Colorado State University Athletics
Howard Kinchelow, Pioneer in CSU Athletic Diversity
2/4/2015 12:00:00 AM
By John Hirn
CSU Athletic Historian
Ram Alumni Athletes Association
Most CSU fans know how Lt. Col. John Mosley broke down color barriers in CSU Athletics playing football and wrestling from 1940 to 1943. However, few know about Howard Kinchelow, the first black wrestler at CSU and his contributions to pioneer diversity from 1937 to 1940 while he was a student.
Howard Kinchelow was born in Denver on December 22, 1917 and enrolled at Colorado State in the fall of 1936. A lot of his history can be traced though the old Silver Spruce yearbooks and Collegian newspapers of the day.
Kinchelow did not just pioneer diversity on the wrestling mat, but also through a campus organization known as the Cosmopolitan Club. This little known club was founded on the CSU campus in 1927 and received its national charter in 1937.
According to the yearbooks of Kinchelow’s day, the Cosmopolitan Club was formed to “Break down all national and racial prejudices, especially on the part of Americans and to promote a bond of good fellowship.” The club’s motto was “‘Above all Nations is Humanity’, the consideration of an individual according to his merits rather than according to his birthplace or the color of his skin.”
The Cosmopolitan Club consisted of no more than 50% white students with the remainder of the members being of a different race or nationality. They met at the homes of faculty members and discussed how to allow more students to see them as equals. Their biggest event of the year included the “Country Dance Night” with other colleges and universities’ Cosmopolitan Clubs from around the area.
Howard Kinchelow joined the organization as a freshman and elected treasurer for the 1936-37 school year. He then was elected secretary of the club in his sophomore and junior years and then president of the club as a senior in 1939-40.
By his sophomore year, Kinchelow decided to join the wrestling team under long-time coach Hans Wagner. Wagner, known though out his career as a coach for his willingness to allow any able bodied student an opportunity to play sports, brought Kinchelow onto the varsity team for the spring semester of 1938.
When Howard Kinchelow made the varsity wrestling squad in January of 1938, he became the first black athlete to compete on a varsity team for the Aggies since Alfred Johnson played football in 1905 and 1906. He is a true pioneer in CSU athletics and is not as well known as many other CSU athletes.
Although official wrestling records from that period have long been lost, some newspaper articles give us a glimpse of Kinchelow’s wrestling career at CSU when it was known as Colorado State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
Kinchelow, who had never wrestled in a collegiate match pulled off a record-setting feat against Dow, a heavyweight from CU. As the Denver Post reported, “The timer’s whistle sounded; the dust of battle arose, and before you could say “recapitulation” the referee was patting Kinchelow on the back in token of victory. 36 seconds! Whamdiddle - that’s really going to town.”
However, we can also read into history and see that at another meet on February 5, 1938 in Laramie, Kinchelow’s opponent, Nipper, forfeited the match. We can only presume it was due to Kinchelow’s skin color, but the newspaper article did not expand on why the match was forfeited.
Kinchelow was a member of the 1939 championship wrestling team and a teammate of CSU’s only national champion wrestler, Gene Grenard. However, he did not wrestle with John Mosley, CSU’s first black wrestler to receive all-conference honors. Kinchelow appears to have left the school just short of his graduation and he did not wrestle on the 1940 team.
Kinchelow’s departure from Colorado State appears to coincide with his enlistment in the US Army just prior to the Pearl Harbor Bombings. He served during the war and then returned to Colorado A&M to receive his bachelor’s degree in 1946 and a master’s degree in liberal arts in 1947.
You can find a book written by Howard Kinchelow in the CSU Archives at the Morgan Library titled: “Employment Trends of Negro Graduates from Land Grant Colleges.”
After receiving his second degree from Colorado A&M, Kinchelow returned to the Army serving in the Korean War and Vietnam War. He died in Denver on March 25, 2003 at the age of 85.