Read more about the article Daugherty and Willie Ray Smith Sr. courted Jerry LeVias to board Underground Railroad

Daugherty and Willie Ray Smith Sr. courted Jerry LeVias to board Underground Railroad

By TOM SHANAHAN Jerry LeVias is on the phone, a stationary moment unlike his 1960s trailblazing college football career. In those days, the Southwest Conference’s first Black scholarship football player left segregated Beaumont, Tex., a refinery town near Houston, for Southern Methodist University in Dallas. It was a time and place resistant to integration that kept him on the move outrunning racism. SMU students ostracized him, fans on the road taunted him with a noose (Texas) and black…

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MLK helped Jerry LeVias and Hayden Fry change the Southwest Conference

By TOM SHANAHAN Martin Luther King Jr. initially hesitated to accept an invitation to speak at Southern Methodist University in 1966, a time and place where resistance to integration persisted. The Civil Rights icon explained to an SMU student senate leader that the Dallas school had rescinded an invitation a couple years earlier. Bert Moore, who won election as student senate vice-president despite opposition campaign posters labeling him an “integrationist,” appealed to SMU president Willis Tate. Tate assured…

Continue ReadingMLK helped Jerry LeVias and Hayden Fry change the Southwest Conference
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