Bowdoin Football - "Forward the White"

"Forward the White" - The Bowdoin Football Fight Song
(information courtesy of John Cross '76)

“Forward the White” was a poem written in 1913 by Kenneth A. Robinson of the Class of 1914, in response to a Prize Song Contest ($50 for the winner).  It took several rounds before the judges found a song that they felt would make a good college song.  The music, composed by non-alumnus George Sumner of Vermont, was selected in 1914 from among a number of entries, again as part of a contest (with a $50 prize).

Bowdoin Orient - November 18, 1913:

Bowdoin Orient - May 5, 1914

As for “the White” (quoting from a Whispering Pines column of February 2013):

"The first intercollegiate athletic contests in the United States were held in the years immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War. Ribbons of different colors sewn onto uniforms distinguished teammates from opponents. Colors, not mascots, identified teams; Princeton’s orange and black ribbons led to the tiger nickname, not the other way around. Thus Dartmouth became the green, Harvard was known as the crimson, Williams was the purple, Wesleyan was cardinal red and black (replacing lavender in 1884), and Bowdoin was the white, decades before any official mascots were adopted."

"Forward the White" following Colby win - November 9, 2013