven other Coronado High teammates from that period would play for Whittier College. They had all followed visionary Coronado High School Coach Esek Perry when he was hired by his alma mater Whittier College to head the PE Department and coach Football, Basketball and Baseball there.
Coach Perry’s arrival at Coronado in 1915 coincided with the resurgence of college Football in California. In a dramatic move in 1906, the two collegiate powerhouses of the state, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford, believing that the violence of American football was too extreme, switched to Rugby Union as the preeminent Fall game. In 1911, Southern Cal (USC), St. Mary’s, Santa Clara and Nevada all followed suit and switched to Rugby Union. However, they began to realize that the popularity of American football greatly overshadowed Rugby Union. California would be the first to replace their Rugby program with American Football in 1915 and over the next few years the rest of the schools would follow suit.
It was during this period that Edward and his Coronado teammates began dominating the local high school football scene. Simultaneously, at the collegiate level, several African American players emerged as groundbreaking All-Americans. Frederick "Fritz" Pollard of Brown University would be named a “Walter Camp” first team All American in 1916, and multi-talented Paul Robeson would be named a first team All American in 1918. At Cal-Berkeley, Walter Gordon would also become California’s first African American named to the All-American list (third team) in 1918. Edward Thompson was very likely to have been inspired by these groundbreaking athletes while playing at Coronado High School.
Band Of Brothers
At Coronado High School (CHS), Coach Perry and his players defied all odds at this new school, which had opened two years earlier in 1913. Competing across the region with less than 100 students, they ran off a string of 5 consecutive San Diego Championships between 1915-1919. During their final season at Coronado High in 1919, star backs Thompson, Ed Suggett and quarterback Ray Johns led tiny Coronado High to the State Semifinals against Long Beach Poly High School, a team considered by Long Beach historian Mike Guardabascio in 2012 as possibly the greatest High School in US History.
Coronado lost that game 59-0 before a crowd of several thousand at Balboa Stadium. Long Beach would go on to finish their season 12-0, winning by a margin of 549-21. They won the California state championship over Berkeley High and then went on to win the Southwestern States Championship against Phoenix High School. Their dominance caused them to be kicked out of CIF the following year! Edward Thompson and a number of his former Coronado teammates at Whittier College would have the chance to battle against three of these former Long Beach High School players in a widely publicized game against USC. Whittier would lose a closely fought game 14-0 in what was billed as the biggest collegiate game of the year in Southern California.
The play of Edward Thompson at Whittier College caught the attention of many Southern California sports fans, including the sportswriters of the Los Angeles Times. On October 22, 1922 Edward Thompson would feature prominently on the front page of the sports section. The racist LA Times writer described Thompson as “dusky” in its headline and “Mistah” in the photo description.
Several months later, in January 1923, a story appeared in the widely circulated California Eagle, Southern California’s premier Black newspaper. In this story, Thompson’s race was described as a source of pride rather than a source of ridicule. Among the accolades in the 1923 article, the Eagle Sportswriter mentions Thompson being named Team Captain, being one of the greatest backs on the Pacific Coast, being a brilliant student, and most remarkably that Thompson accomplished “without a doubt the most distinguished position yet held by a colored athlete on the Pacific Coast.”
Thompson studied History while at Whittier, and while he did not manage to complete his studies, he was a beloved member of the student body and recognized for his leadership by his teammates by perhaps being one of the first African American Team Captains in Collegiate Football History, a fact that made headlines in both the Oakland and Sacramento newspapers that year.
What has not been mentioned but of also great importance is that Thompson is likely the first African American student at Whittier College, which was founded in 1893. Despite the college being named after the abolitionist Quaker Poet John Greenleaf Whittier, it took more than 25 years before it admitted its first African American student.
Edward Thompson was born in Coronado when the small island town was less than one thousand residents. Among those he grew up with in Coronado (and were his football teammates at Coronado High School) included his cousin Leo Ellis, Coronado’s High’s first African American graduate (1918), Martin and Manuel Meza from the pioneering Mexican-American Meza family of La Paz, Mexico, and Irish-American Albert “Mick”Madden, raised by a single Mom in Coronado. Among the eleven players that took the field for the Coronado championship teams of 1915-1919, they included two African American players, “Puss” Thompson and Leo Ellis, and two Mexican-American players, Martin and Manuel Meza, and included the famously tough kid raised by a single Mom, “Mick” Madden. This was a gritty, diverse and cohesive group of players that represented the highest of human endeavors one should seek in sports and life: a shared common humanity and brotherhood while in the pursuit of excellence.
Albert “Mick” Madden grew up playing ball in the open lots of Coronado with Edward Thompson. They played three years of high school together at Coronado High and four years of collegiate football together at Whittier College. After graduation in 1924, Mick went to work for the Southern California Gas Company in Whittier, California. As a supervisor at SoCal Gas in 1925 he hired his longtime friend and teammate, Edward Thompson. While such jobs were not normally given to African Americans in the increasingly segregated cities of Southern California, Madden did not let that deter him, nor would I suspect that anyone would dare tangle or disagree with the famously tough former lineman.
Mick Madden and Edward Thompson would work together at the Southern California Gas for over three decades before they both retired. A photo from a Coronado High School reunion was featured in the Coronado Eagle in 1954 that celebrated the early Coronado football teams of 1916-1919. In the photo, Edward “Puss” Thompson is seen standing next to his old childhood friend, co-worker and teammate Albert Madden.
Edward Thompson married African American Lucille Thompson of Texas after college (marriage date not known). They had no children. Lucille passed away in Whittier in 1965 at age 60, and Edward passed away five years later in San Diego in 1970.
Kevin Ashley, Coronado, March 2023