By TOM SHANAHAN

Michigan State is a singular story for Duffy Daugherty leading college football integration in the 1950s and 1960s.

The 2024 season marked the 70^th anniversary of the College Football Hall of Fame coach’s first staff in 1954 that changed the face of the game, and it is the 60^th anniversary of Daugherty taking the first fully integrated team to play in the segregated South in a game against North Carolina on September 26, in 1964, at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill.

Daugherty separated himself from his peers by abandoning the unwritten quota limiting Black athletes to a half-dozen or so. No school or coach matches what Daugherty established as the Spartans’ head coach, 1954 to 1972.

— On Daugherty’s 1954 staff were future College Football Hall of Fame coaches Dan Devine, Bob Devaney, Bill Yeoman and Sonny Grandelius. All of them followed Daugherty’s blueprint of ignoring quota limitations. They increased opportunities for Black athletes beyond the roster they inherited.

They were Devine, Arizona State; Missouri and Notre Dame; Devaney, Wyoming and Nebraska; Yeoman, desegrated Houston in 1964; Grandelius, his 1961 team threatened to boycott the 1962 Orange Bowl over Jim Crow. The Orange Bowl and Miami backed down.

Three other coaches related to Daugherty and his influence were former MSU player Frank Kush, who succeeded Devine at Arizona State; former MSU player Chuck Fairbanks, Oklahoma; and former MSU assistant Earle Edwards, who desegregated North Carolina State.

— In the 1962 season, the Associated Press reported Michigan State’s “17 Negro athletes was the largest delegation in a major college football history.” What the report didn’t state was Michigan State broke its own record from 1961. By comparison, Minnesota won the 1960 national title with only five Black players; USC’s 1962 team the national title with five Black players and USC’s 1967 national championship team with seven.

— When Michigan State was the first fully integrated team to play in the South against North Carolina, future College Football Hall of Famers Clinton Jones and Gene Washington were the first Black players to score touchdowns in Kenan Stadium.

— Of the nation’s Black athletes to earn a national title ring as designated by the Associated Press or United Press International, 41.5 percent (23) played on Michigan State’s 1965 roster. The rest of the country totaled 30: Minnesota (5, 1960); USC (12 total, 1962 and 1967); Notre Dame (1, 1966); and Ohio State (12, 1968). Segregated teams won the other AP or UPI titles: Alabama (1961, 1964, 1965) and Texas (1963, 1969).

— Of the “Game of the Century” iterations the first involving Black players matched Notre Dame at Michigan State on November 19, 1966.

— Michigan State numbered 20 Black players, 11 Black starters, two Black team captains, College Football Hall of Famers George Webster and Clinton Jones, and the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title, Jimmy Raye of segregated Fayetteville, N.C. Notre Dame lined up one Black player, Alan Page.

— Daugherty’s fingerprints also were on the 1971 Game of the Century matching Nebraska and Oklahoma as the first with two fully integrated rosters. The head coaches were Duffy Disciples Bob Devaney and Chuck Fairbanks.

— Daugherty recruited 44 Black players on the Underground Railroad from 1959 through his final class in 1972. The success running parallel to the Civil Rights movement influenced southern programs to desegregate to live up to the U.S. Constitution and keep talent home. Their motivation was not necessarily in that order.

— Daugherty’s Underground Railroad included players from every southern state but Alabama, Tennessee and Maryland. Other schools numbered only a couple of Black southern players in isolated examples.

— The Underground Railroad genesis was a late 1950s clinic in the segregated South, according to long-time Michigan State assistant coach Hank Bullough. Bullough said Daugherty was upset Black high school coaches weren’t admitted to the clinic. Daugherty subsequently put on a free clinic for the Black high school coaches.

— Prior to the clinic, Michigan State and Daugherty enjoyed a reputation for its Black All-American players seen on TV in the 1954 and 1956 Rose Bowls. Players such as Ellis Duckett and Leroy Bolden were from Michigan factory towns. Black high school coaches throughout the South viewed Michigan State as a North Star and began contacting Daugherty and asking him to take their players.

— Most prominent was Willie Ray Smith Sr. of Charlton-Pollard High Beaumont, Texas, near Houston. He sent Daugherty two College Football Hall of Famers, his son Bubba Smith and Gene Washington, among nine players overall.

— In the 1966 Game of the Century, Michigan State’s three Black starters Willie Ray Smith steered to Michigan State, Bubba Smith, Gene Washington and Jess Phillips, was more than Notre Dame’s entire national roster of one Black player.  

— White southerners opposed to segregation also viewed Michigan State as a place of opportunity. They included Roanoke (Virginia) World Telegram sportswriter Bob McClelland. In 1963, he contacted Daugherty to tell him Charlie Thornhill was the first Black player to make Roanoke’s all-area team. Thornhill was an All-Big Ten player for the Spartans in 1965 and 1966.

— The graduation rate of Daugherty’s Underground Railroad recruits was 68 percent (30 of 44). Compare Daugherty’s record to the 1984 national 30-percent graduation rate for Black football players. The NCAA imposed academic requirements to stem coaches exploiting Black athletes.

— Duffy Daugherty was Michigan State’s top recruiter under head coach Biggie Munn, 1947 to 1953, while he mined players from talent-rich Pennsylvania coal mines and steel cities. One of the players was quarterback Willie Thrower, the NFL’s first Black quarterback with the Chicago Bears, in 1953. Thrower was from New Kensington, Pennsylvania.

— Daugherty’s coaching opportunity fingerprints extend to the NFL. In 1972, Michigan State included two Black assistant coaches, Sherman Raye hired in 1969 and Jimmy Raye in 1972. At the time other schools were getting around to hiring first Black assistant. Raye and Lewis were long-time NFL offensive coordinators. In 2022, Raye honored in Pro Football Hall of Fame’s inaugural class of NFL Awards of Excellence. In 2023, Lewis honored in second class.

The above bullet points that explain Michigan State’s leadership, but it was largely an untold story in real time due to the 1960s sports media that avoided race.

Daugherty was not a self-promoter, but my theory through 12-plus years of research and two books on why he was open-minded includes his experience as a player at Syracuse around two teammates, Black quarterback Wilmeth Sidat-Singh and Jewish halfback Marty Glickman.

In 1937, Sidat-Singh was forced to sit out a game at Maryland due to the Gentleman’s Agreement that required integrated programs to bench their Black players in games played in the South.

In 1936 Berlin Olympics, Glickman wasn’t permitted to compete as scheduled on the U.S. 4×400-meter relay team that won a gold medal. The U.S. Olympic track coaches bowed to pressure not to use Jewish athletes in the Nazi Olympics.

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Tom Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter and frequent contributor to Spartanamag.com. His new book on Michigan State leading college football integration is, “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.” His first book was “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans.”

I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055

Below are links to click on to purchase my books focused.

My books tell the true story of college football integration in the 1960s and address the myths and fiction that allowed a false narrative surrounding the 1970 USC-Alabama game to usurp the credit from the true pioneers. As I said when I spoke at the National Sports Media Association book festival, no two books provide an accurate portrayal more than RAYE OF LIGHT and THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

I’ll put my facts up against anybody, anytime, anywhere. Watch here.

Click here for my story on the 1962 Rose Bowl and Segregation awarded first place by the Football Writers Association of America. I tell untold stories on Michigan State’s leading role and the true pioneers of college football integration. Click here to read the summary as a first-place story.

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Click here to purchase The Right Thing To Do

THE RIGHT THING TO DO

The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s

Foreword by Ruffin McNeill

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Click here to purchase Raye of Light.

RAYE OF LIGHT

Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the 1ntegration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans

Foreword by Tony Dungy

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Click here to purchase my children’s book, Bubba’s Dad, Duffy and College Football’s Underground Railroad

The book for now is only a Kindle version on Amazon. Print and audio platforms available soon.

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My next children’s book coming soon: How Duffy Put Hawaii on the Football Map