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.

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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?