Missouri football team sacks school's top officials

Attempts by black athletes to assert power have been mixed.

In 1969, Gold Glove outfielder Curt Flood challenged baseball’s “reserve clause” by refusing to accept a trade to Philadelphia from St. Louis. He lost his case in the U.S. Supreme Court and, in the prime of his career, played in only 13 more games. But his challenge eventually led to the abolishment of the reserve clause, in which players were tied to one team forever, and paved the way for free agency.

“That was strictly Curt Flood,” said Hank Aaron. “But I also know that he had the backing of all the black ballplayers. But that was a risk that Curt Flood had to take by himself.”

Two of the most significant and visible acts by black athletes could have been seen as individual acts: Muhammad Ali’s refusal to enlist in the Army, which cost him his boxing license; and Smith and Carlos’ Black Power salute, which brought praise from supporters and intense criticism from those who thought it was inappropriate — even un-American.

In 1967, Smith joined the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which advocated boycotting the 1968 games because of how blacks were being treated in America.

As in the wake of Ferguson today, cities were burning and the black athlete was changing. Icons like Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens seemed behind the times with the emergence of activists athletes like Aaron, Ali, Lew Alcindor and Jim Brown.

As they waited for the medal ceremony, Smith told Carlos he was going to raise his “fist to the sky.” He rolled up the legs of his warm-up suit to show his black socks, representing poverty. When the National Anthem started, the American athletes bowed their heads. Then they raised their fists. Smith said the gesture wasn’t meant to be strictly about Black Power; it represented resistance to injustice against African-Americans.

The University of Missouri Tigers forced the resignations of the university’s top administrators on Monday – an unprecedented show of power by student athletes who were angry about the school’s response to complaints about racism on campus.

Late Monday, the players and other protesters at Mizzou claimed their second trophy of the day: University Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin stepped down, following system President Tim Wolfe by several hours.

Languishing at 4-5 in the tough SEC East division, the Tigers were a largely forgettable team – before this past weekend. Now they have successfully wielded the wealth and power of college football as a weapon against their own school and stand on the verge of changing college sports forever. The decades-old perception of college athletes as essentially voiceless? That ended on Monday.

“Anybody who thinks this is not going to happen again is out of their mind,” said Harry Edwards, a professor emeritus at University of California Berkeley and author of “The Revolt of the Black Athlete.” “I saw this coming and I sent an email to NCAA President Mark Emmert telling him that it was his responsibility to get your presidents, athletic directors and coaches to understand the era we are moving into so they can be prepared.

“This is what the NCAA should be doing — at least with the urgency that they use whenever a kid gets an extra dollar for a hamburger the same night he put a million into the school.”

Famed black athletes in Atlanta, including Hank Aaron, celebrated the Missouri team.

“I just feel like sometimes, we don’t know how much power we have,” said Aaron, the Braves icon who eclipsed Babe Ruth's home run record, when contacted at home Monday evening. “I can recall several things that I tried to do myself, but I could never get participation from others. But … the Missouri players were a group. That is why they were able to see some results.”

With angry students demanding the resignation of President Wolfe, the football team joined in on Saturday, saying it would not play or practice again until Wolfe was gone. The threat carried real consequences: even the forfeit of Saturday’s game against Brigham Young University would have cost Mizzou $1 million.

In Atlanta, Tommie Smith watched and smiled.

It was 47 years ago that he and fellow Olympian John Carlos stood on the medal stand and raised their black-gloved fists in the air to protest racial injustice in America.

“This is the power of a group banding together for equal rights and attention,” Smith said. “Sociologically speaking it has all forces of moving things along, proactively and nonviolently.”

This semester, the University of Missouri — two hours away from Ferguson — has been troubled by reports of overt acts of racism that have brought the school national attention.

In September, student body president Payton Head, who is black, reported that a group of men yelled racial slurs at him. In October a black group on campus was rehearsing for a homecoming event when a man stormed their stage and hurled racial epithets at them. Soon after, someone drew a swastika on a university building using feces.

“I am not totally surprised by anything, but I was surprised by some of these events,” said Vivian King, a Missouri graduate and former news anchor in Milwaukee. As a student in the early 80s, King was active politically, even camping out in makeshift shantytowns to protest apartheid.

Still, she said she experienced little racism and in 1985, made school history by becoming part of the first black couple voted Mr. and Miss Homecoming. It was at the alumni luncheon where it was announced that the couple won that she heard the N-word directed at her for the first time, when an alumnus whispered loudly: “I can’t believe they let two (N-words) win.”

“So this saddens me, because I thought we had finally turned a corner,” King said. ”

Protests spread across campus

As the clamor grew on campus, students claimed that Wolfe was refusing to take their complaints seriously. Jonathan Butler, a graduate student, went on a hunger strike, saying he would not eat again until Wolfe resigned. The student government called for Wolfe’s job and faculty members canceled classes in support of the students.

Not everyone applauded the outcome.

W. Dudley McCarter, a former president of the university’s alumni group, told the New York Tiimes that alumni, in calls and emails on Monday, had expressed disappointment in Mr. Wolfe’s decision. “They feel like he was backed into a corner and was made a scapegoat for things he didn’t do,” Mr. McCarter said.

Conservative talk show host Michael Graham devoted much of his Monday morning show on 106.7 FM to arguing that Wolfe was bullied out of a job.

“It was bullying, not just from the athletic department, but the overall student body. The power of the SEC was used to crush this guy and still, nobody can say what he did,” Graham said. “The school’s coddling these spoiled brat whiners and I wouldn’t be surprised that as a result of this, the worst elements of Black Lives Matter begin to dominate the conversation. There is a real imbalance here.”

At a special meeting Monday of the university system's governing Board of Curators, Wolfe said his resignation was “the right thing to do. … I take full responsibility for this frustration, and I take full responsibility for the inaction that has occurred.”

The 'second era of black revolt'

There may, indeed, have been a precedent to the Missouri team’s threat. Edwards, the retired Berkeley professor, recalled that in the fall of 1967, he helped organize a football boycott at San Jose State to force the administration to desegregate the campus. Buckling under the pressure, school officials canceled the season opener against Texas Western in what might be the first and only time the threat of a racial boycott canceled a major college football game.

He said we are in the “second era of black revolt.”

“You will see that the parallels are identical. There is nothing new in terms of leveraging sports in order to achieve broader goals,” said Edwards, who is a consultant to the San Francisco 49ers. “The only thing that has shocked me about it is that it took so long to happen.”

In fact, and as Edwards knows, it has been a long road for African-American athletes.

In 1959 Hank Aaron and other black players on the Milwaukee Braves demanded that they be able to stay with the team in hotels while in spring training in Bradenton, Fla. Black players usually stayed in the homes of local prominent blacks.

“Even though we were treated like royalty in the black community, we were tired of it,” Aaron said. “If we going to play together, we needed to stay together.”

The club initially balked at the idea, but in 1960, the team moved its spring training camp to West Palm Beach, and all the players lived in the same hotel, Aaron said.

Tommie Smith, the Olympian who lives in Stone Mountain, said he can’t help but feel a part of what happened at Missouri.

“I certainly do feel that they followed in my footsteps. But there were footsteps that I followed,” Smith said. “I stood for something. They are standing for something. They are doing the right thing. This is a big step for them, because they put their education on the line. I hope across the nation recognizes that.”

Staff writer Mark Davis contributed to this article.