Breaking SWC Color Barrier Tops Fry's Memories

[MrMustang1965]

from today's Houston Chronicle:

Hayden Fry won eight coach of the year awards, took teams to 17 bowl games, won 232 games at SMU, North Texas and Iowa, was selected to the College Football Hall of Fame and is a footnote in American pop culture as Craig T. Nelson's model for the Hayden Fox character in the sitcom Coach .

But as Fry received yet another award Wednesday night from the Touchdown Club of Houston as the group's Touchdowner of the Year, he said his proudest moment is and always will be his decision 40 years ago to break the Southwest Conference color barrier by signing Jerry LeVias to a scholarship at SMU.

"From a football standpoint, I'm more proud of that than anything," Fry said. "It opened the door for other African-Americans from this part of the country to have a choice in where they wanted to go to school.

"You cannot believe the things that Jerry endured. You know what some of my high-roller boosters in Dallas told me? They said that every time Jerry crossed the goal line, he was getting whiter and whiter. Isn't that terrible? Isn't that ridiculous?

"I gave Jerry a scholarship for one reason: It was the right thing to do."

LeVias, who along with Texas Football magazine founder Dave Campbell and former Texas Tech coach Spike Dykes spoke in Fry's honor Wednesday, said he and his old coach "didn't do anything to make a social statement" at SMU.

"But the way it turned out (with an SWC title in 1966, LeVias' sophomore year), it was a Cinderella story," he added.

Also on hand to honor Fry were Bill Moorman, Fry's teammate on the 1946 Odessa team that won the state high school championship, and Touchdown Club founder Sonny Sowell , who played on the San Antonio Jefferson team that lost to Odessa in the title game.

Rice coach Ken Hatfield and former coaches R.C. Slocum of Texas A&M and Bill Yeoman of Houston also attended.

The club also gave its award for long and meritorious service to Les Koenning Sr. , who coached at Cypress Creek, Memorial and other schools during his coaching career, and honored its preseason high school all-city team.

[overcusser]

Coach should be proud of intergration. In the end it probably cost him his job.

I've heard Coach Fry privately say what really did him in at SMU wasn't wins & losses, but there were some powerful SMU alumni at the time that weren't too thrilled with the intergration to begin with and felt that he was recruiting "too many" black players.


Thats not saying anything against the current SMU regime, fans, alumni, students, etc. Of course today none of that would be tolerated This was ancient history and has nothing to do with SMU today. But considering the racial climate of Dallas or at any other SWC school at that time....Yeah I can see that being the truth, especially with older generation alumni that would have had enough clout to get a coach fired.

[tryon]

Did he really break the color barrier though? What about John Hill Westbrook. He played a week earlier than LeVias.


http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/onl ... fwe60.html

[MrMustang1965]

Did he really break the color barrier though? What about John Hill Westbrook. He played a week earlier than LeVias.


http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/onl ... fwe60.html

Fry got LeVias a SCHOLARSHIP which was virtually unheard of at that time.

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/onl ... /xzs1.html

[tryon]

Well so did Westbrook.

I'm not trying to discredit LeVias. I think at the time both instances were huge in breaking new ground. And I think LeVias and Fry deserve all the praise they get.

But I always feel bad for John because he and whoever the Baylor coach was get no credit for an equally corageuos and ground breaking thing.

[Bergermeister]

don't feel bad.

[MrMustang1965]

Well so did Westbrook.

I'm not trying to discredit LeVias. I think at the time both instances were huge in breaking new ground. And I think LeVias and Fry deserve all the praise they get.

But I always feel bad for John because he and whoever the Baylor coach was get no credit for an equally corageuos and ground breaking thing.

I believe Westbrook's scholarship was awarded AFTER he had been at Baylor for a year but I could be wrong.

Both men and their coaches deserve credit for what they did.

It's interesting though that Westbrook has an entire page in the Texas Handbook devoted to him whereas LeVias is only a sentence in the link about sports in Texas.

[Stallion]

Jerry LeVias was the first black scholarship player in SWC history. Westbrook was actually the first to set foot on the field by a week. He received a scholarship later.

[DiamondM75]

It is real interesting to talk with Jerry about his accepting the scholarship to SMU. He had offers from primarilly black schools that he was highly considering, but his mother told him that SMU would give him a better education. That is why "he" accepted the SMU offer.

I think Jerry's mother should get a lot of credit for helping Jerry make the right decision.

[DixieTech]

They said that every time Jerry crossed the goal line, he was getting whiter and whiter.

Sorry, but that is freaking funny.

SMU and the SWC was not doing anything that every other school in the South was doing. This doesn't mean it was right, but it was simply the way it was up until that point. No need to be ashamed or feel bad. It would be like me or you feeling guilty for the 200,000 slaves in Texas. We had nothing to do with it, and it was just the way it was. Wrong, but still the way it was.

Cool story though.

[Stallion]

No it very much was a shameful episode in American History-and it took a lot of guts for Fry to make that decision. Don't just sweep responsibility for a great morale wrong under the rug by saying "everybody was doing it". Thank God Fry picked the perfect athlete, scholar and gentleman to be the first -Jerry LeVias.

[DixieTech]

Oh, I wasn't making excuses, but I do think "everyone was doing it" is a legitimate reason, not an excuse. However, he was courageous, I meant that to feel remorse or embarassment for something that was commonplace of the region would be stupid for someone who had nothing to do with it. Acceptance of the staus quo is not wrong, but not courageous either.

[bubba pony]

you don't understand the measure of this accomplishment. your title 'Southern, Texan, American - in that order.' continues to reflects the problem. if it wasn't for 'Americans' you be a Northern, Texan, Mexican.

[Rayburn]

Well, I am a TEXAN, Southern, American and I don't see that as any problem at all. If you do, screw you.

My father tells an interesting story about Levias as part of the Texas all-star team that played against the Pennsylvania all-stars in the Annual Big 33 game in Hershey, PA.

UCLA Coach Tom Prothro recruited Levias heavily even after Jerry agreed to come to SMU. Prothro was at the Big 33 game that summer of 1965 (as was my dad) and tried to board the Texas team bus to talk to Jerry. But he met face-to-face with then-SMU assistant coach Chuck Curtis who physically tossed him off the bus to keep him away from Levias.

Recruiting practices have changed some.

[Rayburn]

Incidently, schools in the South were not the only ones keeping black players off their rosters. Check out the team photos for Notre Dame sometime. Until Ara Parsegian, there were rarely more than two blacks on any Irish team and more often that not, none at all.

Syracuse did not want Jim Brown, he came without a scholarship. Though Jim Crow was law in Dixie, Northern, Eastern and Western teams -- areas that had their own form of Yankee Jim Crow -- did not begin adding blacks to their rosters in significant numbers until the 1970s. Some schools like Michigan State and Southern Cal in the 1960s were exceptions but this idea that Big 10, Pacific Coast and Eastern schools were loaded with blacks prior to the 1970s is a crock of [deleted].