The University of Kentucky will honor four players who helped break the color barrier within the program, and the SEC, by building statues in their honor. Greg Page, Nate Northington, Wilbur Hackett and Houston Hogg will each be honored with the new statues that will be placed outside Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington.
Page and Northington were inducted into Kentucky’s Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday, and the university used a Hall of Fame dinner to announce the decision to construct statues in honor of the four players that opened doors at the program. Page and Northington were the first African-American football players on Kentucky’s roster in 1966. Page died from a paralyzing neck injury suffered in practice and never played a game at Kentucky. Northington was inserted in the starting line-up for the next Kentucky game in Page’s honor, making him the first African-American football player to play in a college football game in the SEC. Northington left Kentucky soon after as the grief of losing his friend caught up to him. Hackett and Hogg are the first two African-American football players to graduate from Kentucky.
“It’s the right thing to do. It’s four guys that changed the face of college athletics, especially in the South, and it’s a story of courage and a story of honor,” athletic director Mitch Barnhart told The Courier-Journal. “So to have an opportunity to let that be the face of our football program going forward is a remarkable thing. You can put your mascot out there and that’s all good – and we’ve done that on one side of campus – but I don’t know if there’s anything more unique than something that changes culture and changes society and changes the way people think, and these four guys did that.”
The statues are scheduled to be unveiled next fall as part of the completion of Kentucky’s football facility upgrades.