First Black Athlete At West Orange HS May Be In This Old Photo

WEST ORANGE, NJ — A century-old photo may be the key to solving an intriguing riddle: Who was the first Black athlete at West Orange High School?

Recently, town historian Joseph Fagan sought to learn the answer to this question, eventually deciding that the actual first Black student-athlete at West Orange High School “may never be known.” But according to Fagan, he’s narrowed the field down to a possible candidate: Lawrence Quallo.

“In preparation for Black History Month, I set out to see if I could possibly find the first Black student to participate in sports at West Orange High School,” Fagan said.

Here’s what Fagan said that he found:

“The history of the high school dates to 1893, when the first West Orange high school class graduated from the St. Mark's School on Main Street. A historical roadside marker placed by the Downtown West Orange Alliance now marks that location at 80 Main Street. Prior to 1893, West Orange students wishing to continue their education beyond 8th grade attended high school in Orange and paid tuition.

“In 1898, the first building for a new West Orange High school opened on Gaston Street. It remains unclear when the new high school began participating in interscholastic sports. Published accounts however tell of baseball and football games between West Orange and Livingston High schools as early as 1903.

“In 1923, a new West Orange High School opened on Northfield Avenue. The building is now home to Seton Hall Prep. The former high school, destroyed by fire in 1913, was subsequently rebuilt and became known as the Gaston Street junior high school. West Orange High School on Northfield Avenue took on the school colors of maroon and white and adopted the name of Cowboys as their mascot. It was not just a random choice and was chosen because of the real cowboys that worked the stock yards that once existed across from current day town hall.

“In 1930, the first yearbook, ‘The West O-Ranger,’ was published. No yearbooks from prior years have ever surfaced so it is presumed that is when annual yearbooks first began at West Orange High School. In typical fashion they featured pictures of teachers, students, and sports teams with recaps of their entire school year. Several photos of high school sports teams before 1930 have emerged but these were staged group photos by a local photographer. Newspaper articles were often relied upon to document interscholastic sports games and records before yearbooks. So, the only real documentation of who participated in West Orange High School sports prior to 1930 are these photos and newspapers articles.

“It’s not known who the first Black student was in West Orange High School. But one of the first would have been Anna Easter Brown. She was born in West Orange in 1879 and part of the high school graduating class of 1897 from the St. Mark’s School. Brown was only one of five students in her class and graduated with honors and continued on to college. Her story is easy to document because she eventually went on to achieve great things in life.

“Brown attended Howard University, and in 1908, was among an original group of students who founded the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. It was the first sorority in the United States for African-American women students. It now has an enduring legacy of generating social capital around the world for over 100 years. In 2016, a historical roadside marker was installed outside the West Orange Public Library by the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority honoring Brown and her achievements. Determining the first Black student athlete at West Orange High School however, would be a more daunting task.

“Several years ago, I came across a spectacular well-preserved photograph from 1922 of West Orange High School’s football team. It showed a single black student athlete on an all-white team but none of the individuals in the photo were identified by name. The photo was 100 years old and school records about the team no longer existed. So, I didn’t hold out much hope in finding out names. It would take a miracle but something miraculous eventually happened that yielded information to helped identify the black student as Lawrence Quallo.

“A grainy newspaper photo, slightly larger than two postage stamps, cut out from a 1922 scholastic football guide appeared on eBay. It was a poor-quality smaller copy of the same photo I already had except it identified names of every player on the team. This football guide was presumably used by schools to help familiarize them with all the players on opposing teams. This small clipping, found by an incredible coincidence, held the essential key in identifying a century’s old secret otherwise lost to history.

“The actual first Black student athlete at West Orange High School may never be known. Census records indicate Quallo immigrated from Cuba and lived on Meade Street in West Orange. He graduated in 1926 with a class of 73 students. He is likely one of the first Black students, if not the first, to participate in sports at the high school whose identity is now known a century later.”

Joseph Fagan is the official historian of the Township of West Orange and has written four books on the subject. He can be reached by email at jfagan@westorange.org.

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