In Black America; Breaking The Ice: The Integration Of Southwest Conference Football

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, IN crystallize the Ray's personalized The integration of Southwest Conference Football is not a pretty story. I'm John Hansen. Join me this week on in Black America. Some of these people I only had one interview with. Others you're right, it did. I had to let them see that I was my interest in my concern with legitimate. Breaking the ice, the integration of Southwest Conference Football this week on in Black America. This is in Black America. Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society.

I had to establish credibility. Certainly some of them were a little bit doubtful about why a white person would be doing this story. And I had more than one ask me why did the Black Journalist not take it on. That's a good question. No, it's a Black writer might have had a different perspective. And also might have gotten more, some more candid responses from some of the Black athletes that I talked to. But all I could do was try and be as objective as I could. When I think in this book I showed the white people's perspective as well as the Black perspective. It's best I could.

Mr. Richard Pinington, author of the newly published book entitled Break in the Ice, a racial integration of Southwest Conference Football, published by McFarlane Incorporated. The Southwest Conference varsity football squads were all white up until 1965. The integration of the conference is not a pretty story. There was brutality and ostracism from both the white and black communities. It is a story of Worm Nick Bay, the first black to pay for the University of Houston, believed to be the best high school football player to ever play in Texas. It is also a story of John Westbrook, the freshman walk on at Bayley University, and Jerry Leviis, of Southern Methodist University, the first black to receive an athletic scholarship to attend the Southwest Conference School. I'm John Hanson, this week, Break in the Ice, the integration of Southwest Conference Football with author Richard Pinington in Black America. I estimate I got turned down by 15 different publishers.

For various reasons, I'm not saying all of them were wrong. This book was not going to be perfect for every publisher, but I do believe, and I have believed ever since I started this project in April of 1983, that it's such an important story that it simply had to be told, and I'm really honored, I really am, to have been able to meet some of these people and talk to them and give them a chance to tell their story. It is a story of Texas, the good and bad, in the 1960s and 70s. The book focuses on the lives and careers of three men who integrate the Southwest Athletic Football Conference. John McBae of the University of Houston, who played from 1965 to 1967, John Westbrook of Bayley University, who played from 1966 to 1968, and Jerry Lovias of Southern Methodist University, who played from 1966 to 1968.

I should point out that the University of Houston was not a member of the Southwest Conference when McBae played. McBae, Lovias and Westbrook broke the ice that it frozen black athletes out of the Southwest Conference for 50 years. While there's no intent in the book to ignore the first black players at other Southwest Conference schools, they received left attention because they came later. McBae, Lovias and Westbrook were truly the first. In 1982 and 1983, I took some journalism and English courses here at UT and got my writing career off the ground doing various newspaper and magazine articles and after a year or so was when I got the idea for this book. I first got the idea from reading a magazine where it mentioned a black player who'd been one of the first to integrate a University of Southern Mississippi. To me that was just a very interesting subject and I knew already a good deal about the integration

process of the Southwest Conference having grown up in Dallas and known a lot about the experiences of Jerry Lovias who in 1966 through 1968 was pretty much considered the first black football player in the Southwest Conference. What was it like going through the motions of finding a research actually tracking down the players who actually broke the ice in the Southwest Conference? Well, it was a very long process. There were spent a lot of time in libraries and going through phone books trying to find these people and talking to one person and sometimes they will turn you on to someone else and someone else and someone else. Of course there were a lot of people I didn't find. I would like to have spoken with more but you know there were only a certain number of people I could actually interview.

I did contact around 250 people in the course of my research. Were they freely and open about their experiences in the Southwest Conference? Well it depends on who you're talking to, somewhere it went the entire spectrum. Some people were very open and were eager to tell their story. Some people played the cards very closely and others of course were just simply refused to talk because maybe they thought I was going to write an overly critical account of the story or making them look bad and in fact there were. There were some people who in retrospect did not behave very honorably and I tried to tell what it was in the book.

What was the mood of the administrators of the Southwest Conference at that time? Were they blatantly denying black the opportunity to play sports in the Southwest Conference? Well it evolved. From I traced the entire history of the Southwest Conference from its inception in 1915 all the way up to the present. Going back in the say the 20s and 30s there was hardly any question of black athletes completely competing in the Southwest Conference. In the 40s it changed because it was becoming gradually more common for Southwest Conference teams to compete against non-conference schools that were integrated. The first instance of that was SMU playing against UCLA and I believe 1939 but as it got into the 50s and the early 60s it became more of an issue. It was obvious the Southwest Conference and the other major southern conferences were

anomalous that they were not in touch with what was going on in most of the country. Their refusal to integrate and to go ahead and let black athletes be a part of their teams was hurting them. They were playing against integrated schools that more often than not were beating them and that's what it all comes down to winning. Who was the first school that actually broke the barrier that allowed a black athlete to register and actually allowed a black athlete to actually play? Okay. It's a little bit, it's not quite as concrete as you might like. The University of Houston was not a member of the Southwest Conference in 1964. They didn't really become a full-fledged member until 1976 but Warren McVey in the summer of 1964 and he was such a standout high school player still considered perhaps the greatest

high school running back Texas has ever produced and it was such a big deal for Houston to sign him in 1964 that it made the other Southwest Conference coaches start examining their positions and what they were doing. And the very next year in summer of 1965 was when SMU signed Jerry Levi's of Beaumont. Concurrently with that was John Westbrook walking on to the Baylor football team, freshman football team. So you can take your pick, I wrote a chapter on each of these three schools, Houston, SMU and Baylor because they were the very first. Varsity football from McVey began in 1965 for Westbrook and Levi's that began in 1966. So it was those three schools and those three men who were the focus of the book. When did the University of Texas come around?

UT, I wrote a chapter about UT not only because they were and still are the dominant member of the Southwest Conference and I don't mean that in terms of football nowadays, obviously. But politically, UT is still the dominant Southwest Conference member. I would like to say that if had UT decided to integrate earlier in the early 60s, Darrell Royal had a perfect opportunity to lead the conference into integration. In November of 1963, the regents voted to integrate all athletic teams. But it looks like it was just a paper policy because there was no effort made to bring the black athletes onto the teams. Royal didn't go out looking for black football players. He made some rather feeble attempts to get one or two in 67 and 68.

The first black to sign with UT would have been Leon O'Neill of Killing in 1968. He flunked out. There were a couple of other black walk-ons, E.A. Curry and Robinson Parsons and Tellmage Bluet. Very obscure figures, but I do think they're significant because they were willing to take that step and go out there and compete against really a very difficult environment. But the first black varsity player for UT would have been Julius Whittier in 1970. You mentioned taking that first step. What was it like from the information that you received from these players from their

teammates? Were the teammates receptive or were the coaching staff somewhat preparing these players for some of the treatment that they more likely were going to receive? That's a good question. By and large, all of these early black athletes got hostility and alienation from their teammates and coaches. There were a few exceptions. There was always going to be someone who's willing to be relatively accepting and friendly. But generally, Levis, McVeigh, Westbrook, all those early players for every Southwest conference school got verbal and physical abuse and isolation. So it was just not an easy thing for them to go through. I'm glad you brought that up, something came to mind.

Football is a contact sport. They were out there by themselves, were they officiating someone's legs, were they late heads, were they cheap shots, et cetera? Yes, there were. There certainly were. Levis, in particular, has questioned candidly whether the officiating was subjective. In my research, I came up with a number of times in which the defensive, practically the whole defensive team would hit a player light and no penalty was called, happened repeatedly. Levis got the brunt of the abuse in the Southwest conference in 1966. He got everything from having players spit in his face, calling him every racial epithet. They knew players trying to hurt him and maim him, mid-night phone calls, death threats, just about everything you can imagine.

He got. They really made an effort, and I don't mean just the players, fans or whoever it was, made a serious effort to run Levis and Westbrook and these other players off and to prevent integration of Southwest Conference football. Now you mentioned one of the main reasons the Southwest Conference was integrated because they were playing schools that were also integrated. So it wasn't really, we wanted, we want to do something that is right and just versus we want to stay competitive on the same level. Did that come out? Yes it did. It was not a matter of humanitarian concern so much on the coaches or administrators part. That might have played a very small role in the whole process, but it mainly came down to, like you say, competition. You got to have the best athletes if you want to win and they were for too long, they were turning their back on a rich pool of athletic talent here in Texas.

I mean there's, there were just great, great players going out of state. In the early 60s you had Bubba Smith, Jane Washington, Mel Far, just those three off the top of my head, truly great black athletes who were going out of state because they couldn't, they were not allowed to compete at the major schools. I would like to say one thing about that and unfortunate development is that the predominantly black schools such as Prairie View, Texas Southern, Wiley and a few others have been hurt by this process. The best black players no longer go there. In the research, did you have an opportunity to speak with some of the head coaches in that era, do they feel that they did something wrong or they were just going along with the mood of the alumni and the administration at that time?

Well they naturally, they were all fairly defensive of their actions back in those days. They were influenced by the alumni in the prevailing cultural environment in which it would have taken a very strong, strong-minded person to go and do what really needed to be done a long time ago. Hayden Frye, who was the coach at SMU and Bill Yeoman at Houston, deserved a commendation for having put their necks on the block. Now footballers shouldn't be a large percentage of a student's time at college. What was it like for these athletes once they left the stadium, once they left practice, college life, more than likely being one of only two or three on campus?

It was lonely. It was very lonely. They had very little opportunity to really interact with other students and even when they did have the opportunity, naturally, these young men needed to be able to interact with other black people and there weren't any around. What they did more often than not was go to the black part of town or Levi's and Westbrook both drove up Interstate 35 to Denton a number of times because North Texas State had a fairly sizeable black student population at that time. But you're right. They did have a very hard time gaining acceptance on campus apart from their football days. The coaches and the administrations made very little effort to ease their way into the

schools. Were any of the players bitter or they just accepted, they were going to be the first and there were certain obstacles they would have to overcome to make it better for other blacks to follow after them? I believe that some of them, if they're being honest, they have to say that there is some bitterness that they, the treatment they received back in those days and the difficulty of their endeavor was such that some bitterness and anger would not be unexpected. Having done the research, do you find any difference there? A lot of black players playing in the software at the conference now, but is the mood and the attitude that much different than it was 15 to 20 years ago? And what regard? The administration and coaches having black athletes for the sake of winning versus having

black athletes for the sake of doing something that's right and just. Well, it's inconceivable that any school, any athletic program, would try to turn back the clock now to the way things were in say 1965. Proposition 48, notwithstanding. There's just, it comes back to winning and you, you simply can't do without the black athletes today. That's one rather controversial thing that I'll dealt with in my book. The question of whether, is it a myth or is there something to this notion of black athletics superiority? Is it just a matter of sociocultural factors or do black athletes really excel for physical reasons? Putting the Southwest Conference on an even kill with other conferences in the country, were they by themselves as far as their attitudes about black athletes participating in their

conference, were there other conferences around the country with the same attitude that the Southwest Conference had at that time? Yes, there were, especially as far as the major conferences go, the South-Eastern Conference was even slower, that you're talking about the deep South there, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia. Those schools, they were a year or two later, probably the most dubious honor on this whole business would go to the University of Mississippi and LSU and Georgia, I believe, who didn't have a black varsity player until 1972. So the Atlantic Coast Conference, which runs generally from Maryland down to South Carolina was very slow, although they did have, their first black player was at Maryland in 1963, so it was a very, very slow, gradual process. Of the 250 eye persons that you interviewed, who would you say was the most open and the

most sincere about expressing how it was at that time? Of the major characters I interviewed, it would probably have been Jerry Lavas, who played at SMU from 66 to 68, and he and I had a series of interviews in 1984 and 85, and we went into every unpleasant detail that there was. Lavas still, in my opinion, apart from his historical contribution as being the first black to receive an athletic scholarship in the Southwest Conference, his greatness as a football player has been forgotten, because I believe that he still is one of the greatest football players of Southwest Conference has ever seen.

Did these athletes obtain that degree? Oh, well, it varies. Some did and some didn't. Lavas did. Westbrook did, of Baylor. Warren McVey, as you know, is experiencing a lot of difficulties with cocaine problems down in Houston. The others say for Texas Tech and TCU and A&M, the various schools, as often as not they did not get their degrees. It's not too surprising because they were laboring under some extremely difficult circumstances. Quite a few players didn't even finish their eligibility, much less get a degree. Are these players being recognized today for the contributions they made to their individual schools and the Southwest Conference? That's a good question. I'm not sure that they are. I don't think that they have been, and that's one reason I wanted to write this book because

it was such a compelling story begging to be told. The experiences of these players was so difficult and so terrible in some cases that they deserve to be remembered and for their achievements to be acknowledged, and I don't think it has been. Did you have an opportunity to talk to any administrators doing that period you mentioned talking to coaches and staff? What was the prevailing attitude of the administrators at that time? Well, it varies one of the UT regents that I spoke with Wales Madden was very, very honest and forthcoming about the situation. He was urging integration of all aspects of the university as early as 1959, which was a fairly radical idea at that time.

Others I spoke with former Chancellor of Baylor, Abner McCall, who they were being very careful, as you might imagine. Not willing to do anything that's going to upset people, but anything that, anything approaching integration was going to cause problems back in early and mid-60s. What was the feeling of you going in, first calling these people on the phone, and then going showing up at their doorstep and seeing a white person answering them questions about integration and racism in the software's conference, were they skeptical, apprehensive? Yes, they were. I had to establish credibility. Certainly some of them were a little bit doubtful about why a white person would be doing this story, and I had more than one ask me why did the black journalist not take it on?

That's a good question. No, it's a black writer might have had a different perspective, and also might have gotten more, some more candid responses from some of the black athletes that I talked to. But all I could do was try and be as objective as I could, and I think in this book I showed the white people's perspective as well as the black perspective as best I could. Did it take more than one interview for them to actually become ease at ease in speaking to you? Well, some of these people I only had one interview with, others you're right, it did. I had to let them see that I was my interest in my concern was legitimate, and that I was writing a critical view of Southwest Conference integration.

I think that most of them realized that, and that they were pretty honest with me. The book is published by McFarlane Incorporated. Were there other publishing houses that you contacted that turned you down? Yes. I estimate I got turned down by 15 different publishers. For various reasons, I'm not saying all of them were wrong. You know, this book was not going to be perfect for every publisher. But I do believe, and I have believed ever since I started this project in April of 1983 that it's such an important story that it simply had to be told, and I'm really honored. I really am, to have been able to meet some of these people and talk to them and give them a chance to tell their story. Mr. Richard Pennington, author of the new book entitled Breaking the Ice, The Integration

of Southwest Conference Football, published by McFarlane Incorporated. If you have a comment, or like to purchase a cassette copy of this program, write us. The address is in Black America, Longhorn, Radio Network, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 787-12. For in Black America's technical producer, Cliff Hargrove, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr., please join us next week. You've been listening to In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society. In Black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station. This is the Longhorn Radio Network.