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Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls

intercollegiate sports teams of Johnson C. Smith University

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ20635282 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls are the athletic teams that represent Johnson C. Smith University, located in Charlotte, North Carolina, in intercollegiate sports at the Division II level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association since 1926.

Conference affiliations

NCAA

Independent (1892–1925)

Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (1926–present)

Varsity teams

Basketball

In 2001 the men's basketball team won the CIAA Basketball Tournament and advanced to the Division II Elite Eight. In 2006 the men's and women's basketball teams were the CIAA Western Division Champions and the Tournament Runners-up. In 2007 the men's basketball team were the 2007 CIAA Western Division Champions. In 2008 the men's basketball team won the 2008 CIAA Men's Basketball Championship. In 2009 the men's and women's basketball team won the 2009 CIAA basketball championship. Sports Illustrated named its venue "One of the Loudest Gymnasiums in the Country."

Football

Commemorative Classic: "The Birth of Black College Football"

On December 27, 1892, Livingstone College and Biddle College, (Johnson C. Smith) University played in the snows of Salisbury, North Carolina, just two days after Christmas. A writer of a story in the 1930 year-book of Livingstone College provided a glimpse of that December experience when the team from Biddle Institute traveled to Livingstone's Old Delta Grove campus in Salisbury to play while writers recorded the results of a historic moment in sports history.

According to historian T.M. Martin, the men of Biddle spent two years studying and practicing the sport of football. In 1892, they challenged the men of Livingstone, whose team was formally organized in the fall of that year.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls” as intercollegiate sports teams of Johnson C. Smith University. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1926, 1892, 1925, 2001—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Johnson, Smith and Golden can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as intercollegiate sports teams of Johnson C. Smith University. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20635282. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1892, 1925 and 2001.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls primary sources, Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls archive and Johnson research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Johnson C. Smith Golden Bulls” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.