William Franklin Hickson III grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina, a college town with a strong middle-class community of African-Americans.
If he and his friends were not going to football games or watching football on television, they were playing football.
They even had their own league-the FYFL-or the Front Yard Football League.
As one of the first black players in the youth sports programs at the Orangeburg Recreation Department, he learned valuable lessons about teamwork, leadership, and .