Maurice Flowers had about as good of a Labor Day weekend as a football coach could ask for.

His team, the Johnson C. Smith University Golden Bulls, had just taken down the Morehouse College Maroon Tigers 45-9 in the inaugural Essence HBCU Classic at Harvard Stadium on Saturday. An event spokesperson said 12,000 people showed up to watch the game, see the school’s famous marching bands and take part in the festivities celebrating HBCU football’s return to Boston.

Standing on the turf, Flowers said he was thrilled that his team helped bring a football experience that’s rarely seen around these parts.

“To come in and see the stadium fill up the way it did, it really just makes you feel proud to know that you’re able to have folks that normally don’t get a chance to see HBCU football and the HBCU experience, to get it,” Flowers said. “And that’s the band, the cheerleaders, the pageantry of it all. This was more of a homecoming feel type of deal, this Classic was.”

The game was the first time two HBCU football teams have faced off in Massachusetts since 1971. (Howard University played Harvard in Harvard Stadium in 2019 and in 2023.) And it came on the same weekend that JCSU and Roxbury Community College announced a partnership that will allow RCC graduates to continue their education at the North Carolina HBCU.

The matchup was the cornerstone of “For the Culture Week,” a Boston-wide celebration that included naming a Roxbury street after the music group New Edition. Speaking at halftime, Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune declared that “we are having one of the Blackest weekends in the city of Boston.”

“I don’t ever want to hear that question whether there are Black people in Boston, ‘cause the answer is, 'Yes,'” she said to cheers.

JCSU outpaced Morehouse in just about every aspect of the game. But the real show came at halftime, with Morehouse’s “House of Funk” and JCSU’s “International Institution of Sound” marching bands shaking the stadium down to its concrete foundation.

In the stands, there were plenty of people who wore the maroon and white of Morehouse and the gold and blue of JCSU — but there were plenty of others wearing the colors of Spelman, Howard, Hampton and other HBCUs.

JCSU president Valerie Kinloch said she hopes that people remember that JCSU and Morehouse were the first schools to play in the Essence HBCU Classic.

“And to come to Boston, a city that does not have an HBCU, is really monumental because it says that people in Boston understand, are ready and want to actually support historically Black colleges and universities,” she said.

Before his Golden Bulls left the field, Maurice Flowers let them know that they’re a “damn good football team.” He’s helped turn the program around since he took over as head coach in 2022, guiding them to the program’s first bowl game in over a decade in 2023. And he would love to return to play in Boston, citing the crowd and the reception as two draws.

“The next time, I’m sure, would be bigger and better. To come out of the locker room and to walk into a party-like environment with everything going on outside the stadium and then have to walk through that to come to the stadium,” he said. “Again, it was a homecoming feel. And we’d definitely like to be a part of it again.”