Charlie "Choo Choo" Brackins (January 12, 1932 – June 1, 1991) was an American former

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) for the Green Bay Packers during the

1955 NFL season The 1955 NFL season was the 36th regular season of the National Football League. NBC paid $100,000 to replace DuMont as the national television network for the NFL Championship Game. The season ended when the Cleveland Browns defeated the Los ...

. Brackins is considered to be one of the first black quarterbacks to play in the NFL.

Biography

Brackins was born on January 12, 1932, in

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County w ...

. He attended Lincoln High in Dallas.

Professional career

He played college football at

Prairie View A&M University Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU or PV) is a public historically black land-grant university in Prairie View, Texas. Founded in 1876, it is one of Texas's two land-grant universities and the second oldest public institution of higher learnin ...

in Prairie View, Texas, from 1951 to 1955. He was a three-year starter for head football coach Billy Nicks and led the Prairie View Panthers to 33 victories in 37 games in the

Southwestern Athletic Conference The Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) is a collegiate athletic conference headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, which is made up of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Southern United States. It participates in t ...

(SWAC). He was a big tall passer at and 205 pounds. Brackins was drafted by the

Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...

in the sixteenth round of the

1955 NFL Draft The 1955 NFL season, 1955 National Football League NFL draft, draft was held January 27–28, 1955 at the Warwick New York Hotel, Warwick Hotel in New York City. This was the ninth year that the List of first overall National Football League Dra ...

, making him the first

HBCU Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the intention of primarily serving the African-American community. Mo ...

alumnus to play quarterback in the NFL. He played in only one game in during the 1955 season, in the closing minutes of a game against the Cleveland Browns on October 23, 1955. Green Bay lost the game, 41–10, and Brackins threw two incomplete passes. The Packers placed Brackins on waivers after that game. Brackins had tried out as a defensive back with other teams but he never got another chance to play in the league. Brackins died from cancer in 1991. In 2013, Brackins was elected to the Black College Football Hall of Fame.

References

External links

* 1932 births 1991 deaths Players of American football from Dallas African-American players of American football American football quarterbacks Prairie View A&M Panthers football players Green Bay Packers players 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American sportspeople {{quarterback-1930s-stub

Biography

Professional career

See also

References

External links