NSU alumna becomes NFL’s first Black female referee
Fred Jeter | 3/11/2021, 6 p.m.
Norfolk State University alumna Maia Chaka has become the NFL’s first Black female referee.
She will begin working regular season NFL games during the 2021 season. She worked some preseason games in 2020.
A 2006 graduate of NSU who now teaches at-risk students at Renaissance Academy in Virginia Beach, Chaka previously served as a referee for high school games in Hampton Roads and more recently as a college ref for Conference USA and the Pac-12, where she was spotted by scouts and recruited into the NFL’s Officiating Development Program in 2014. She graduated from the program with Sarah Thomas, who became the first female referee in the NFL in 2015. This year, Thomas became the first woman to referee the Super Bowl.
Later in 2014, Chaka became the first woman to referee a NCAA Division I bowl game, Washington versus Brigham Young.
The first Black NFL referee was Burl Toler in 1965. At the start of the 2020 NFL season, 40 of the 121 officials were African- American men.
