BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Eddie Robinson was earning 25 cents an hour at a feed mill in this capital city when he heard about a coaching vacancy at a small black college in rural, piney hills of north Louisiana.

That was more than six decades ago, when Robinson and fellow blacks lived in segregation, forbidden to patronize restaurants that catered exclusively to whites or to sit anywhere on a public bus but in the back.

On Monday, the grounds of the Louisiana Capitol were reserved for all who wish to pay their respects to the legendary former coach of Grambling State University.

When Robinson died last week at the age of 88, state officials immediately made plans for him to lie in state, an honor more often bestowed upon political leaders such as Huey Long, the former governor and U.S. senator whose days in power coincided with Robinson’s youth.

All former Grambling players were invited to a players-only service at the Capitol on Monday and then to carry Robinson’s casket to Memorial Hall for public viewing. Robinson’s body will be brought to Grambling for a wake Tuesday evening and burial Wednesday.

Former Jackson State coach and Southwestern Athletic Conference rival W.C. Gordon referred to Robinson as “the Martin Luther King of football.”

“I don’t think you can describe him any better than that,” said former Grambling and NFL quarterback Doug Williams, who has been invited to speak during a memorial service in the state House of Representatives chambers.

“There were so many young black men, in a time when segregation was strong, that coach steered in the right direction so they could go out in America and make way for their family. He preached being able to thrive in America – to go out and be whatever to be what you want to be,” Mr. Williams said.

Mr. Gordon remembered Robinson as a true gentleman who never uttered a derogatory word about an opponent.

“He carried the attitude that he loved everybody.”

By the time Robinson retired in 1997, with 57 years of coaching and 408 victories to his name, it seemed that everybody loved him as well.

Governor Blanco called Robinson a “true American hero … and one of the greatest civil rights pioneers in our history.”

It turned out that Robinson, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease about 10 years ago, would live just long enough to see the first Super Bowl involving two black head coaches when Tony Dungy’s Indianapolis Colts defeated Lovie Smith’s Chicago Bears little more than two months ago.

Robinson never coached either of them, but his success at Grambling laid the groundwork for players of Messrs. Dungy’s and Smith’s generation to thrive at larger college programs before moving on to playing and coaching careers in the NFL.

Paul “Tank” Younger, the first NFL player to come out of an all-black university, played for Robinson at Grambling. More than 200 of Robinson’s players would go on to play in the NFL, four of them later being enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And their success went beyond the field to the front office.

Former Grambling and NFL quarterback James Harris is now vice president for player personnel for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Mr. Williams, a Super Bowl MVP with the Washington Redskins, became a player personnel executive with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following a stint as Grambling’s coach after Robinson retired.

When Robinson started coaching at Grambling in 1941, he had no paid assistants and cared for the field himself. His salary was $63.75 a month.

During his career, he would pioneer classic games, in which Grambling would meet opponents before big crowds in large cities. Like Notre Dame, Grambling’s fan support began to extended far beyond its alumni to people who simply admired the way Robinson had turned a once obscure, historically black college into an internationally known institution.

In doing so, Robinson gave Grambling the chance to showcase more than the talent of black athletes. It was also a chance to share the pageantry and richness of black culture. Grambling’s Tiger Marching Band became about as famous as the football team, providing the halftime entertainment for the Super Bowl in 1968 and receiving invitations to march in popular parades across the country and to perform in foreign lands.

“Do you know, in all my days in the NFL, how many guys have told me, ‘Man, I wish I could have gone to Grambling?'” Mr. Williams said. “And I always tell them, ‘You missed a treat.'”