Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality Five Pioneer Stories of Black Manliness, White Citizenship, and American Democracy Gregory J. Kaliss TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS PHILADELPHIA TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2012 by Temple University All rights reserved Published 2012 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaliss, Gregory J. Men’s college athletics and the politics of racial equality : five pioneer stories of Black manliness, White citizenship, and American democracy / Gregory J. Kaliss. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4399-0856-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4399-0858-7 (e-book) 1. College sports—United States. 2. Racism in sports—United States. 3. Discrimination in sports—United States. 4. African American athletes. 5. United States—Race relations. I. Title. GV351.K35 2012 796.04′30973—dc23 2011047603 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 For Leigh and Holly Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: College Sports, “Fair Play,” and Black Masculinity 1 1. “Our Own ‘Roby’” and “the Dark Cloud”: Paul Robeson at Rutgers, 1915–1919 12 2. “Harbingers of Progress” and “the Gold Dust Trio”: Kenny Washington, Woody Strode, Jackie Robinson, and the 1939 UCLA Football Team 41 3. “A First-Class Gentleman” and “That Big N——r”: Wilt Chamberlain at the University of Kansas, 1955–1958 74 4. “Our Colored Boy” and “Fine Black Athletes”: Charlie Scott at the University of North Carolina, 1965–1970 109 5. “Those Nigras” and “Men Again”: Bear Bryant, John Mitchell, and Wilbur Jackson at the University of Alabama, 1969–1973 138 Conclusion: What We Talk about When We Talk about Sports 172 Notes 181 Bibliography 219 Index 229 Acknowledgments riting this book required the support of countless individuals and institutions. The following funding made the completion Wof this project possible: the Mowry Dissertation Fellowship for Research from the University of North Carolina (UNC) History Department; the Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship from UNC’s Graduate School; generous funding from the Historical Society of Southern California, which supported a research trip to the Univer- sity of California at Los Angeles (UCLA); valuable summer research funding and the McColl Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Cen- ter for the Study of the American South; and timely research funding from Franklin and Marshall College. Many librarians and archivists also provided support. I am very grateful for the help of individuals at the North Carolina Collection and the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, the UCLA University Archives in the Charles E. Young Research Library, the William Stanley Hoole Special Collections Library and the Paul S. Bryant Museum at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and the University Archives in the Archibald S. Alexander Library at Rutgers University. I found the librarians at each of these institutions to be friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful, and I thank them for their ef- forts. I offer special thanks to Rebecca Schulte and Deborah Dandridge of the University of Kansas Archives in Spencer Research Library. Both were immeasurably helpful in sifting through the range of materials regarding Wilt Chamberlain and in pointing me toward the papers of Dowdal Davis. x Acknowledgments Many scholars shared their knowledge and offered aid, including William Chafe, Lewis Erenberg, Peter Filene, Aram Goudsouzian, Bethany Keenan, Pam Lach, Tim Marr, David C. Ogden, Joel Nathan Rosen, David Sehat, Blake Slonecker, and Maren Wood. I thank them, as well as the anonymous readers of the Journal of Sport History and the Journal of American History, who offered perceptive and helpful comments on articles related to Charlie Scott and the 1939 UCLA football team, respectively. I am also grateful to my peers at Franklin and Marshall College, including Dennis Deslippe, Matt Hoffman, Alison Kibler, and David Schuyler, who helped me navigate the book publishing process and offered comments on my project and proposal. A few individuals deserve special thanks. Fitz Brundage helped conceive the project and offered invaluable professional advice along the way. My graduate school advisor, John Kasson, who supported this project from the start, has also been my sharpest critic, helping me draw broader inferences from the material at hand and providing countless helpful suggestions along the way. He has also been a warm friend, commiserating in times of distress and offer- ing encouragement and support throughout the process. Patrick W. O’Neil probably read more drafts of this work than any other person; without his careful editing and insightful commentary, I would have been at a great loss. More important still, he has been a good and faithful friend to me. Finally, and above all, I thank my family. My parents, Edward and Mil- lie Kaliss, were loyal cheerleaders as I wrote and edited this book. They kept my spirits up in the tough times and offered hearty congratulations in the good times. My mother-in-law, Patti Butler, and her husband, Paul, provided moral support of their own. But most of all, I am indebted to my wife, Leigh, and my daughter, Holly, to whom I dedicate this book. The long hours and trying phases of writing and research can make writing a book a lonely en- deavor, but at the end of each day, it is always a joy to have my family to come home to. They make all the effort worthwhile, and I thank them, with love, for everything. Introduction College Sports, “Fair Play,” and Black Masculinity n November 1939, the editors of the Crisis, the monthly publica- tion of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored IPeople (NAACP), nominated a rather unusual “honor roll.” Instead of successful black students, or even black businesses or schools, the list consisted of predominantly white southern universities: Southern Methodist University, Texas Christian University, Duke University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Maryland. What had these schools, many of which would not admit African American stu- dents until decades later, done to deserve such an honor? All had played football games in the previous year against racially integrated teams from schools in the North and West. Considering the tenacious hold of Jim Crow segregation over the South, and the exclusion of African American athletes from every major professional sport, including Major League Baseball (by far the most popular and lucrative professional cir- cuit), these contests were indeed significant developments in the realm of sports. But the editors of the Crisis saw implications beyond the play- ing field, writing, “Fair play in sports leads the way to fair play in life. May the honor roll increase!”1 The NAACP’s emphasis on encouraging racial integration in Ameri- can society helps explain the editors’ eagerness to assign larger meanings to these football games. But they were hardly alone in believing in the poten- tial of sports to model fairness in American life. In countless publications and forums, observers throughout the twentieth century identified the “level playing field” of sports as a realization of the “American dream” of equal 2 Introduction opportunity. The notion of a meritocracy, deeply embedded in American culture, seemed best realized in athletic competition, an arena many hoped could be free from the racial prejudice that abrogated millions of Americans’ opportunities in business, politics, and social life. When barriers to partici- pation fell—when, for example, blacks competed against, or later for, white southern schools—the path seemed clear for players to succeed on the playing field or court by merit alone. Their effort and ability, not the color of their skin, would determine their standing as athletes. Observers on both sides of the color line clung to this ideal as proof that the American democratic system could work, that an equal-opportunity society was, in fact, possible. That faith constitutes the central theme of this study, which explores how Americans responded to changes in the nation’s racial politics. By analyz- ing the public discourse surrounding men’s college athletics from 1915 to 1973—in black and white newspapers, national magazines, school publica- tions, memoirs, legal documents, and correspondence—I trace how Ameri- cans of all stripes used sports to discuss and contest issues of race, equality, citizenship, and masculinity. The range of these diverse reactions can be seen in my five case studies: Paul Robeson at Rutgers College, 1915–1919; the 1939 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) football team; Wilt Chamberlain at the University of Kansas (KU), 1955–1958; Charlie Scott at the University of North Carolina (UNC), 1966–1970; and the integration of football at the University of Alabama, 1969–1973. As the varied responses to these pioneering athletes illustrate, sports, and college sports in particular, were central to how many people conceived of American society.2 Although residing in the leisure-time realm of “fun” and “play,” and sup- posedly remote from the everyday world and its consequences, spectator sports grew tremendously popular in the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, often mirroring the altered rhythms of everyday life as American society shifted and changed. In watching sports, in reading about the games, and in discussing the performances afterward, people drew enter- tainment value from the competition, but they also used sports as a shared cultural language to help them understand their world.3 Inevitably, race was a central topic of these discussions. More than any other marker of identity, including gender, class, and sexual preference, race has been intertwined with sports history from its earliest origins in American life.