Untold story of racial divide on 1970 and 1971 USC football rosters that played Alabama
PHOTO: USC’s Charle Young was a 1972 All-American tight end and College Football Hall of Famer. His honesty provided a revelation about the Trojans’ disappointing 1970 and 1971 seasons.
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By TOM SHANAHAN
USC legend Charle Young appeared recently on the podcast “100 Yards of Football.” The College Football Hall of Fame tight end and 13-year NFL veteran participated cheerfully, but his honesty backfired on the hosts.
They wanted to perpetuate the myth that the 1970 USC-Alabama game propelled college football integration as a model program. But Young’s frank response to a query revealed a racial divide on USC’s 1970 and 1971 rosters. Those teams that posted disappointing 6-4-1 both records weren’t ready for the future.
“You are a sophomore and there were seniors in front of you,” said Young, a sophomore in 1970 and All-American senior in 1972. “Here this guy (a Black sophomore) is getting credit and you’re not getting credit. You’re a senior looking to go to the NFL and the guy is taking your credit away. That creates adversity. That was being replicated all up and down the line.”
This should be a revelation to fans and disconcerting to members of the national print media as well as documentary producers at HBO, Showtime, ESPN and the SEC Network. They’ve been hoodwinked into accepting an unvetted tale Alabama coach Bear Bryant orchestrated the 1970 USC-Alabama game to launch integration.
The documentaries portray the 1970 Trojans who beat Alabama 42-21 as a juggernaut. That USC team didn’t win the Pac-8 Conference title or even earn a bowl bid with 6-4-1 finish.
However, the objective of this story is beyond debunking an entrenched myth. It’s meant to bring out of the shadows the true integration pioneers who paid a price in the 1960s to make college football integration a fait accompli by the 1970s.
The myth claims Bryant chose USC as a model integration program to schedule as a game to lose, and USC’s 42-21 victory was an integration tipping point. Young’s sincere thoughts, though, exposed all of it as a fairytale.
Young merely responded to a question podcast host Steven Travers and two other hosts raised. They were perplexed by USC’s disappointing 1970 and 1971 seasons despite the Trojans adding talented Black sophomores who were future All-Americans such as Young and Sam Cunningham in 1970 and future All-American Lynn Swann and Pac-8 stars in 1971 (the NCAA prohibited freshmen eligibility until 1972).
PHOTO: USC’s Charle Young.
Young, 74, cited Cunningham displacing senior Charlie Evans, a White fullback who was a returning starter in 1970. Cunningham, making his varsity debut, led a 42-21 win in the 1970 opener at Alabama with 135 yards rushing and two touchdowns.
“Charlie Evans was the starting fullback,” Young said. “You’re the starting fullback and a sophomore comes in and gets all your glory. You don’t get the girls; let’s be real.”
Evans, who went on to play five NFL seasons, died at age 76 on November 5, 2024.
The 1970 USC-Alabama myth skips over the fact that USC numbered more Black players in 1971 yet lost its season opener to Alabama at the Coliseum, 17-10. The myth’s entire premise overlooked USC’s integration history was dubious at best.
The Trojans were among many programs that followed the custom until the late 1960s of limiting Black players on the roster to half-dozen or so. USC’s 1970s influx of Black recruits took playing time away from the White veterans. Two prime examples of USC’s adherence were the 1962 and 1967 national title teams. USC numbered only five Black players in 1962 and seven in 1967 despite the Trojans’ campus located in populous and diverse Los Angeles.
One of the 1967 seven was O.J. Simpson, a San Francisco City College import.
Coaches with limited slots for Black players pursued only elite Black prospects – five-star recruits in today’s vernacular. With USC Heisman Trophy winners Mike Garrett (1965) and Simpson (1968) scoring so many touchdowns, highlight films of the African American stars presented a distorted image of the Trojans’ roster makeup.
But upon USC coach John McKay joining other schools ignoring the quota limitations, the Trojans’ total number of Black players jumped from single digits to 18 on the 1970 roster. But of the 18 Black players, 15 didn’t arrive until the 1969 and 1970 recruiting classes.
Of those 15 Black players, only four were high school recruits. Nine arrived as junior college transfers (four in 1969, five in 1970) and two from four-year schools. Nevertheless, HBO, Showtime, ESPN and the SEC Network superficially cited 18 Black players as representative of a model integrated program.
By 1972, though, USC’s mid-to-late 1960s White recruits had moved on, and the Trojans’ makeover was comfortably integrated with 23 Black players.
Young’s honesty punches another hole in the long-standing claim Bryant was pro-active on integration, believing an embarrassing loss against Black athletes would sway racist Alabama Gov. George Wallace and the Crimson Tide’s bigoted fanbase to allow him to recruit Black players.
Wallace blocking Bryant was a misnomer. Wallace wasn’t in office, 1967 to 1971. Alabama’s in-state rival, Auburn, signed James Owens as its first Black player in the Tigers’ 1969 class. No one fired Auburn coach Shug Jordan.
Bryant wasn’t stirred to act until he was sued by the Alabama Afro American Student Association for failing to recruit Black players on a campus desegregated since 1963. The suit was filed July 2, 1969, and Bryant signed Bo Matthews and Wilbur Jackson to SEC letters of intent on December 13, 1969. Jackson was on Alabama’s freshmen team in 1970, although Matthews played at Colorado.
Bryant was the seventh of 10 Southeastern Conference coaches to sign his first Black player. By the 1970 season, 33 of 37 major southern programs included Black players.
Nevertheless, the myth’s narrative gained traction in Los Angeles and among Alabama fans embracing a tale that obfuscated Bryant’s segregationist past.
The popular misconception worked its way into the national folklore with the aid of poorly researched sports writing. By the early 1990s, the national media picked up on Loel Schrader’s story in the Long Beach Press Telegram and regurgitated it without fact-checking.
The myth also ignored neither Bryant nor McKay cited racial progress through the 1970 USC-Alabama game in autobiographies they both released in 1974 – “BEAR” and “McKAY: A COACH’S STORY.”
The true significance of USC’s 1970 roster was the Trojans were playing catchup with the changing times. The fairytale portrays the 1970 USC-Alabama game as a singular moment for Black athletes competing in the Deep South, but that ground was broken dating to the mid-1960s.
— Auburn hosted integrated Wake Forest in 1966 and integrated Southern Methodist in 1968. SMU All-American Jerry LeVias, a College Football Hall of Famer, scored a touchdown and two-point conversion to lead the Mustangs to a 37-28 win on the Tigers’ field.
— Houston’s integrated teams played at six SEC stadiums from 1965 to 1969: Tennessee, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Georgia, Florida and Ole Miss again in Memphis’ Liberty Bowl. In the same time frame, the Cougars traveled to six other southern opponents: Texas A&M, Miami, Florida State, Texas, Memphis and North Carolina State.
— Outside of SEC turf, Michigan State was the first fully integrated team to play in the South in a 1964 game against North Carolina in segregated Chapel Hill.
PHOTO: College Football Hall of Famer Clinton Jones was the first Black player to score a touchdown at Kenan Stadium. Click here for the video: Milestone Minutes Episode 14
— The same day that USC and Alabama met on September 12, 1970, Stanford upset No. 4-ranked Arkansas at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock. Stanford’s Hillary Shockley, a Black fullback from Los Angeles High, scored three touchdowns and accumulated 149 total yards. Such irony can’t be made up when compared to the Cunningham myth.
— Stanford played with an all-minority backfield — Shockley, running back Jackie Brown (Black) and quarterback Jim Plunkett (Mexican American/Native American). Stanford went on to beat USC 24-14, win the Pac-8 title and upset Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. USC, despite the myth leaving the impression the 1970 team was a juggernaut, lost to crosstown UCLA, 45-20, and was home during bowl season.
— Stanford-Arkansas was ABC-TV’s national game of the week. USC-Alabama wasn’t televised.
— Also on September 12, Georgia Tech’s Eddie McAshan was the Deep South’s first Black quarterback to start a game. Unranked Georgia Tech defeated integrated South Carolina, ranked No. 17, at Grant Field in Atlanta.
— Of Alabama’s 12 opponents in 1970, nine were integrated: USC, Virginia Tech, Florida, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Houston, Mississippi State, Miami, Auburn and Oklahoma.
If there ever was a moment when Alabama’s fans were shocked, it happened in 1969 – a year before USC arrived. Tennessee’s integrated 1969 roster routed Alabama 41-14 before 72,443 fans at Legion Field. Tennessee linebacker Jackie Walker, the SEC’s first Black All-American player, intercepted a pass for a touchdown and 21-0 lead in the first quarter.
In the podcast, the unwritten quota wasn’t discussed – it has been overlooked and misunderstood throughout college football lore – but McKay acknowledged in his 1974 book, “McKay: A Coach’s Story,” the Black community in Los Angeles was upset with his lack of Black players.
He wrote that he explained to a father his roster was no different than any other in the country, but that explanation was incorrect and disingenuous. McKay knew better.
USC played Michigan State’s fully integrated rosters three times in the decade, 1963. 1964 and 1967. Michigan State coach Duffy Daugherty, McKay’s good friend, was the first coach to assemble fully integrated teams with Black players numbering in double-digits.
In 1962, the Associated Press reported that Michigan State’s 17 Black players were the most in major college football history, although the story failed to note the Spartans broke their own record.
In the 1966 Game of the Century matching Notre Dame at Michigan State, the Spartans lined up 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 player to win a national title, Jimmy Raye of segregated Fayetteville, N.C. Notre Dame, meanwhile, had one Black player, Alan Page.
More untold college football integration stories
— College football integration’s 40 most significant moments, 1954 to the 1970s – Tom Shanahan Report
— My lengthy catalogue of 1970 USC-Alabama myths and Bear Bryant fairytales – Tom Shanahan Report
— Clint Jones and his 1964 touchdown at North Carolina that history ignored – Tom Shanahan Report
We’re committed to telling the true stories of college football integration in the 1960s
Game Changers of the Century documentary development – Tom Shanahan Report
An example of the sports media’s negligence to identify Michigan State’s existential moment was found in the Game of the Century story written by Dan Jenkins, a godfather of sportswriters. His story made no mention of race. His only description of Raye was he had a thin mustache.
Only a year later, USC played on the same Spartan Stadium turf. The sports media avoided race in those days and Michigan State’s contrast with the Notre Dame and USC rosters weren’t noted.
McKay’s excuse for the small number was nebulous at best, but it wasn’t as shameful as Bryant claiming he couldn’t find academically qualified Black athletes. Bryant, upon cutting five black walk-on players from the 1967 spring football roster, said in a TV interview, “I haven’t found many, if any, qualified academically and athletically both.”
If it sounds like Travers has been singled out, it’s not meant that way. He’s about the only honest man among the USC backers who successfully pushed the 1970 USC-Alabama myths. Travers exposed the myth of Bryant taking Cunningham into Alabama’s locker room and telling his players, “This is what a football player looks like.”
Travers, unlike the media and cable networks, researched the locker-room tale USC linebacker John Papadakas spread while trying to sell a movie script. He took grief from USC backers for exposing the story that remains largely accepted in college football lore.
The 1960s sports media’s failure to document racial milestones left a void. When the USC backers made up their fairytale, it snugly filled a hole.
As one consequence among many, the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American Culture features a display of the 1970 USC-Alabama game as a tipping point at the expense of the true 1960s pioneers. All these years later the media remains reluctant to revisit the 1970 USC-Alabama myth to correct a false narrative. To do so requires national media members admitting complicity through sloppy journalism.
The reality is the 1970 and 1971 USC rosters were no better than other segments of America resisting change. Throughout American history, when racial inequality is addressed, inevitably a White group of the population views the corrective measure as taking from them.
Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote about such recoils in her 2024 book, “An Unfinished Love Story, A Personal History of the 1960s.”
She cited the general population accepting as progress the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed. Kearns Goodwin wrote Johnson was euphoric on signing day, but he despondently expressed fear overtaking him the next morning.
She quoted him: “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”
By the South, LBJ met elections, but southern-like prejudices extend beyond the Mason Dixon Line and politics. They include football rosters, including mythologized ones.
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Tom Shanahan is an award-winning sportswriter with two books on college football integration, “RAYE OF LIGHT, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans,” and “THE RIGHT THING TO DO, The True Pioneers of College Football Integration in the 1960s,” and a children’s book, “DUFFY’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.” Shanahan’s 2022 story on the 1962 Rose Bowl, Alabama and segregation was awarded first place for Enterprise from the Football Writers Association of America.
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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.”
Below are links to click on to purchase my books focused.
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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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