Sidelined (25 page)

What was not being discussed as these issues were worked out, however, was the role of sport in dramatizing the racial problems in wider society. Certainly the Milton affair and countless others were bringing contemporary racial politics into the sports world. Crucially, though, this was a different phenomenon than athletes using their position as sports stars to call attention to racial struggles in wider society. This latter effort had been the initial impulse of the OPHR and represents a specific connection between the world of sport and the black freedom struggle. Remember, the initial aims of the OPHR boycott movement spoke to wider political issues like the suspension of apartheid South Africa and the desegregation of sporting facilities. Smith and Carlos's stand, as Smith so eloquently explained, was designed to draw attention to the problems of poverty and racial injustice that shaped American society. The protests of men like Milton and Presley were bringing the increasing black consciousness of the late 1960s into the sports world in an interconnected but subtly different way.

It is in this context that we now turn to events in Wyoming in the fall of 1969 and discuss the waning potential for sport to be used as an arena for protesting against the racial injustice of wider society. The Wyoming protest has traditionally been discussed in relation to the general racial unrest in athletics departments across the country in 1969. Indeed, the NCAA files on racial incidents refer to it alongside other disturbances concerning black players.
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Wyoming represents a case study of the black athletic revolt in the period after the 1968 Olympics. Just as the national sporting community reacted angrily as the Black Power Movement intruded on the sporting arena, so the local community in Wyoming blamed outside agitators for the disruption of their football program. Events at Wyoming were different from other manifestations of the black athletic revolt on other campuses in 1968 and 1969. The attitudes toward the black athletes involved were informed by these other developments, however. The twin forces of countercultural challenges to traditional authority and assertions of black masculinity made it increasingly difficult for athletes to use sport to successfully advance the black freedom struggle.

The attempted protest at Wyoming can be traced back to the original architect of the black athletic revolt. Harry Edwards was instrumental in helping black football players at San Jose State realize their desire to wear black armbands during a game against Brigham Young University (BYU). The bands were a protest against a doctrine of the Mormon Church that stated that black people could not be members of the priesthood. With head coach Joe McMullen offering his own criticism of Mormon policies, the San Jose State authorities produced a “right of conscience” agreement that allowed players to sit out games or express their political views on the field.
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These events embody the initial aims of the black athletic revolt: to use the sporting arena as a place to dramatize wider racial injustice.

Black students at the University of Wyoming also expressed a desire to protest against the racial views of BYU. The fourteen black players who were subsequently suspended from their football team for attempting to protest were not boycotting any games; they were not accusing their coach of being racist or culturally insensitive. Instead, they were trying to use the sporting arena to point to a racial injustice that existed in wider society, in this case the continued racial prejudice and segregation that were features of the Mormon institution. Theirs was a protest in the spirit and style of that carried out at San Jose a year earlier.

There were very few African American students at BYU. When integrated teams visited Utah they often encountered difficulties when staying in Provo because of the racial prejudice they encountered. Indeed, there was not a suitable hotel that would accommodate an integrated team of white and black players.
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San Jose State was not the only institution to protest the policies of BYU. Their passions raised by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., black student athletes at the University of Texas at El Paso, including Bob Beamon, organized a boycott of a track meet with BYU. The university's response was to cut off financial aid to the black athletes and suspend them from further competition. When the university tried to hold a home track event without the black athletes, African American female students invaded the track and held a sit-down protest, whereupon they had to be removed by city and state policemen.
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Early in 1969, black members of the New Mexico basketball team wore black ribbons on their shirts as a protest during a game with BYU. Following this incident the school's athletics department ruled that no deviation from standard uniform would be permitted in the future.
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Black members of the University of Wyoming Cowboys football team had themselves experienced racial prejudice while playing against BYU. During games they were subject to racial taunts from opponents on the field and spectators in the stand. Tackles after the whistle aimed at the Cowboys' African Americans were common, and these “cheap shots” often carried not only symbolic but also physical weight. Many of the BYU players had completed their mission and come back to play football at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three; therefore they were three or four years older than some of the Cowboys. As black Wyoming player Melvin Hamilton argued, “These guys were physically men compared to us, so they could put some damage on us.”
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The fourteen football players who met with Willie Black, the chancellor of the Black Student Alliance, in October 1969 were among approximately 150 African American students on the Wyoming campus.
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It was Black who explained the racial practices of the Mormon Church at a black student meeting prior to the game with BYU.

This example of the impact of student activism on the university and consequently on the athletics department had long been anticipated by head football coach Lloyd Eaton. Eaton made it clear to members of his team in 1968 that they were not permitted to get involved in any political activism during their time on the team. He sent his assistants to an ROTC protest to report whether any of his players were present. He warned his team not to get involved in any protests about the Vietnam War and said that they were not permitted to form any kind of faction or group within the team.
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The Black Student Alliance made public a letter criticizing the racial policies of the Mormons. This letter was delivered to Eaton and indicated that “the Black Students Alliance opposed on moral and human grounds contests with Brigham Young University and that the BSA would protest any such contest including the football game with BYU scheduled for 18 October, by wearing of black arm bands.”
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Eaton responded by telling black tri-captain Joe Williams that he would not allow the players to wear the armbands at practice or on the field of play. Williams informed the thirteen other black players on the team of Eaton's decision, after which they decided to seek a meeting with the coach the day before the game to see if some form of compromise could be reached. The players were trying to engage with issues of racial discrimination outside of their own athletics department. They were not threatening to boycott any games or protesting about their own coach in the way many other black athletes were across the country in 1969.

The fourteen black players went to Eaton's office well before practice was due to begin on the morning of October 17. Each player was wearing a black cloth armband. Eaton ordered the players to the field house, where he informed them that they were “through” because they had violated his rules. The coach remarked that they could “go back on Negro relief” or play for the black schools “Grambling or Morgan State.”
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Joe Williams argued that Eaton did not understand his black players. He maintained that the black Cowboys wanted to wear armbands, or black socks, or a black cross on their helmets but had decided that if Eaton said they could not then they would be willing to protest with just their black skins. Williams maintained that the coach would not listen to their requests but instead sneered and yelled.
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“He flew off the handle and said things about us being on nigger relief and that was the kind of thing that just incensed the whole situation there and as a result of that we were kicked off the team.”
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Because the players went to Eaton well before practice was to begin they felt they were not breaking any rule by wearing their black armbands.

Eaton, however, regarded the players' actions as an affront to his leadership and was not interested in discussing a compromise or the extent of the black grievances. The coach believed that he and the university had given the players an opportunity that they were wasting. He remarked later, “What we were trying to do for these fellows was to give them that chance to really do something for their people by getting that education.”
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Eaton had suspended the players twenty-four hours before the game against BYU. In an attempt to resolve the crisis, university president William Carlson and Wyoming governor Stanley Hathaway convened a meeting with the fourteen black players that stretched long into the night. Eaton did not attend the meeting but spoke to Carlson and Hathaway after it had concluded. The black players refused to back down because of the way their coach had approached their request. Just as Edwards had used sport as a power lever to push for concessions at San Jose State in 1967, so the black players at Wyoming realized the power they had when threatening to ruin the Cowboys' football season.
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The real power lay with Eaton, however. He had produced a winning football program and had the support of the local community. As Melvin Hamilton later recalled, “Football at that time was really more powerful than the presidency and more powerful than the governor…. [The players] did not have enough power to call down the man who put the University of Wyoming on the map athletically.”
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The black players were informed that Eaton's decision would stand and they were off the team.

At Berkeley and Oregon State black players threatened to or actually did withdraw from practice sessions in order to raise awareness of various racial problems. Both Presley and Milton accused their coaches of racial insensitivity, and inherent in their protest was the argument that sport itself was the home of racial prejudice. Whereas at Marquette basketball players briefly withdrew from the university in order to put pressure on administrators to improve the institution's commitment to civil rights and social justice, at Wyoming the black players were removed from the team by the coach for requesting to protest against the racist practices of another institution. The black players did not attempt to protest against the problems that they encountered on their own campus, and complaints concerning racial prejudice at Wyoming surfaced only after the dismissal of the black fourteen. Eaton's response was typical of many coaches who felt besieged by protesting athletes during 1969. Crucially, though, the circumstances at Wyoming were different. For Eaton the request to wear armbands was not distinct from the desire to grow a mustache or sideburns; they all represented a violation of his rules. Nevertheless, there was a subtle difference. While Milton and others argued that facial hair was part of their cultural identity, the black fourteen requested to wear armbands to draw attention to racial segregation and injustice.

Certainly there were racial tensions at Wyoming before the incident involving BYU but these did not produce any significant protests. Black student and Cowboys player Melvin Hamilton had experienced some of the problems facing black students on white campuses two years before the protest at Wyoming. Hamilton was playing under Coach Eaton but was also dating a white woman on campus. The couple wanted to get married and Hamilton requested the assistance of the athletics department concerning housing and finance. It was customary for the department to assist students who were married during their time on the football team. Hamilton explained that “Coach Eaton said he could not let me marry a woman of the white race or the supporters would run him out of town, so consequently he and I had a blowout.”
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As a result Hamilton refused to play football any longer. He left the school and spent some time in the army before returning to play for the Cowboys when Eaton agreed to give him his scholarship back. Hamilton was determined not to let racism get in the way of his education but was aware of the racial issues on campus. He believed that white students saw the black athletes only as football players and not as legitimate students.
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In his book
Sports in America,
James Michener told a story about one of the black players at Wyoming who
made romantic advances toward a white girl. When news of this reached some of the white Cowboys players a posse was organized to “gun down the nigger if he makes another move.”
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