A Pioneering Force
January 15, 2007 03:44 PM | General
January 15, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – As we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, it is also a time to recognize the accomplishments of our pioneering athletes at West Virginia University.
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| Fullback Dick Leftridge (pictured here) joined Roger Alford as the first pair of African-American scholarship athletes at West Virginia University in 1963.
WVU Sports Communications photo |
The door to WVU athletics was opened to people of all color in 1963 when Roger Alford and Dick Leftridge became the school’s first scholarship athletes in football. That paved the way a year later for West Virginia’s first African-American freshman basketball class consisting of Ron Williams, Ed Harvard, Norman Holmes and Jim Lewis.
“The black population in Morgantown in 1964 was very, very small,” Jim Lewis recalled in 2004. “I think most of us came in with our eyes wide open. But we found ways to get stuff done. We went over to Osage and found places where we could do things and have the kinds of experiences that we were accustomed to.”
Garrett Ford, West Virginia’s star running back in 1965 and 1966 and the school’s first full-time African American assistant coach in 1970, says flatly that if it weren’t for Leftridge and Alford he wouldn’t have remained in school at West Virginia.
“They set the tone for all of us and in reality if it wasn’t for Dick and Roger I’m not sure any of us would have stayed,” Ford said. “We all got homesick our first semester here and wanted to leave and Dick and Roger kind of helped us through that.”
Ford, a Washington, D.C., native, remembers experiencing extreme culture shock when he first arrived in Morgantown in 1965.
“I had never been in a place where I had seen poor white people,” he said. “I never saw white garbage collectors.”
The winds of change were blowing throughout the country, beginning with the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 and continuing with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The first integrated college football game in the South took place in 1947 when Virginia played Harvard. Prior to that, northern schools typically agreed to “bench” its handful of black players when they traveled to play games in the south. Another solution for northern schools was to simply avoid scheduling southern teams.
The Cotton Bowl was integrated without incident in 1948; the Orange Bowl in 1955 and the Sugar Bowl in 1956 when Georgia segregationist governor Marvin Griffin backed down from his threat of having Georgia Tech boycott the game because Pitt had African-American Bobby Grier on its roster.
The ACC integrated in 1963, the Southwest Conference in 1966 and the SEC in 1967. A watershed event in college football took place in Tuscaloosa, Ala., when a completely white Alabama team played host to integrated USC on Sept. 12, 1970.
College basketball took a similar path. The Loyola (Chicago) teams of the early 1960s were thought to be responsible for removing the color barrier from the hardwood. Coach George Ireland broke the game’s longstanding “gentlemen’s agreement” of not playing more than three black players at any given time during the 1962-63 season, becoming the first team in Division I history to employ an all-black starting lineup in 1962.
Of even greater national significance was the 1966 NCAA championship game when Texas Western used an all-black lineup to defeat an all-white Kentucky team to claim the national title. The team’s victory inspired the 2006 movie Glory Road.
To learn more about the history of athletic integration at West Virginia University, Click HERE.
Futher Reading
A True Trailblazer
Breaking Barriers
African-American Pioneers at West Virginia University
Baseball
Bruce Clinton (1976)
Football
Roger Alford and Dick Leftridge (1963)
Men’s Basketball
Ed Harvard, Norman Holmes, Jim Lewis and Ron Williams (1964)
Men’s Soccer
George Woods, Jr. (1965)
Men’s Track
Phillip Edwards (1961)
Wrestling
Norman Hill (1965)
Women’s Basketball
Cathy Parson and Janice Drummonds (1980)
Gymnastics
Yvette Clark (1987)
Women’s Swimming
Vanessa and Valerie Patterson (1993)
Women’s Track
Cheryl Nabors (1976)
Women's Tennis
Shirley Robinson (1981)
