Darryl Hill (American football)

Darryl Andre Hill (born October 21, 1943, in Washington, D.C.) is an athlete and businessman; in 1963 he started with the University of Maryland football team as the first African-American football player in any of the southern athletic conferences composed of formerly segregated white institutions. (In that era, Maryland competed in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which at the time consisted only of such institutions.) The only black player on the team until his senior year, Hill set two records that still stand: total yards receiving, and most passes caught in a single game.^[1]

After college and graduate school, Hill was an early advocate of minority business enterprise. He became a ground-breaking businessman, with an entrepreneurial range that has included fine restaurants and green energy companies. In the 1990s, he also established business relations in Russia and China.