Mosley, CSU's first black football player, dies

The funeral for former Tuskegee Airman Lt. Col. John Mosley, the first black football player at CSU and a pioneer in the civil rights movement, is Saturday.

Mosley, 93, a Denver native, died Friday in Aurora.

He enrolled at Colorado State University, then called the Agricultural College of Colorado, in 1939 and was one of nine black students. He was the only African-American football player and encountered prejudice from opponents and some teammates who never accepted him, according to a CSU news release, but he did find friends in fellow teammates Dude Dent and Woody Fries.

After his time at CSU and during World War II, Mosley aggressively sought the right to fly and fight for this country.

"He always said that he had to fight in order to fight," his son Eric Mosley told The Denver Post. "He used that saying as a benchmark in his life. He had to struggle to be able to fight for his country."

"He always had the determination to be the best he could be and be someone extraordinary," Eric recalled.

Mosley excelled despite segregation and the prejudice that once existed. In his youth, blacks were confined by covenants and standards to living in an area just east of downtown. He refused to become bitter.

"I looked at it as an opportunity to move ahead," he told the Post in a 2008 interview. "I was too busy trying to ensure that I got everything I possibly could out of school and also to participate in athletics."

CIVIL RIGHTS:CSU protested more than BYU in 1970 'Moby Riot'

Mosley was a National Merit Scholar at Denver's Manual High School.

A CSU, he was the Mountain States Conference most valuable player and honorable-mention All-American following his senior season. He was a standout wrestler and was elected vice president of his junior and senior classes at CSU. He was inducted into the CSU Sports Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.

CSU has established the John Mosley Leadership Program, a collaboration between athletics and the Black/African American Cultural Center, developed to serve underrepresented and underserved student-athletes via a mentoring program.

Eric Mosley, in an interview with the Post, told how his father told him of his dreams back then of becoming a pilot.

"At that time, most people had never even seen an airplane let alone flown on one," Eric said.

Mosley hoped to become the first black person in Advance ROTC at A&M. He took a physical at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver but was told he had a heart murmur, which he believed to be bogus.

He paid for his own flight physical and started taking flying lessons. An all-black 99th Fighter Squadron was formed at Tuskegee in June 1941, but upon graduation, Mosley wasn't drafted to join them. Instead of being sent to Tuskegee, he was dispatched to a segregated artillery unit in Fort Sill, Okla. He protested, writing letters to those in Congress and the White House.

Finally, he became part of the Tuskegee unit. Even then, it took pressure from newspapers owned by blacks and the White House for the first black airmen to actually see combat.

"He was unique among individuals, but his type was also common as a member of the world's greatest generation," Eric said of his father. "They looked to service before self. Sacrifice was the code of the day."

That sacrifice continued well after WWII. He was an operations officer in Thailand as U.S. pilots flew bombing missions over North Vietnam. He retired from the Air Force in 1970 and was a special assistant to the undersecretary in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington before returning to Denver.

The funeral service will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at New Hope Baptist Church, 3701 Colorado Blvd. in Denver.

He is preceded in death by his wife, Edna Mosley, who also was a pioneer as the first African-American ever to serve on the Aurora City Council, and by a son, John Mosley. He is survived by his sons Eric and Brian Mosley and his daughter, Edna Futrell.

The funeral service will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at New Hope Baptist Church, 3701 Colorado Blvd. in Denver. Donations can be made to the John and Edna Scholarship Fund, run by the Denver Foundation, or to the Mile High Flight Program run by the Hubert L. "Hooks" Jones local chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen Inc.

Christopher N. Osher of The Denver Post contributed to this report.

CSU FOOTBALL:Rams' players graduating at high rate