football coach gridiron football player
Frank Purnell was born on April 5, 1933, in Sweatman, Mississippi, a rural community in the southern part of the state. He attended Spring Hill High School in Sweatman before continuing to Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, a historically Black land-grant institution.
His life ended in Winona, Mississippi, in April 2007.
Purnell attended Spring Hill High School in Sweatman, Mississippi, before enrolling at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. The college was founded in 1871 as Alcorn University on the site of Oakland College, a Presbyterian school for white students that had closed during the Civil War. The Mississippi state government designated it for the education of Black students during Reconstruction, and it was named after former governor James L. Alcorn.
In 1878 the institution became Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College under the federal land-grant framework established by the Morrill Act of 1862, combining agricultural and mechanical instruction with teacher education. The school retained that name until 1974, when it became Alcorn State University. Purnell later returned to the campus as a football coach.
Purnell played professionally as a fullback for the Green Bay Packers during the 1957 NFL season. The Packers finished that year with a 3–9 record under head coach Lisle Blackbourn, placing last in the Western Conference, and the team moved into a new City Stadium that season. Purnell appeared in nine games without a start, carrying five times for 22 rushing yards and catching two passes for 16 yards. A Packers history feature on the team's Black players of the 1950s includes him among the players of that decade.
After his playing career, Purnell became head football coach at Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College, his alma mater, serving from 1960 to 1963. His teams compiled a record of 14–20 over those four seasons. The Braves competed in the South Central Athletic Conference in 1960 and 1961 and in the Southwestern Athletic Conference in 1962 and 1963, when the 1962 team finished seventh and the 1963 team finished eighth in the conference.
