Gatorade was invented in 1965 at the University of Florida by a team of researchers led by Dr. Robert Cade to help the university’s football team, the Florida Gators.
At that time:
The University of Florida was still segregated. The school admitted its first Black undergraduate student in 1962, but Black athletes did not begin playing varsity football there until 1969. In 1965, the Gators football team was entirely white.
Context:
The Southeastern Conference (SEC), to which Florida belongs, was one of the last major conferences to integrate its athletic programs. Full desegregation of football programs across the South happened slowly through the late 1960s into the early 1970s