Sidelined (16 page)

White and black players were seen as equal in the locker room and on the field, but this sense of togetherness extended only to the sporting context. This situation was central to Edwards and his supporters' argument.
The concept of the team was conditional and as such the idea of sport as a truly positive racial force was a myth, since it disguised an inequality that still existed. What is interesting about the response of the administrators at Kansas, and to an extent at Marquette, is the motivation for the concessions to the black students. By using sport as a mechanism to gain leverage black students were successful; however, the extent to which administrators were motivated by a desire to improve situations in which they recognized persistent inequality is questionable. It seems in the case of Coach Rodgers and the Kansas university authorities and Coach McGuire at Marquette that the primary motivation was to defuse tensions on successful sports teams. Edwards correctly identified the importance of college athletics and the way this could be exploited to make civil rights gains. It was successful sporting competition that remained paramount, though, and black athletes were thrown token gestures to appease them and reduce the tension they felt as team members and black representatives on campus. The result was limited change but continued black sporting participation—participation that was vital to the success of many college teams. Indeed, Amison remembered that race relations on campus at Kansas were “not at all” better in any practical terms after the boycott. The important thing was to take a symbolic stand.
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Once this stand had been made and the university had been seen to respond, then focus could return to winning games.

The local struggles on the campuses at Kansas, Berkeley, and Marquette were part of a wider movement of black student protest in the late 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement had exposed both black and white students to protest experiences and had given them a sense of responsibility to affect social change. Furthermore, university campuses provided the best venues for young people to engage with important societal issues. Following the desegregation of higher education institutions across the United States, black students on predominantly white campuses were able to mobilize in sufficient numbers to make their voices heard.
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At Marquette, Kansas, and Berkeley we can see different levels of interaction between black student protest leaders and black athletes. Black athletes at Berkeley took a greater lead in their struggle against athletic administrators as they sought to expose perceived racism within the athletics department. At Kansas and Marquette black athletes added their voices to grievances generated by the Black Student Union on campus.

The actions of black student protest organizations saw a convergence of protest activity associated with the Civil Rights Movement and a more
militant and racially self-conscious movement of black students in the late 1960s. The course of events at Berkeley was influenced by the wider black student mobilization across California in the 1967–1968 academic year. Over half of campuses under the jurisdiction of the California college system experienced significant black student protests in that year.
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The militant nature of black student protest in California during this period was a contributing factor to the shape of the black athletic revolt at Berkeley. Radicalized by the black student movement, athletes were more sensitive to perceived prejudice and discrimination and so the Presley incident became a catalyst for racially motivated protests.

Stefan Bradley's study of black student protest at Columbia University in the late 1960s shows how racially integrated student movements could be altered by the influence of Black Power rhetoric and ideology. By separating themselves from white protesters, black students could bring attention to their demands as separate issues. Students wanted their universities to act to try to correct the problems of society.
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We can see elements of this at Marquette, where SURE gave way to Respond, a more radicalized and black-dominated protest movement. Furthermore, black student protesters were able to win concessions from university officials because they did not want to be labeled as racist. When these considerations were placed alongside the desire of administrators to maintain successful sports programs, the ability of student protesters to extract short-term changes from university policy makers was enhanced.

Protests characterized by withdrawing from the university or boycotting practice sessions were useful tools for forcing concessions from university administrators; however, they represented a dangerous tactic that threatened team unity and racial understanding. At Marquette and Kansas the short-lived nature of the demonstration ensured that a strong team ethic was maintained. Also, the fact that the focus of the grievances was outside of the athletic department meant that administrators could make important symbolic gestures to amend policy and therefore give black players a sense of vindication for their stand. In these episodes the players were given a way to balance the competing demands of team and racial identity. The desire to maintain a winning team often motivated both university officials and black players, and so in many respects sport precluded more radical protest.

The role of sport in promoting a team ethic also ensured that any protest that threatened to damage the group provoked tension. This was certainly the case at Berkeley, where events were exacerbated by the fact that the root of the protest emanated from inside the athletics department. The focus of the protest was the coach himself and this opened up black players to the charge that they were not dramatizing racial injustice but seeking to excuse their own indiscipline. Although closest to events at San Jose, both geographically and in the connection to Edwards's leadership, the protest at Berkeley strayed somewhat from the original spirit of the black athletic revolt. At San Jose and through the OPHR, activists sought to use sport as an arena in which to dramatize racial inequality. The students at Marquette and Kansas, however subconsciously, were using the same methods of protest that had been utilized in the call to boycott the NYAC meet and the Olympics. This use of the sporting arena to highlight wider racial inequality was an expression of a different form of connection with the black freedom struggle than that at Berkeley. Black students at Berkeley may have intended to do the same as students at Marquette and Kansas, but by choosing the Presley-Herrerias clash as their initial focus they seriously weakened the legitimacy of their demonstration.

Scenarios similar to the case studies explored above were being played out on many campuses across the country in the spring and summer of 1968. Media interest increased because of the contemporaneous debate over the potential black boycott of the Olympics. A number of the problems on other campuses were highlighted in a series of articles for
Sports Illustrated
by Jack Olsen titled “The Black Athlete: A Shameful Story.”
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The series revealed a number of complaints by black athletes at both college and professional levels and exposed some institutions for their alleged racist practices. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) archives file on “racial matters” is dominated by internal responses to Olsen's article. There is little evidence of discussion of the wider national debate; instead the focus was on managing the organization's public image, which, it was felt, was being damaged by Olsen's work. The crucial issue here, then, is the extent to which the NCAA attempted to combat the charges published in
Sports Illustrated
. The institution was threatened by the attack on the myth of sport as a positive racial force. In its attempts to neutralize this threat we see similarities with the approach adopted by the USOC in response to discussions of protests leading up to the Olympics.

President of the NCAA Marcus Plant wrote to public relations director
Thomas Hansen in early August 1968 asking for a list of inaccuracies that were alleged to be in the Olsen articles. Plant explained he wanted to be “armed with all the ammunition I can get.”
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Hansen replied a week later with a number of rebuttals to the allegations made by Olsen in his articles. While he argued that it was unrealistic for the NCAA to refute outright allegations of racism in college sports since the organization would be speaking for over six hundred institutions, Hansen did seek to expose Olsen as someone who had used questionable evidence. The letter is exceptionally detailed. It runs to seven pages that pick out any perceived faults in Olsen's articles, and Hansen himself described the letter as a “lengthy epistle.” He concluded with a hope that he had been able “to win a few rounds … for the people in intercollegiate athletics.”
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(The people to whom he was referring were the administrators and coaches who he felt had been unfairly represented by Olsen.) It is telling that the investigation he conducted was aimed at discrediting the claims made in the
Sports Illustrated
articles rather than looking into what could be done to improve the position of black athletes.

The NCAA was obviously sensitive to the charges of racial discrimination in college sports and was hurt by the allegation that sport exhibited as much racism as wider society. Hansen corresponded with many of the institutions mentioned in the Olsen series and sent further information to Plant later in August 1968. In a letter of thanks to University of Washington athletic director James Owens, Hansen wrote, “It's most helpful to have specific cases to show that many of the printed complaints by Negroes are simply not factually true.” He further mentioned that the NCAA Council had discussed the “black athlete situation” and would do so again in the future.
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The official minutes of the council meetings for 1968 reveal nothing of these conversations, and as such it is not clear exactly how lengthy or serious they were.
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The issue clearly bothered NCAA president Plant, however, and his anger concerning the
Sports Illustrated
series can be seen in his letter to Hansen. Plant wrote, “This is very valuable information and I shall use it effectively, I hope. I am seeking a good opportunity to make a public appearance and devote my remarks toward outlining the deficiencies in this article and holding it up as a horrible example of irresponsible journalism. Maybe this is an unsound idea, but the whole project bothered me so much that I am having trouble forgetting it.”
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There is no documentary evidence that Plant did devote himself to making such a statement. Nevertheless, it is clear that he was particularly “bothered” by the Olsen article.

There were signs, though, that the NCAA was aware that some action was needed to improve the racial problems that had been increasingly affecting college athletics since the original black athletic revolt at San Jose State. U.S. vice president Hubert Humphrey was troubled by the problems of African American athletes and the impact that this had on America's global image. He was concerned about the threatened boycott of the Olympics and was central to the government's attempts to open up recreational facilities to inner-city youth.
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The minutes of the NCAA executive committee meeting on August 15, 1968, record the federal government's plan, which involved the establishment of sports facilities in the nation's fifty largest cities. The project was to be called the Summer Youth Project, and although there was an obvious racial element to inner-city programs, the committee outlined that the initiative would not be “limited to disadvantaged youth.”
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The project was to run the following year and would eventually take place in thirty-five urban areas that the federal government identified as poverty stricken. It was anticipated that thirty to thirty-five thousand young people would be involved, and the participating institutions were enthusiastic about the program.
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Certainly the Summer Youth Project was a step in the direction of addressing some of the concerns of African American athletes in the sense that the NCAA and the institutions it represented were trying to bring sport to inner-city young people. In this respect they were responding on a national level to some of the problems identified by the protesters at, for example, Marquette. The Marquette students had urged the university to reach out to impoverished communities in the ghettos only a few blocks away from the campus; however, the overriding attitude of the NCAA was still one of caution. They displayed anger and disappointment that the institution of college sports was being accused of racist practices rather than a desire to investigate the substance of the allegations and the problems of black athletes. A common problem faced by black athletes on predominantly white campuses was the lack of female company of the same race. This led, on occasion, to black athletes dating white girls, a practice that was consistently frowned upon. Olsen highlighted this problem in his series. Hansen countered the allegations of unfair treatment of black athletes who transgressed this racial barrier in his letter to Plant. Referencing the views of a doctor he had spoken to, Hansen ignored the racism inherent in prohibition of mixed-race relationships and suggested that black athletes “might have hit the books instead of worrying about inter-racial dating and instead of playing cards and spending hours in student hangouts.”
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As mentioned above, Hansen did concede that it was impossible to defend the NCAA against charges of racism because of the sheer number of people who worked for its member institutions. There was not, however, a concession that the NCAA itself perpetuated racial inequality, and a primary aim of efforts to pick apart Olsen's articles seemed to be to defend the organization against such charges. By highlighting the inaccuracies in Olsen's evidence Hansen was attempting to show that racism was limited to a small number of individuals and specific incidents. Olsen's series made the same arguments that Edwards had been making since 1967 and to a varying extent highlighted problems the like of which were experienced at Berkeley, Marquette, and Kansas and on many other campuses. Douglas Hartmann correctly judges that Olsen “got the story of African-American discontent in sport right.”
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He is not correct, though, in asserting that Hansen came to a similar conclusion. To support his view, Hartmann points to a comment by Hansen that “SI [
Sports Illustrated
] isn't totally wrong, just incredibly sloppy.” He argues that this comment supports Hansen's concession that the NCAA could not be defended against claims of racism. First, however, the NCAA public relations director was only conceding that all of society had racism in it and that his establishment could not be held to account for all the people under its organization. He did not concede institutional racism—the charge that Edwards continually made. Second, Hartmann takes the Hansen quote out of context. The actual sentence in the letter read “
here
SI isn't totally wrong, just incredibly sloppy.” The word
here
is important because it draws attention to the specific subject of the previous paragraph, which deals with a mix-up over a photograph and a byline concerning the record-breaking UCLA relay team.
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Hansen was commenting on this mix-up and not making a general point about Olsen's charges of racial prejudice.