Ball of Confustion: Race, Basketball and the Chaos of 1972

Segregation, determination, demonstration, integration, aggravation, humiliation, obligation to our nation  BALL OF CONFUSION  That's what the world is today.  The Temptations 1972

March 8, 1972 was the night all hell broke loose. The Missouri State Class L (Large) boys’ high school basketball tournament played two quarterfinal games that fateful evening on opposite sides of the state. In the immediate aftermath of both, racial strife exploded into violence on a stage intended to showcase a simple game between mere teenagers. 

St. Louis’ Kiel Auditorium saw St. Louis Northwest High School play Kirkwood High School and the campus fieldhouse at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville hosted the Kansas City Central High School vs. Raytown South High School matchup. At each venue the schedule featured one suburban predominantly white school vs one inner-city black team, all cheered on by standing room only crowds, equally represented along racial lines. The assigned officials for the two games were all four white. The combined season records entering play for the four teams were a gaudy 113 wins and 11 losses. The four head coaches, two white and two black, would combine over their careers to win 3,368 games and log 182 years of total head coaching experience - Mt. Rushmore type numbers.

The events of that evening are a microcosm of the head scratching befuddlement that both blacks and whites felt towards each other in 1972. Neither side understood the other. Whites felt that legislation of the landmark civil rights laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s had eradicated racism from American society. African-Americans felt that much-needed progress was still yet to be made. The two basketball riots of that evening 47 years ago served as a near-perfect illustration  of the combined fear and belligerence that had in 1972 come to so infect the relations between the races in America. Often, at high profile athletic events of the day, an unsteady truce between the races existed. But, at other times, the emotion and passion for the moment could swirl toxic. March 8, 1972 was one of those toxic times.

EXCERPTS: 

  

Jim Crow Segregation

In the fall of '49 the Jim Crow segregated South was, for a poor white sharecropper, a life of little choice. One political party (Democrat), one crop (cotton), and one dollar, if you were lucky. But, the lot of a black man was worse. There was no choice and there was no dignity. For a black man passivity and poverty in Caruthersville ruled, life passing slowly in the cotton fields amid dirt and the boiling summer sun.  Bush’s experience in Caruthersville, he says today,  is something, “I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. There was nowhere in that little town black people could go to socialize,” recalls Bush.  “Our students, their parents were cotton field workers. We were given hardly any money for those kids to educate them. My wife and I both had college degrees. My wife had been a college professor, for goodness sakes. Made no difference, we were treated with no respect by local whites. We might as well been in Mississippi.”

Seven years later, by the time Bush left Caruthersville and moved back to Kansas City, Missouri had begun open racial competition in high school athletics with all schools belonging to the MSHSAA. The Missouri Negro Athletic Association (MNAA), until then the organization for black high school sports in Missouri, was swallowed up by MSHSSA. All athletic competitions, by Missouri law until 1956,  were separate by race. There were before 1956  some isolated desegregated competitions winked at during the regular season. For several years in the early 1950’s the all-white St. Louis Public High League, “in a show of friendship,” invited the city’s “negro” schools” to compete in the PHL’s spring track meet for the boys and “play day” for the girls. But until 1956, come playoff time, competition segregated by race, as called for by law, was strictly enforced.

Almost 20 years after the elimination of separate state high school athletic associations, in 1972, no black educational leader had ever served on the MSHSAA Board of Directors. Such “membership without representation,” was for years bemoaned by the black schools of St. Louis and Kansas City.  “They did give us a chance to play basketball with them and it was now open for us if we really want to do it,” remembers Bush. “But it wasn’t like the white schools were to hug us and kiss us and welcome us with open arms. We got the opportunity to play, true; we just had a lot of catching up to do. Seems like I spent the next 50 years playing catch up." Bush retired in 2001, almost one-half century  after segregation of the nation’s public schools was declared by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional. Jack Bush in 55 years of toil on the high school basketball sidelines never coached a white player.

Educational Failure

Both the St. Louis and Kansas City failures demonstrate the power of the federal courts. Drastically, and often over vocal patron complaint, local education underwent Federal Court mandated major shifts in priorities. Well intentioned or not, the court’s mandates and leadership brought no significant change for the better for either district’s students. Under judicial oversight, failing St. Louis and Kansas City school systems have, since 1972, morphed into much more expensive but now totally dysfunctional entities. Throughout the now 50+ years of court ordered “solutions” for our segregated urban schools, it is painfully apparent the courts and their academia allies have not the insights nor the strategies needed to produce the equal educational opportunity that they so haughtily, through their autarchy, champion.

The Game

For every championship team comes a season defining moment, when confidence replaces self-doubt. Identifying the moment is sometimes not easy. But, not in this story. For the 1972 Kirkwood Pioneers, that time was now. With its season hanging in the balance, Miller did not blink. In the timeout huddle, the coach was emphatic to the point that his certainty shot waves of confidence through his team, just when they needed it the most. All season, in every practice and game, Miller had stressed to his team the importance of continually pushing the action. His message in the biggest timeout huddle of the year was simple, “Get it and go. We know what we need to do, so go do it.” He specifically told his team, regardless of whether Shelton’s second free throw was good or not, no timeout was to be called. Just do what we have practiced for all year, just get it and go.

Progress

The 1972 Kirkwood High School basketball  team, the only integrated one of the four in this story,  is a metaphor of what this nation could be when all come together in a selfless quest for a common goal. If there is any place where true equality can be found, it is on the basketball hardwood, a popular catalyst with the power of March Madness to bring all factions of a community (temporarily, at least) together. 

The widow of Bud Lathrop told me she was so proud of how the great coach had over the years guided his beloved home town of Raytown through a total racial flip flop. If you listened close enough you could hear the barriers falling, the walls come tumbling down, she tells me.  “We had all white boys when we went to school here and for the first 20 years that Bud coached here,” the coach’s wife says. In 1972, Raytown South basketball was as white as snow. “Then the black kids began moving in,” she says. “ I remember the 1990 team (undefeated state champions) were about half white and half black. The boys got along so well and that helped the town accept each other.  Our fans, blacks and whites, cheered with one voice.” 

Blame

The Central loyalists were outraged at what they saw as a vague and ambiguous ruling while ambivalent to fair and consistent past board actions involving white schools and their fans’ misbehavior. Coach Bush pointed to the exemplary behavior of his athletes before, during, and after the contest. Bush objected to the school being held accountable for the behavior of blacks who were not staff or students at Central.

Several Raytown South players commented they felt the punishment of Central was misdirected, that the players at Central were being punished for the actions of their crowd of followers who had caused the problems. Ed Stoll said he felt bad for the Central players. Coach Bud Lathrop had spoken with the state board at the hearing. He refused to comment as to the fairness of the ruling and the punishment, nor reveal what he had shared with the MSHSAA tribunal. He did say he felt that a school was responsible for the behavior of its followers. Central Coach Bush vehemently disagreed. “Not one of our students has been accused of misbehavior,” Bush observed. “You can’t make us responsible for the behavior of every black person who attends the game, and that is what the state is doing.”

1972 or 2019

In 2019, with the exception of the most extreme racists, the “N” word is culturally taboo and brings immediate censure to the fringe racists who use it.  However , the change is only semantic, the intent of the context slur still socially pervasive, just spoken through racist dog whistles like “The Wall and “shit hole countries.” For conservative white middle America in 2019, the “nigger radicals” of the athletic world are  Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James and those NFL “son of a bitches” take a knee thugs; spoiled millionaires who do not appreciate what white America’s new and enlightened view of race has done for them.

Today, 50 years later, Ali is considered an American icon. The pair of 1968 Olympic protesters, John Carlos and Tommy Smith, are now labeled as heroes. History is a great predictor. My money, based on the past,  says 50 years from now Kalen Kaepernick will be considered a cultural  hero, viewed as a visionary who sacrificed his own career to call attention to social injustice. Just watch. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Richard Nixon and the “Silent Majority” of 1972 or Donald Trump and the “Deplorables” of  2019; is there really a difference? 

Take the High Road

I spent the years 2012 to 2014 on the open road listening to Americans. We are today a divided nation. I wanted to know why? This book is what I heard.

“A bit of Keourec, a dash of Kuralt with just the right pinch of Least Heat-Moon; a must read recipe for the lover of the open road and the true aficionado of what is unique Americana.”

The Ultimate Road Trip for true lover of Americana

Hit the Great American Open Road and listen as common folk discuss their history, their fears and their dreams; all in an elusive search for common ground in a rapidly changing nation.

We are a nation of sad stories; we bleed historical tears soaked in cultural pathos. Most I met on the open road had a tale of personal woe they almost always were quick to share with a stranger.  There are a million ways to break a heart, to kill a dream. The more street savvy and life toughened the teller, I learned, the more poignant their life’s tale of double cross. “Better to have loved and lost, my ass,” a chain smoking grave yard shift waitress at an all-night diner in Kentucky told me. “Anyone spouting that bullshit obviously never lost anyone worth squat.” I grew to respect, but also to expect that type of down to the earth truthful wisdom straight from the mouth of common folk; a refreshing tell it like it is no spin zone of reality.”

Like the endless byways I traveled, on and on the stories rolled.

Excerpts

“Although handsome in a rakish sort of way, his appearance still belied a man huddled around a camp fire over a mile and half up in the Rockies with the first blizzard of the season bearing down. He looked 40; but in reality, I was to learn, he was past 60 years of age. His dress was akin to a man just released from a gulag. Disheveled hair hung to below his shoulders, held in place by a wool stocking cap. A bushy beard framed a weathered face. His mismatched clothes were tattered and worn in layers to protect him from the cold while his mittens had the fingers cut out. His attire smelled of many camp fires while his eyes were crystal clear blue and danced as he spoke. I immediately sensed gentleness only men of immense strength possess.”

Prairie Blitz: High School Football on America's 50 Yard Line

THE ULTIMATE ROAD TRIP FOR A HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL JUNKIE

You know you are coaching football at small high school IF you measure the quality of your victories against fast food franchises. Dan Imdieke, coach of the Linton, North Dakota Lions has compiled a 33 year record of 288-67. Last fall (2010), Linton traveled south to play the squad representing the much larger town of Mobridge, SD. Overcoming a two touchdown deficit in the 4th quarter, the Lions rallied for a 34-28 win. One excited Lion player informed the coach after the game that "they (Mobridge) have a McDonald's AND a Pizza Hut. We have beaten a lot of Dairy Queen towns, but never a McDonald's or a Pizza Hut, and they have both!!"



In 2011 I followed the fortunes of three long time dominant small high school football programs: Canadian, TX, McCook, NE and Linton, ND; as they strove towards the ultimate goal of any high school athlete: a state championship.



I wanted a random choice of towns, so I chose Highway 83 as my anchor. I will need no GPS to find my way on this journey, as US Highway 83 passes through each town, a common main street, linking all three. Call it the ultimate road trip for a high school football junkie. Highway 83 is the last non-interstate highway left in our federal transportation system that runs unimpeded from the Canadian to the Mexican border. Along its’ route I expect to find the “true” America- one of real people whose solid but common everyday lives never make the national news. I intend to record the human drama that is so unique, and so American, to small town high school athletics.

This story will form the second leg in a three part trilogy of books I will write on high school football. This edition of small town highway school football should be on the book shelves by June 2012. I expect a 180 degree difference in environment along rural Highway 83 from what I found at inner-city Roosevelt High School in St. Louis, MO, the team whose season I chronicled in 2008, the first book of this three part story. (www.stlhsfb.com).



What I expect to be no different in Linton, ND, McCook, NB and Canadian, TX, from what I found in St. Louis, MO, is the passion of teenagers to succeed, and the unqualified support of their family and community in that noble quest. So, if you are looking for me this fall, I can be found somewhere on US Highway 83 between Antler, North Dakota and Laredo, Texas. 

*******

THREE SMALL TOWNS, THREE BIG DREAMS

Almany spent the 2011 fall following the fortunes of three long time small town high school football powers: Linton, North Dakota; McCook, Nebraska and Canadian, Texas. All three towns are located on US Highway 83, America’s 50 yard line. The book chronicles not only the season’s wins and losses on the scoreboard, but also the joys and the heartbreak of each of the three schools, highlighting the drama involved in this unique slice of Americana: the love affair small towns have with their teenage football heroes.

Along the trail Almany chronicled characters with “backbones as strong as a North Dakota winter prairie wind, enough courage to fill a Nebraska bushel basket of corn and loyalty as straight and true as the spine of a Texas Panhandle cowboy.”

Come along for this 25,000 mile wandering on the back roads of the heartland to see the pure side of the game that still exists in the small burgs on the High Plains. You will find none of the toxic mercenariest behavior that has soiled any last pretense that big time college football is a noble activity for true student-athletes. It is refreshing to see that this negativity has yet to infest the small town football worlds of Linton, ND, McCook, NE or Canadian, TX. That alone, makes this a spirit lifting story that needs to be told. 

******

In the Most Unexpected Places


Traveling the back roads of America, as I like to do, I have seen some head turning, out of place commercial establishments that defy all business logic. I once saw a store front sign for deep sea diving outfitter in the desert town of Ely, NV. Another time I did a double take as

I drove past a Quonset Hutt in the absolute middle of nowhere, not a house for miles around, in the South Dakota Badlands, where a large sign announced that the rusting military surplus building before me hosted a “Gymnastics Academy.”


In many ways I applaud the individuals who opened and operated these businesses. I doubt they were making any money, but I suspect both were run by strong minded individuals who didn’t care what conventional business wisdom said. I wish now I would have taken the time to stop and meet them. Independent entrepreneur risk takers are what have made the USA the envy of the capitalistic world.

To contact the Author, please call 636-232-4688

Riding the Storm Out: A Year if Inner City High School Football

A YEAR OF INNER CITY HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS-GHETTO STYLE  Cast against the grim background of racial disharmony in the disengaging and collapsing city of St. Louis, MO – an uplifting saga of the youthful exuberance of high school football and the noble struggle for survival of an inner city school.

EXCERPTS FROM RIDING THE STORM OUT

Leadership

Speaking with the older students of Roosevelt, whose tenure as Roughriders spans to the pre Mr. Houston days, a stark picture quickly emerges of a school that was overrun by out of control students; dominated by multiple neighborhood gangs who had taken control of the school hallways. Senior football player Quadricous Sanford in 2006 transferred to Roosevelt from South Panola High School in Batesville, MS, several months before Houston’s arrival. “Mississippi was bad,” Sanford says in a thick southern drawl, “but this place (Roosevelt) was wild. I come here and dudes are spitting on the floor right in the hallways, tearing up things and just being crazy. I say ‘why you do that, this is our school, why you tear it up.’ Mr. Houston comes in and all that changed. Here now we got discipline, not only in football, but also in school. Mr. Houston come in and just start(ed) kicking the gang members out. He tells us all the time ‘there is only one gang here now, the Roosevelt Gang, and everyone here is a member.’”

Houston states the condition he inherited in quantitative terms: “Our first point of emphasis when I came here was to hold people accountable for their behavior. We had 38 identifiable gangs at Roosevelt in 2006. Today (April, 2008) we can’t identify one known gang in our hallways. If some of our students are in gangs, they are keeping it quiet. They know if they throw signs or participate in any identifiable gang activity while in our building, they are gone. No second chances. No gray area. If you are in a gang, you will not go to school here, and if you in any way display your membership in our building, you are gone. The gang members, we had zero tolerance for them. That is non negotiable here at Roosevelt High School.” 

Hope

Hope is life. Without hope, we have no life. No one should ever be deprived of hope. For many of the young athletes on the Roosevelt High School football team, hope was all they had. The “Forgotten Boys,” as I came to refer to my football playing friends at RHS, were not dealt the strongest hand in the game of life. Privilege was not a term one would use to describe the family fortunes pinned to the chest of any of the Roosevelt players.

Despite the gloomy economical conditions of the everyday life of these young men, the hopes they espoused to me as they grew comfortable with my presence were, for the most part, well grounded in a strong optimism for the future. My fear is that, as time passes and these young men continued to suffer the societal kicks to the stomachs of their dreams, is that an accumulative reality will set in, their present hopes supplanted by the cynicism born of repeated failure. The odds of escaping the stark limitations of the inner city life they know, I fear, are not stacked in their favor. Yet still they dream.

Labor Activist Marshall Ganz said that young people have an almost biological destiny to dream. I found that Ganz’s wisdom rang true at Roosevelt High School. The optimism I found among its’ students was uplifting to the very core of mankind’s soul – the human spirit.

Pride

A hot discussion topic amongst  PHL football enthusiasts in both 2007 and 2008 centered around the debate as to who was the best running back in the PHL, Gateway Tech’s sophomore AJ Pearson or Roosevelt’s senior Antonio Carter. A college coach succinctly summed up Pearson’s style as such: “Watching him run is like watching clean water flow over rocks in a creek. His style is natural and effortless.” The star sophomore was already being called one of the top Class of 2011 recruits in the nation. A limitless future was predicted for the 6’2” multi talented running back. Pearson’s running style was effortless, at times appearing almost too easy. He was a top of the line Cadillac possessing a level of potential stardom most at Roosevelt could not relate to.

Carter, on the other hand, was a four wheel drive pickup; with a lot of mud under the chassis. Unlike Pearson, Carter was not a glider; he was a slasher. He didn’t flow; he attacked. While Pearson appeared to have hitched a ride onto a first class charter jet on his way to stardom, Carter took the city bus to work each day, lunch pail in hand - the people’s choice for best running back in the PHL. As Carter liked to point out about his more acclaimed rival, “the dude ain’t ever beat me on the field.”

Couple Carter’s God-given athletic talent with his humility and a courage level described by another coach as “more guts than a fish market” and Carter would seem to have a perfect football pedigree and a future well beyond the confines of Roosevelt High School and the Public High League. Only one problem area can be found on Carter’s football resume: he stands, with shoes on, only 5 feet 4 inches tall and weights a slight 140 lbs.  Carter’s RHS coaches emphasize his great team attitude. They tell college suitors that he would run through a brick wall if asked to. However, as college scouts are quick to point out, the hole in the brick wall the diminutive Carter would leave, would be a small one.

Brotherhood

So what lessons can be gleaned from the feel good story of Tyler Clubb, the white kid known affectionately by his black Roosevelt teammates as “White Chocolate?” To paraphrase his parents, it would be this: The beauty and educational value of athletics lies in the premise that everyone; regardless of racial, social, or economic differences; compete on an even playing field, void of social prejudice and discrimination. For Tyler, the football field at Roosevelt High School became his own personal proving ground, allowing him to earn not only the respect of his black teammates but, more importantly, his own self respect. The football driven self esteem he has nurtured - due to his participation at Roosevelt,

Tyler will tell you, is priceless. In due time, Clubb morphed from a scared 14 year old freshman into a self confident 18 year old team leader. He earned the respect of his teammates - and later their friendship - not because he is white, but because he showed a grit and drive that allowed him to endure. Along the way, he also willed himself into a pretty good football player.

Once Tyler was accepted as a teammate, the racial divide between his culture and that of his black teammates melted away- in essence, bridged by a camaraderie forged through endless hours of shared toil on the football field. Athletics teach youth a valuable lesson: respect is earned and lasting friendships are built, not on skin color, but as the end result of equals working together, striving toward a common goal.

Watching Clubb joke and banter in good natured fun with his black friends at a 2008 football practice, is a stark image in contrast to a much different scenario his father witnessed that summer evening four years prior: a timid and unsure 14 year old white boy, on his way to his first football practice at Roosevelt High School, walking gingerly through what his father perceived as a “threatening mob” of young black men in the Roosevelt High School parking lot. Over the next four years many of those same young men who comprised the perceived “threatening mob” would become like brothers to Clubb, teammates he would now “take a bullet for.”

Politics

For years, politicians throughout the state have used the SLPS to shamelessly court votes based upon irrational racial fears. Judges have used the urban students that form the constituency of the district like laboratory test mice, in a complex social experiment that created an idealistic master plan that promised educational bliss, but delivered results that have borne little academic success, while indirectly destroying block after block of city neighborhoods. At the same time, predominantly white suburban school districts, in the name of social benevolence, have taken the brightest and the best from the city schools, leaving those less blessed in academic and athletic prowess, to defend for themselves in a system that is as dismal a failure as any school district in the nation.

Heroes

By the Spring of 2008, the St. Louis Public Schools found itself floundering at an all time low water mark. The very survival of the district was suspect, many predicting within years, if not months, an impending doom and total systemic collapse. Into this educational abyss I walked - and found the exact opposite of what I had assumed. The reality I found was a dedication to the education and future of young people - on a front line, grass roots level - that should be awe inspiring to anyone who still believes in the populist dreams that are built upon the foundation of a free and public education.

Our public schools today are not burdened by a lack of modern day educational heroes; just a lack of knowing where to find them. They are out there. Within the St. Louis Public School System - an organization infested with political agendas that find little time or resources for the education of students - I found heroes. I found at Roosevelt High School teachers, coaches and administrators whose one simple daily goal was to make a positive impact on the lives of their students; one child at a time. Riding the Storm Out:  A Year of Intercity High School Football is their story.

Activism

Thom Kuhn, Charlie Tallman and the other volunteers of PHL, Inc., have buckets that are overflowing. Their unbridled, no strings attached philanthropy, has given the teenage football players of the St. Louis, MO Public High League a brief reprise from the daily grind of coming of age in a harsh and unforgiving city. In a culture where most inner city youth are forced to grow up much too fast, PHL, Inc. has provided a gift whose value is beyond measure: the chance to be forever young - suspended Peter Pan style - in a perpetual state of youthful exuberance and celebration. Due to the generosity of strangers, the athletes of the Public High League now play on athletic fields of grass so green it hurts your eyes, so soft you never want to leave. “Man,” says Roosevelt quarterback Arlando Bailey, “I just want to stay right here, right now, and play football forever.”