Looking back At Texas Western NCAA Victory From a Different View

We all know Hollywood does things with historic events to move a storyline or create dramatic tension, as done in Glory Road, but Larry Conley is full of bovine scatology while dishing out his own recipe of revisionist history. Ask him how many blacks students (athletes and non-athletes) attended the University of Kentucky when he was there and how many were there with whom he actually shared a classroom. Did he speak to any or even eat with any?

Conley says: "Listen, Adoph Rupp may have been many things, but he was not a racist."

Author Taylor Branch in his book "At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68," said that Rupp used a racial slur while complaining of pressure from his university president to recruit black players. Although he did eventually recruit Kentucky's first black player - when he retired in 1972, his team was all-white.

Consley says above: "That is because black players were RELUCTANT to come to schools in the South. It was not because of any conscious decision on the part of UK or the coaching staff."

Bovine scatology again. How would he, a mere player, even know this?

It is a fact most southern colleges did not relax their ban on integration until the later part of the 1960s.

However, if black althletes were RELUCTANT it was perhaps because they knew what they would face - most famously captured in the racially motivated, on-field assault by white Wilbanks Smith, a player for Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) on October 20, 1951, that was captured in a widely disseminated and Pulitzer Prize winning photo sequence, in which Smith in his repeated assault on (undefeated) Drake's star player Johnny Bright, deliberately broke Bright's jaw. Bright was a pre-season Heisman Trophy candidate from Drake, and led the nation in total offense. During the first seven minutes of the game, Bright was knocked unconscious three times by blows from Smith. While Smith's final elbow blow broke Bright's jaw, he was still able to complete a 61-yard touchdown pass to Drake halfback Jim Pilkington a few plays later. Soon afterward, the injury finally forced him to leave the game. Bright finished the game with less than 100 yards, the first time in his three year collegiate career at Drake. Oklahoma A&M eventually won the game 27–14. Bob Spiegel, a reporter with the Des Moines Register, interviewed several spectators after the game, eventually publishing a report on the incident. According to Spiegel's report, several of the Oklahoma A&M students he interviewed overheard an Oklahoma A&M coach repeatedly say "Get that nigger" whenever the A&M practice squad ran Drake plays against the Oklahoma A&M starting defense, prior to the October 20 game. Spiegel also recounted the experiences of a businessman and his wife, who were seated behind a group of Oklahoma A&M practice squad players. At the beginning of the game, one of the players turned around said, "We're gonna get that nigger." (Johnny Bright Incident - Wikipedia)

That was what black athletes faced to "play" a "game". So to even play AGAINST a southern college - was a major accomplishment, let alone ever play FOR one.

Some integrated northern colleges had to change their southern schedule in order that black athletes be allowed to play in games. Others simply left black players on the sidelines when they visited or hosted southern teams (Harris 1993). In a sure sign that white southern schools were not prepared to welcome black athletes, African American students (non-athletes) were met by angry white mobs when they attempted to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 and the University of Alabama in 1963. Furthermore, Mississippi colleges sat out NCAA college basketball tournaments in 1959 and 1961 and a bowl game in 1961 – all prestigious events - rather than compete against black athletes because its legislators threatened to stop funding schools that competed against integrated teams (so you know no black athletes were even allowed on any of Mississippi's teams).  (International Politics of Sport in the 20th Century)

In 1949, only after a lawsuit filed by civil rights attorneys (Supreme Court Justice-to-be Thurgood Marshall, et al.) was successful did the University of Kentucky admit its first African-American students. The football dominated S.E.C. Conference members resisted integration in football until the mid-1960's. Thus, it took Kentucky another 17 years since 1949 to put Nat Northington and Greg Page, two African-Americans, on its football team in 1966 and for Northington to become the first African-American to play in the S.E.C. in a game against Mississippi State in 1967. They were the first African-American student-athletes in the football-dominated S.E.C.

Also, it wasn't until the late 1960s that comparatively small numbers of black students were admitted to historically white institutions, prompting black student protests at the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville in 1968 and 1969 and the creation of special programs to increase black enrollment. In 1980 the U.S. Office of Civil Rights determined that Kentucky had not ended segregation in its higher education system and imposed a court ordered desegregation plan on the state. (See The Kentucky Encylopedia by John E. Kieber.)

In 1966 when Texas Western recruited an all-black starting five – it was a first for a basketball team at a predominantly white university. It was shortly thereafter that Kentucky accepted black players on its teams. Most other white colleges thereafter also desegregated, if they had not already done so. (International Politics of Sport in the 20th Century)".

Conley said: "If you look at the University of San Francisco, they won their national championships in the 1950's with four black players starting. So it was not like this game was something new."

But it was something new and revolutionary for a SOUTHERN COLLEGE like Texas Western College. And even NATIONALLY never in a championship game did a school have ALL FIVE STARTING PLAYERS be black. Coach Haskins judged his team by each man's ability and not by the color of their skin.

But consider the fact that the four black players who started for that University of San Francisco team in the 1955-56 NCAA were a truly great team comprised of some serious SUPERSTARS. There was an unwritten rule in college basketball at that time that teams did not start three black players.  Coach Woolpert said that nobody ever told him there was a quota for black starters, “but you knew as a coach that you had to be aware of the quota thing.”  Shortly after Perry was inserted into the Dons starting lineup, the team ran into racial problems at the All-College Tournament in Oklahoma City.  The Dons were told that the black players could not stay in any downtown hotels.  A team meeting was held and the team voted to all stay in a school dorm that was empty for the holidays.  Hal Perry later said of Woolpert, “He deserved as much respect as any coach, but even more than that, as much as any person in any phase of the civil rights movement…. He went through hell.” The SUPERSTARS of San Francisco were:

(1) Bill Russell, 6'10"Olympian - who led San Francisco to two NCAA Championships. When he was a freshman at San Francisco the student newspaper, featuring him in its first issue, labeled him "a potential Globetrotter." He was a five-time winner of the NBA Most Valuable Player Award and a twelve-time All Star, was the centerpiece of the Boston Celtics dynasty that won eleven NBA Championships during Russell's thirteen-year career. (Bill Russell also won two of those titles as head coach, but he was also doubling as a player.)

(2) K.C. Jones, Olympian who along with Bill Russell led San Francisco to two NCAA Championships, one of the greatest NBA defensive players. Jones spent all of his nine seasons in the NBA with the Boston Celtics, being part of eight championship teams from 1959 to 1966. In NBA history, only teammates Bill Russell and Sam Jones have won more championship rings during their playing careers. His coaching career in the NBA is legendary and he is the only African American coach to win multiple NBA championships as solely a head coach. 

(3) Hal Perry the starting guard and team Captain (1956) who was one of the greatest for full court pressure defense and an excellent passer and ball handler. He was one of two black students at San Francisco during his freshman year. Bill Russell was the other. He was part of the great San Francisco's 60 game winning streak.

(4) Gene Brown was the other great college player of the four.

In 1957-1958 the National Association of Basketball Coaches' First Team All-Americans was all-black — but none of these guys had attended a Southern university:

(1) the 7'1" Wilt Chamberlain of the University of Kansas, widely considered one of the greatest and most dominant players in the history of the NBA;

(2) 6'5" Oscar Robertson of the University of Cincinnati, regarded as one of the best and most versatile NBA players of all time;

(3) 6'5" Elgin Baylor of Seattle University, No. 1 overall pick in the 1958 NBA Draft, king of the hanging jump shot and regarded as one of the game's all-time greatest players;

(4) 6'8" Olympian Bob Boozer of Kansas State University, No. 1 overall pick in the 1959 NBA Draft

(5) Guy Rodgers of Temple University was one of the league's best playmakers in the early to mid 1960s. Rodgers led the NBA in assists twice, and placed second six times. Rodgers played alongside the great Wilt Chamberlain from 1959 through 1964, and during Chamberlain's famous 100-point game, he led the way with 20 assists.

In 1962 the University of Cincinnati started four black players when it won the NCAA championship, and Loyola University of Chicago started four when it won in 1963.

So when Mr. Conley is dissing (or being disrepectful) to the achievement of Texas Western College's black athletes and Coach Don Haskins - Mr. Conley's color analysis of the history of his college years in the South is way off. The Texas Western victory should not be minimized by anyone's view.