This story is a part of a collaborative Black History Month print and digital edition with the Campus Echo on Feb. 26, 2026. This story was originally printed in the Campus Echo on March 12, 2024.
Eighty years ago, in the depths of the Jim Crow era, Duke University and N.C. Central University (formerly known as the North Carolina College for Negros (NCC)) broke barriers in the south. Known as the “secret game,” it brought together the Eagles’ varsity men’s team and a squad from Duke’s School of Medicine.
Students in the YMCA chapters at Duke and North Carolina College for Negroes, as NCCU was known at the time, had been holding clandestine prayer meetings…