‘Benching Jim Crow’–Smart, heartbreaking, detailed
December 2, 2010
By Rus Bradburd
Two important and fascinating books about race and sports were released this year. One is the rich and compelling Carry the Rock, which profiles the football team at Little Rock’s Central High School 50 years after nine black students’ historic desegregation of the school.
Of local interest, though, is the long-awaited labor of love from UTEP history professor Charles Martin. For decades scholars and journalists have used Martin as a resource, because he was known as the unofficial guru of sports desegregation in the United States. Martin has finally released Benching Jim Crow: the Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sports, 1890-1980 (University of Illinois Press). Martin made readers, scholars, journalists and fans wait patiently. Perhaps he wanted us to get a small taste of what it felt like for black players and coaches kept out of competition before 1980.
In this case, though, the long wait was well worth it.
Martin’s book details, with patience and wisdom, the long and strange journey of black athletes at the collegiate level in this country. The book is incredibly researched, well detailed, and follows the arc of American sports history – from the unwritten gentlemen’s agreements, to the opening of the floodgates with Texas Western’s (now UTEP) historic win with an all-black lineup in the 1966 NCAA basketball championship, and beyond. Martin examines not just the players’ roles in desegregation, but the intentions of the universities and the careers of important coaches. The book focuses on the elite conferences of the Old South, leagues that for years ignored black athletes – the ACC, the SEC and the mostly-Texan SWC.
Martin credits the culture of competition so prevalent in America as the impetus for changing social attitudes across the country. Often coaches were pulled in two directions – wanting badly to win games, but being withheld from recruiting the best players by their Board of Trustees, fans, administration or their own fears.
Most sports fans in the area know the story of the 1966 Texas Western basketball team that shook the foundations of college sports. Often ignored, though, was the role of Charlie Brown at the same school. Brown and his brother Cecil became the first black athletes at Texas Western, years before Don Haskins arrived or won the NCAA title. Before Charlie Brown’s arrival, Texas Western had a history of refusing to play integrated teams in El Paso. (Most NMSU fans, incidentally, have never heard the story of local legend Lou Henson’s role in bringing some of the first black athletes – and a Mexican-American assistant coach – to Hardin-Simmons University, where he coached in the 1960s. The smaller Baptist college is briefly mentioned in this book.)
Martin skillfully weaves in the constant push-pull between college administrators, athletic directors and coaches, as their relentless pursuit of national status on the sports fields was constantly undermined by racial policies and prejudices of the time.
Benching Jim Crow is smart, heartbreaking and meticulously detailed. The book is a vital resource for anyone interested in race, sports or American history.
Rus Bradburd is the author of Forty Minutes of Hell: the Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richardson.
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