Including Kearny’s Leonard Raney
Black Soccer, High School Soccer, Kearny, New Jersey:
In the fall of 1922, Leonard H. Raney played on the first-ever varsity soccer team for Kearny High School. That New Jersey town, which would later be dubbed Soccer Town, USA, had long been a soccer hotbed. It was rare for African Americans to play soccer in the 1920s, and while African-American participation in the game still lags today, Raney was a soccer pioneer.
![Football in Central Park, c. 1915. Museum of the City of New York [X2010.11.1395]](https://www.ussoccerhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/MNY215661-120x120.jpg)
