Before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, threats of violence kept him from playing in Central Florida. He returns this week in an upcoming exhibit entitled “Pride & Passion: The African American Baseball Experience” at UCF.

This one must really sting though, huh? Making it all the way to the inaugural United Football League championship game as an undefeated team at 6-0 only to come up short, 20-17, against the hometown Las Vegas Locomotives in overtime.

Life in the South in the late-50s was still very much segregated both on and off the field. It would be another 10 years before school kids sat side-by-side in classrooms or even huddled together at sporting events in Orange County. At UCF’s football game against Buffalo the 1958 Bulls were recognized for showing a rare form of unity back in the days of Civil Rights strife.