PHOTO: Wake Forest honored pioneer Bob Grant and the late Kenneth “Butch” Henry with its inaugural Trailblazers Award, in 2021. He was introduced to the crowd at home football game as part of the ceremonies. Standing (L-R) are Wake Forest president Susan Wente, former Wake Forest coach Bill Tate (1964-68), Bob Grant, former Wake Forest athletic director Gene Hooks (1964-92) and current Wake Forest AD John Currie.

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Click here for review and purchase link: THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s.

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By TOM SHANAHAN

The 1971 ABC TV movie “Brian’s Song” drew an audience share of 48 percent – a staggering number, even for pre-cable and Internet days. Back then viewers were limited to three over-the-air networks, ABC, CBS and NBC.

The inspiring story starts with Chicago Bears teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers arriving together as 1965 rookies. The Bears paired Piccolo, an outgoing White player from Wake Forest in segregated North Carolina, as a roommate with the introverted Sayers, a Black player from Kansas.

In the film, Bears’ head coach George Halas and an assistant coach explain to Sayers the team was taking a new approach in the wake of the Civil Rights movement that was both tumultuous due to resistance and hopeful with its progress.

The movie continues with the Piccolo-Sayers bond growing stronger through adversity. Sayers suffered a devastating knee injury in 1968, and Piccolo helped push him through recovery. When Piccolo was diagnosed with cancer late in the 1969 season, Sayers supported him to the end. Piccolo died at age 26 on June 16, 1970.

The movie was a tearjerker without poetic license needed to embellish the story.

But if the film was a documentary and included a scene with Piccolo’s thoughts, a Black roommate was nothing new to him.

In Piccolo’s 1964 senior season at Wake Forest, the Atlantic Coast Conference school broke ground as the first school from a major southern conference to recruit Black players out of high school. It’s true Maryland’s Darryl Hill broke the ACC color line in 1963, but he was a senior transfer from Navy. The Terrapins’ football program didn’t commit to recruiting Black players until later in the decade.

Wake Forest president Harold Tribble hired Bill Tate, an Illinois assistant coach, in 1964 with a mandate to integrate the football program. Tate’s first recruiting class included three Black high school prospects, Bob Grant, Kenneth “Butch” Henry and William Smith. Henry and Smith were paired as roommates. That left Grant needing a roommate.

“Fortunately, Brian Piccolo was one of my players,” Tate said. “I roomed Brian with Bob. Brian was from Florida, and he didn’t have a problem with Black kids. Brian was an open book. He didn’t have any prejudices.”

Tate, who is 93 years old, told the little-known story in a phone interview from his home in Omaha, Nebraska.

The 1960s sports media avoided race and that left a landscape of strewn rocks with untold stories. Rocks can still be turned over in the 21st century to reveal unknown or unappreciated milestones. Grant’s rock features a Triple Crown of defeating Jim Crow, starting with his 1964 arrival helping to desegregate the football program.

The second leg was in 1966. Grant earned All-ACC recognition as a junior defensive lineman to become the first Black player named to an all-conference team from a school in a major southern conference.

The third was 1968. The Baltimore Colts took Grant in the second round to make him the first Black NFL draft pick from a school in a major southern conference. He played in two Super Bowls, losing in Super Bowl III to the New York Jets and winning Super V against the Dallas Cowboys.

Henry was Wake Forest’s second Black player taken in the 1968 draft as a seventh rounder by the St. Louis Cardinals, although he didn’t have an NFL career.

PHOTO: Bob Grant completed an integration Triple Crown with the Baltimore Colts. He was the first Black player from a major school in a southern conference drafted in the NFL.

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Context is always required when labeling “firsts” in college football integration, a complicated story to untangle. So, here’s background to help explain Grant’s singular place in history.

Although Missouri’s Mel West was a three-time All-Big Eight pick (1958-60) and teammate Norris Stevenson was an All-Big Eight 1960 selection, Missouri, a former Confederate state, didn’t play in a southern conference. Big Eight schools had a long history of integration.

Houston’s Warren McVea also was drafted in 1968, but he was taken after Grant in the fourth round by the Kansas City Chiefs.

These are fine points help to understand it took many figures and moments along the way to college football integration by the 1970 season, although college football lore continues claims Alabama coach Bear Bryant and USC running back Sam Cunningham change segregation overnight with the 1970 USC-Alabama game.

WHY IT MATTERS

This story isn’t about critiquing a movie that won five Emmy Awards. Instead, it is about the failure of the sports media – then and now — to recognize, honor and appreciate the true college football integration pioneers.

The problem is more than the 1960s media ignored milestones that took place in real time. The modern media remains blinded by Bear Bryant hagiography. Prominent journalists perpetuate myths celebrating Bryant despite his poor record on integration that he delayed until the 1970s.

College football lore overlooks Maryland in 1963 and Wake Forest in 1964 set off tumbling dominoes. They included Houston coach Bill Yeoman signing Warren McVea, 1964; Southern Methodist coach Hayden Fry, Jerry LeVias, 1965; Kentucky coach Charley Bradshaw, Nate Northington and Greg Page, 1966; Tennessee coach Doug Dickey, Lester McClain, 1967; and Auburn coach Shug Jordan, James Owens, 1969.

Above the Mason-Dixon Line, Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty was the first with fully integrated rosters in the 1960s. He ignored the unwritten quota limiting black scholarships to a half-dozen that was the custom throughout college football. USC, despite a campus in populous and diverse Los Angeles, numbered only five Black players on its 1962 national title team and seven on its 1967 national championship team.

Michigan State’s success with shares of the 1965 and 1966 national titles led to other schools abandoning the quotas win the late 1960s.

But in the South, the pioneers faced standing up to violent resistance The Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists bombed Black churches and homes. Peaceful protesters were violently attacked by mobs and the police.

Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., referred to “the appalling silence of the good people” to express his frustration. Bryant remained silent throughout the decade. He was the most powerful coach in the South, yet he waited while other coaches with less job security stuck out their necks.

Bryant didn’t recruit his first Black player until the 1970 season. And that wasn’t until after he was sued in 1969 by the Alabama Afro American Student Association for failing to recruit Black football players, even though the campus had been desegregated since 1963.

Alabama was the seventh of 10 Southeastern Conference football programs to desegregate. College football integration was a fait accompli by 1970 when 33 of 37 major southern programs were integrated.

But that’s not how college football lore and major media outlets such as ESPN, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times and The Athletic tell the history of college football integration. They celebrate Bryant folklore. An honest look at the 1960s timeline reveals Bryant was behind his southern peers.

NORTH CAROLINA AS A PROGRESSIVE BATTLEGROUND

Grant’s pioneering background has been overshadowed by misinformed college sports lore that includes two better known Black athletes Grant preceded, North Carolina basketball player Charlie Scott (1967-70) and USC football player Sam Cuningham (1970-72). They receive a distorted proportion of credit for changing times.

In basketball, Scott and legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith were indeed pivotal integration figures, but they weren’t alone in the ACC during the 1960s.

Maryland’s Billy Jones (1965-68) preceded Scott by two years and Duke’s C.B. Clairborne (1966-69) by a year. North Carolina’s State’s Al Heartley and William Cooper and Wake Forest’s Gil McGregor and Charlie Davis arrived on their respective campuses as a freshman in 1967. Just as Wake Forest is a North Carolina school in Winston-Salem, Duke is located in Durham and NC State in Raleigh.

In other words, all four Tobacco Road schools were integrated as Scott played his varsity career, but the national media writes about Scott and Smith as lone crusaders. But at least the Scott/Smith story is true.

But the Bryant/Cunningham story surrounding the 1970 USC-Alabama game is folklore. Context exposes the false narrative that credits Cunningham and Bryant for ending segregation overnight through Cunningham’s dominant performance leading USC’s win against Alabama.

Bryant, according to the myth that was crafted and spread two decades after the game was played, scheduled USC as a game to lose. He wanted a player such as Cunningham, an African American, to run over his all-White roster to gain permission from his bigoted fanbase to recruit Black athletes. The myth ignores Bryant’s first Black player, Wilbur Jackson, was a freshman when USC arrived.

The myths also slight the varied athletes and schools that collectively combined to knock down the insidious walls of racism. American racism has never been defeated overnight.

But with the 1960s sports media failing to record the progress as institutional knowledge, when USC alums Craig Fertig and John Papadakis successfully crafted and pushed their myth promoting USC and Bryant into the mainstream media, they worked from a blank canvas. They were unaware of 1960s progress. The folklore spread with the aid of poorly researched sports writing.

The injustice of crediting Bryant and Cunningham over the true 1960s pioneers was painfully evident from the obituaries written when Cunningham died in 2021 and Grant in 2024. It’s not Cunningham’s fault he was thrust into the myth, the result has been he is a widely known hailed figure, while Grant and others are virtually unknown.

Cunningham’s death on September 7, 2021, and his role in the 1970 USC-Alabama game was reported in every major media outlet in the nation.

When Grant died on May 19, 2024, the only published obituary was in the Winston-Salem Journal. Grant was a long-time Los Angeles resident and businessman after his NFL days, but the LA Times wrote nothing about his pioneering life and times.

As for Bryant’s obituaries in 1983, there was no mention of the 1970 USC-Alabama game as a tipping point. The myth had yet to be made up. In 1980, Time Magazine published a cover story on Bryant’s career winding down. There wasn’t a single word about the 1970 USC-Alabama game in the 5,000-word piece.

THE BIG PICTURE

In 1962, Wake Forest’s Board of Trustees voted to desegregate the campus and admit its first Black student, Ed Reynolds. Wake Forest was the first major private school in the South to integrate.

When it was time to hire a new football coach in 1964, Tribble, the school’s president from 1950 to 1967, was among the “good people in the South” who weren’t remaining silent. He spoke up.

Tate was a 32-year-old Illinois assistant coach when he interviewed with Tribble. The Illini were coming off a 1963 Big Ten title and victory over Washington in the Rose Bowl that was played on January 1, 1964.

After the Rose Bowl victory, Tate was called back to Winston-Salem for a second interview with Tribble.

“I didn’t know what the second interview was about,” Tate said. “As we discussed things, he said – and this is an exact quote – to me: “How do you feel about recruiting Negroes?”

Negroes was the vernacular of the times, but the question hardly startled Tate with his Big Ten and Illinois background.

“My response was, “I’m in favor of it.”

Tate spent his Big Ten days representing Illinois. As an Illinois fullback, Tate led the Illini to the 1951 Big Ten title. He was named MVP of the 1952 Rose Bowl with 20 carries for 152 yards and two touchdowns in a 40-7 win over Stanford. He returned to his alma mater as an assistant coach in 1959.

One of Tate’s first phone calls upon landing the Wake Forest job was to Grant’s coach at Georgetown High in Jacksonville, N.C. Grant was already committed to Michigan State to ride the coach Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad, but Grant’s coach and Grant’s grandfather both encouraged him to open doors at Wake Forest as a pioneer.

Another call was to Kenneth “Butch” Henry in Greensboro. Henry’s father was a professor at North Carolina A&T and onboard with Wake Forest’s attempt to break barriers. Smith only stayed one year, but it should be noted he served as a medic in Vietnam and later became a doctor.

Wake Forest quickly numbered more Black players than other ACC programs. In 1965, Tate added running back Jimmy Johnson and center Howard Stanback; in 1966, defensive lineman Bill Overton; and in 1967, quarterback Freddie Summers.

Overton and Summers were both recruited out of McCook Junior College in Nebraska along with Andy Heck, a White running back who arrived in 1965. Heck and Overton were another “Brian’s Song” pair of roommates.

Also in 1967, Wake Forest basketball coach Jack McCloskey — who went on to NBA fame as the Detroit Piston’s general manager when the franchise won back-to-back NBA titles (1989 and 1990) — signed Charlie Davis and Gilbert McGregor.

Scott and Davis were both three-time All-ACC picks — Scott 1968-69-70 and Davis 1969-70-71. Davis was the first Black player named ACC Player of the Year in 1971, although Dean Smith was on record protesting Scott’s skin color was the reason South Carolina’s John Roche was selected over Scott in both 1969 and 1970. Scott also played on the U.S. 1968 Olympic team that won the gold medal.

Smith protesting Scott was overlooked for race arguably opened the door to Davis earning the award over Roche when both were seniors, in 1971. One player and one moment doesn’t change racial attitudes in American. It takes a collective effort of people creating moments. That’s true for Dean Smith and Charlie Scott and refutes the folklore crediting Bear Bryant and Sam Cunningham.

But another 1964 mountain for Tate to scale was turning around a woeful football program. Wake Forest’s 1-19 record the previous two seasons included an overlapping 18-game losing streak. The Demon Deacons were 0-10 in 1962 and 1-9 in 1963.

PHOTO: Brian PIccolo ran for 1,044 yards and 15 touchdowns as a Wake Forest senior.

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In those days, the NCAA didn’t permit freshmen eligibility until 1972, so Tate’s 1964 recruits weren’t part of the varsity. But he still got Wake Forest off to a winning start with a 31-21 victory playied at Virginia.

“On the bus ride back home, Brian Piccolo got up and had the whole team singing songs,” Tate said. “They sang the fight song and other songs. Some of them were silly songs. These kids had been through losing 18 straight games the year before. It was a moving experience. I still get emotional when I think about it. That’s the kind of leader Brian was.”

Wake Forest improved to 2-0 with a win over Virginia Tech, although the Demon Deacons only won three more games to finish 5-5 overall and tied for third in the ACC. Nevertheless, the dramatic improvement earned Tate the ACC Coach of the Year award.

Piccolo finished the year running for 1,044 yards and 15 touchdowns to earn first-team All-ACC and second-team All-American honors.

“The Bears called me about Brian, and I compared him to Rick Casares,” said Tate, referring to Chicago’s veteran fullback from 1955 through 1964. “Brian wasn’t fast, but he had balance and was tough to knock off his feet.”

In 1965, Grant, a defensive lineman, and Henry, a wide receiver, were sophomores who established themselves in the ACC.

The 1966 season provides more context on barriers being knocked down in the South long before the 1970 USC-Alabama game.

Wake Forest’s 1966 schedule included a game at Auburn, an SEC school in Alabama. With college football games typically scheduled five to 10 years in advance, the matchup of two southern all-White programs was set before Wake Forest’s decision to desegregate. As a result, Wake Forest couldn’t find a hotel to house an integrated roster in the Auburn area. Auburn coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan could have remained silent, but Tate said he stepped up.

“Shug took it upon himself to find a hotel for us,” Tate said. “We catered in our own food to eat in at the hotel.”

PHOTO: Auburn’s Ralph “Shug” Jordan helped Wake Forest find a hotel when the Demon Deacons played at Auburn, in 1966. On the timeline of 1960s college football integration, Jordan placed his program ahead of in-state and SEC rival Alabama and Bear Bryant.

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In 1968, Southern Methodist was in its fourth year as an integrated program when the Mustangs were scheduled to play at Auburn. By then, though, Jim Crow was wilting. SMU flew from Dallas to Birmingham’s airport and bussed to an Auburn hotel without difficulty.

Jordan demonstrated he was fully onboard with integration by 1968 when he recruited James Owens, a Black senior running back at desegregated Fairfield High near Birmingham. Owens signed in Auburn’s 1969 recruiting class – one year before Alabama signed its first Black player in the 1970 class.

It’s significant to note Auburn and Jordan were ahead of Bryant and Alabama. Bryant’s partisans to this day excuse him for not recruiting Black players earlier because his hands were tied by racist Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Such a claim is belied by two facts fact:

— Jordan signed Owens and wasn’t fired. He was Auburn’s head coach 25 years, 1951-1975, until he retired.

— Wallace wasn’t in office from 1967 to 1971. 

Wake Forest broke another barrier in the 1967 season with Summers as the South’s first Black quarterback. Tate recruited Summers out of McCook Junior College in Nebraska, and he was a two-year starter, 1967 and 1968.

His milestone followed Jimmy Raye, who was the South’s first Black quarterback to win a national title as a starter at Michigan State. Raye had been recruited aboard Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty’s Underground Railroad out of segregated Fayetteville, N.C.

Raye and Summers were the only starting Black quarterbacks in major college football in the 1967 season. The momentum of schools following the racial progress of their peers continued.

In 1969, Jimmy Jones, a sophomore African American, was USC’s starting quarterback.

In 1970, George Tech’s Eddie McAshan was the first Black quarterback to start a game in Deep South in a win over integrated South Carolina. By 1972, McAshan and Tennessee’s Condredge Holloway were the first Black quarterbacks to face each other as starters in the South.

Bryant remained silent on quarterbacks, too.

Holloway was a senior in the 1970 football season at Lee High in Huntsville, but Bryant told him Alabama wasn’t ready for a quarterback. He said he would only recruit him as a defensive back. Holloway went to Tennessee, where he was a three-year starter.

The 1970 USC-Alabama mythmakers overlooked Holloway was a senior at Lee the same year Jones was USC’s quarterback at Legion Field. If the premise of the myth was Bryant wanted to shock is bigoted fans through Cunningham’s dominant performance to recruit Black athletes, consider Jones faced Alabama while Bryant recruited Holloway.

If we’re to believe the myth, doesn’t it fall in line Bryant could have used Jones’ performance to convince the same bigots Alabama should be allowed to recruit Holloway as a quarterback?

So much of the 1970 USC-Alabama myth wasn’t well thought out. The myth also overlooked Bryant didn’t have a boss. Bryant’s stature was such that Alabama’s fans were ready for whatever Byant said it was ready for.

THE DOWNTURN

Wake Forest’s bold leadership wasn’t without resistance.

“Bob and Butch had more problems to deal with than I had,” Tate said. “Not all of the professors were onboard with integration. Some openly opposed it. We had to work through all that”.

But Tate was unable to improve on the promising 5-5 record his first season. Grant earning All-ACC honors and Henry leading the team in receiving two of three seasons weren’t enough to make the Demon Deacons winners.

Tate said the difficulty was operating on a limited recruiting budget at a school with high academic standards. He also said he had fewer scholarships than rival programs.

“I had to tell my coaches when they were recruiting on the phone they had to hang up after a certain amount of time, so we didn’t go over our budget,” he said.

The next four seasons, the Demon Deacons struggled: 1965, 3-7; 1966, 3-7; 1967, 4-6; and 1968: 2-7-1. Tate’s five-year record was 17-32-1.

Tate resigned before the final game of 1968, a 42-21 loss at Florida State. The story published in the Durham Herald-Sun on November 19, 1969, was yet another example the 1960s sports media failed understand Wake Forest’s leadership. There were no references to Tate leading desegregation.

A statement from athletic director Gene Hooks also failed to mention Tate’s pioneering integration role.

“Wake Forest appreciates the tremendous effort given by Bill Tate and his staff. We regret that the football the football program under his direction did not meet with greater success. The search for a successor will begin immediately.”

Tate, of course, wishes the program won more games, but he remains proud of what Wake Forest launched in the South.

Bob Grant appeared on THE END GAME in March 2024 two months prior to his death at age 77.

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“I feel real strongly that Wake Forest has never received the credit it deserves,” Tate said. “It’s story that deserves to be heard. We brought in good athletes, but we only had so many scholarships and the academics were tough. It was hard to recruit on our budget.”

Tate said he left coaching making only $10,000 a year. He took a job in the corporate world with Levi Strauss Company. One of the most impactful coaches in college football integration didn’t return to the sidelines.

And he was written out of history. His story is unjustly lost in the shadows of Bear Bryant myths.

THE TRUE STORIES

So, why is a preposterous tale that Bear Bryant and Sam Cunningham solved segregation overnight in 1970 accepted in college football lore and by national media members at the expense of the true pioneers?

Ken Burns, the historian and award-winning filmmaker, provided some insight on researching history. He says in America the snappy story is adopted rather than a longer narrative requiring explanation. Burns emphasized researching beyond accepted tales is necessary.

Andy Katz discussed Bob Grant earning the NCAA’s Inspiration Award on Episode 94 of the NCAA Social Series.

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“We tend to resort to conventional, superficial understandings, tying things up to nice bows,” he said in an interview prior to the release of his 2020 documentary on Muhammad Ali.

How do you tell Wake Forest’s story with a tidy bow. You can’t.

And that’s why the Demon Deacons are largely lost to history in the shadow of myths.

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BONUS VIDEO

James Caan played football at Michigan State in the late 1950s under Duffy Daugherty before launching his acting career. He filmed this video when the 1976 Spartans were rebuilding their program in the aftermath of NCAA probation.

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Tom Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter and frequent contributor to Spartanmag.com in addition to posting on his website. 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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