"The Brutal Thirteen": Brethren Nonconformity, Acculturation, and Race in Elizabethtown College’s Lone Season of Collegiate Football

Abstract

The story of Elizabethtown College’s lone season of intercollegiate football, in 1928, offers a window onto the dynamics of Plainness and acculturation among Brethren in eastern Pennsylvania, since the college was then controlled by the Church of the Brethren. Brethren leaders opposed intercollegiate sports, and football in particular, as beyond the bounds of Brethren nonconformity and Plainness. Students organized their own team, outside official college structures, in what may be seen as a direct challenge to Plain values. Yet the team’s experience also complicates any narrative of early twentieth-century Brethren assimilation because the team did not merely mimic the sports culture of mainstream America and the patterns of nearby schools. The Elizabethtown team included an African American player and a player with a physically disability, both examples of inclusion that were surprising for the time and were many years ahead of neighboring athletic programs, and thus suggest not only currents of acculturation but also the presence of clearly countercultural values among the Elizabethtown College players.