Sidelined (12 page)

Possibly more significant than the press interest in the statements made by the Harvard crew were the reactions among athletics administrators. John J. Carlin, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Rowing Committee, wrote to acting executive director of the USOC Everett D. Barnes offering his suggestions for curtailing the actions of the Harvard rowers. Carlin originally considered forcing the crew to sign a “cease and desist order” or face expulsion from the team. He then considered that this could be viewed as a threat that might produce adverse publicity. Instead it was decided that the rowers should be asked to sign a statement agreeing to stop any planned demonstrations. If they did then participate in any action they could be sent home.
¹⁴⁵
The Harvard crew had already written to the USOC a week before Carlin sent his letter to Barnes, expressing their desire to foster
a dialogue among athletes on the racial problems facing wider society. The rowers argued that black athletes and those who wanted to support them were seeking to communicate to the rest of society the situation that black people faced. They asserted that this was not contrary to the spirit of the Olympics but was “in fact in accord with that spirit, for it is in the interests of brotherhood and understanding among men.”
¹⁴⁶

Hoffman described the general attitude of athletic administrators at that time toward athletes, both black and white, as dismissive. They were given no role in the organization and governance of sport and their opinions were never sought. “All athletes were basically treated as not fully logical, thinking species that were being dressed and sent out to compete.”
¹⁴⁷
This opinion is confirmed by the fact that the response of the USOC to the rowers' reasoned explanation of their stance was a letter requesting a signature from the crew stating that they would not engage in any protest activities. When they were in training in Colorado before going on to Mexico City, the USOC attempted “outreach” toward the athletes through a liaison committee, the same committee that Roby told Brundage was going to be used to diffuse any tension and possible protest activities. The Harvard crew was lectured about the responsibilities associated with competing for their country by a USOC official. Essentially the representative of the USOC who met with them attempted to sound out their ideas and motivations and tried to ascertain the possibility of them protesting in any way.
¹⁴⁸

The OPHR's intended original aim was a black boycott of the 1968 Olympics. It was perceived as a radical and dangerous organization by athletics administrators and was harshly criticized. Indeed, such was the USOC's hostility to the movement that when a group of well-educated, white Harvard rowers attempted to understand the motivations of angry black athletes, to reach for the middle ground, and to open a constructive dialogue on the grievances inspired by wider American social problems, they were treated with hostility and suspicion. The threat of a boycott of the Olympics by black athletes horrified a liberal sporting establishment that had convinced itself that sport promoted racial progress. Any further intrusion into the sports world by political discussions was fiercely resisted.

The questionnaires sent out to teammates by the Harvard crew received little attention from fellow white athletes. Certainly no replies were received
by the rowers—no responses to their ideas, either positive or negative. The dialogue that they tried to start was very much one-sided. It is worth noting, however, that some of the questionnaires were passed on directly to the USOC.
¹⁴⁹
It is fair to speculate that this action can be deemed critical of the attempt to stimulate a dialogue, almost a gesture of loyalty for the line taken by the U.S. Olympic administration.

The response of white athletes and administrators to the OPHR from its inception until the eve of the games and the reaction to the stand taken by the Harvard oarsmen are characteristic of a “conditional” relationship between sport and race in the late 1960s. For many years sport was seen as a key area of American life in which blacks could achieve progress incommensurate with the advancement that could be made in the remainder of the social, cultural, economic, and political spheres. This progress came with the condition that they continue to excel within the given sporting discipline and that they play by the rules of the game. These rules extended to life off the field and out of the arena and required athletes to respect the unwritten code of veneration of the sporting ideals of fair play and equality for all. The black athlete who had achieved excellence, and with it some fame, should be grateful. Wider social and political problems were not to intrude into the sporting arena. In the late 1960s this prevailing opinion in the sporting sphere found a counterpart in the wider social world. Following the political achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, many mainstream Americans felt that the racial problem had been addressed, that black people had been given their equality and should now work to enjoy the benefits. At the same time as the OPHR and its brash spokesman, Harry Edwards, were confronting the perceived sporting ideal, so too were angry young black men challenging the prevailing political position that equality had been delivered and America was a better place.

John Roche, a former adviser to President Johnson, told
Newsweek
in October 1969 that many nonblack groups felt that the rules were being changed and that this had allowed African Americans to advance too far.
¹⁵⁰
The view that the OPHR was breaking the rules, that it was pushing racial politics into sport, was the major reason why it received such a hostile reception. This reception displays the ideological straitjacket that restricted the sporting arena from furthering the cause of racial equality and social justice.

The attempts by the Harvard crew, and others who will be discussed in the following chapter, to inhabit the middle ground of the debate met with limited positive response. Because of prevailing racial attitudes, a
commitment to the ideal of the purity of sport, a single-minded focus on a particular discipline and event, or a convergence of all three, the OPHR's attempt to produce a significant change in the attitudes of athletes and administrators failed. The events in Mexico City further highlighted the great difficulties faced by athletes who tried to engage in the civil rights struggle.

Before analyzing these events we must first turn to a closer investigation of the ways in which the black freedom struggle affected sports faculties on college campuses. Simultaneous with the development of the OPHR, there were several racially charged incidents that affected the athletics departments of universities across the United States in 1968. An exploration of these local case studies further illuminates the difficulties faced by athletes who wished to use their position as sportsmen to engage in the civil rights struggle. While some of these case studies display a genuine attempt by some individuals to transcend their position as a student-athlete and play a part in the black freedom struggle, others reveal a different dynamic.

The black athletic revolt on campus had the potential to destroy sports programs and disrupt winning teams. In a way that served only to strengthen the resolve of those who believed racial politics should not be allowed to affect the sporting arena, some young men confused discipline with discrimination. Again, by utilizing oral histories collected some thirty-five or more years after the events we can gain a wider perspective on campus unrest. The extent to which white and black athletes themselves understood each other's attitudes and motivations had a huge impact on the potential to use sport as a forum for furthering the civil rights struggle.

Not all athletes who engaged in the revolt did so with the same sense of purpose and ideological agenda as those who had supported an Olympic boycott. This created further problems for the potential of sport to significantly affect the advance of the black freedom struggle.

3

We figure it's only right. We represent our race and our school in football, basketball, and track but still we didn't have a pom-pom girl.

—Don Shanklin, University of Kansas, football

[Black athletes] were dropped into an environment that was almost impossible for them to succeed in … two entirely different universes all of a sudden converging.

—Bob Wolfe, University of California, Berkeley, basketball

Far from the political activism surrounding Harry Edwards, the sprinters of Speed City, and the Harvard rowers was the University of Kansas athletics department. The institution's teams were known as the Jayhawks—as a reference to the violence and turmoil of the Civil War era—and were members of the Big Eight Conference. In 1968 they would improve on their relatively mediocre performances of the previous two years and tie for the position of Big Eight football champions. On a Saturday in May of that year the players gathered to participate in the varsity intrasquad scrimmage at Memorial Stadium. Play was divided into three periods of twenty minutes. The offense was awarded points for making first downs or touchdowns while the defense scored when they stopped first downs, forced fumbles, or intercepted passes. Although the defense won the first two periods, the Jayhawk offense dominated the third period to record an overall victory of 52–49.

Coach Pepper Rodgers declared he was pleased with the scrimmage. He commented, “The offense beat themselves by making mistakes—fumbles and interceptions. If you eliminate mistakes you have a chance to
win.” The coach singled out a few individuals for special mention after a successful spring practice that left the team in a better position than in the previous year.
¹

Despite Rodgers's no-nonsense analysis, this scrimmage was not an entirely unremarkable event and the campus in Lawrence, Kansas, had not escaped the racial tensions that were prevalent in many other areas of the nation. Two days previous to the scrimmage that marked the end of spring practice, T. J. Gaughan, a white member of the team, entered the locker room. He began talking with other members of the team as he changed for practice. His attention was then slowly drawn to a source of amusement elsewhere in the room. One of the team was stripped and in the process of putting on his uniform when Coach Rodgers walked in. Gaughan and others began to smirk at the scene that was developing. The player inadvertently providing the levity was black. As he looked around the locker room he quickly saw that he was the only black player there. Rodgers told the young man that he had better put his clothes back on and go up to the Student Union to join the rest of the black players who were boycotting practice. Gaughan remembered, “Poor Vernon forgot about it or had taken a nap and missed it!”
²

African American Jayhawk football players were protesting the perceived discriminatory policies of the university. They were attempting to use sport as a lever to extract concessions, just as Edwards and Noel had done at San Jose the previous year. This sort of activism took place on many campuses across the United States in 1968. In fact, Harry Edwards asserted that in the 1967–1968 academic year there were demonstrations in the athletic departments of some thirty-seven major college campuses.
³
Significant protests followed at several institutions throughout 1969. The majority of these incidents have received only brief historical attention, with just one article devoted to comparative analysis.
⁴
A full understanding of the course of the black athletic revolt requires that these protests be given closer scrutiny. They reveal a further dimension to the relationship between the black athletic revolt and the black freedom movement. Teams were disrupted, racial tensions heightened, and the civil rights struggle became intertwined with concerns over racial identity and team discipline. White and black athletes found it difficult to maintain a team ethos when faced with issues of racial politics. Furthermore, some black athletes, facing pressure to reconcile their role as student athletes with an increasing black militancy, confused issues of racial prejudice with team discipline. This further hardened the stance
of sports administrators against any intrusion by the civil rights struggle into the sports world.

The case studies that follow have been chosen because they highlight different elements of the intersection between sport and civil rights activism on the campus. At the University of California, Berkeley, we can see the way in which an athletics department was affected by black players' search for identity as the Black Power Movement encouraged a rising race consciousness. The Berkeley case study also highlights the extent to which Edwards's calls for black athletes to engage with a more radical racial agenda could lead to confusion between discrimination and discipline. At Marquette and Kansas Universities leading college athletes used their position as leverage in order to gain concessions from the administrators of their institutions. In these cases, athletes engaged in protest activity that supported the demands of wider campus civil rights causes.

In January 1968 racial problems engulfed the athletics department at the University of California, Berkeley. The racial situation on campuses in California, and at Berkeley in particular, created an environment that was especially susceptible to manifestations of the black athletic revolt. By the late 1960s West Coast university teams were filled with white and black athletes. Indeed, in the early 1960s students at UCLA successfully linked football to the civil rights struggle when protesting about segregated southern teams. A threatened boycott if an all-white University of Alabama squad were invited to the 1961 Rose Bowl shows the extent to which sporting integration was increasingly accepted by West Coast institutions.
⁵