Did racism help kill SMU basketball star Ruben Triplett?
Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2018 10:45 amMedium
Kevin James Shay
Did racism help kill SMU basketball star Ruben Triplett?
Almost 40 years later, questions remain about a triple killing in Dallas that authorities classify as ‘solved’
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The couple standing in the North Dallas movie theater line to see newly-released The Empire Strikes Back stood out for several reasons that warm May evening.
For one thing, they were playing Yahtzee as they waited. Who does that in a movie line? They were attractive and well-dressed. The man was extremely tall at 6-foot-7.
But what made them truly memorable was their mixed racial backgrounds: he happened to be black, she white.
This was 1980 ― not 2018 ― in Dallas ― not New York. For decades, “segregation of the races” had literally been a formal policy in Dallas, written into the city charter until 1969. Interracial marriage, mostly defined as between “negroes” and whites, was officially outlawed in predominantly Southern states, including Texas, until a 1967 Supreme Court decision that was vehemently opposed by most Americans. At least Texas was not like two defiant states that held onto bans following the national ruling; South Carolina did not remove the clause until 1998, Alabama until 2000. In the latter state, some 546,000 voters ― 40.5 percent ― still wanted to keep the ban. In 2000.
Such marriages grew slowly. In 1970, only 65,000 couples nationwide were black-and-white. That more than doubled to 167,000 by 1980, but that was still only 0.3 percent of the marriages. By 2009, the number expanded to 550,000 ― still less than 1 percent of the total ― although more newlyweds married outside their race. However, a study released in 2014 found that only 26 percent of white Americans favored a close relative marrying an African American, compared with 54 percent of blacks supporting a family member marrying a white. Even in 2015, there were many more marriages between whites and Hispanics [42 percent of the total] than whites and blacks [11 percent] and slightly more among whites and Asians [15 percent]. 1
In Southern cities like Dallas, black-and-white dating was still frowned upon by many for decades after the 1967 ruling. Even black members of the adored Dallas Cowboys had to live in segregated housing developments much farther away from the team’s practice facilities until lawsuits forced change in the 1970s. During those years, the KKK regularly marched through downtown without inciting a riot.
Interracial dating was such a taboo around that time, so rebellious of the established social order, that members of the Richland College basketball team and cheerleaders decided one evening in 1978 to walk arm-in-arm into a small North Texas town diner as black-and-white couples. That was their Rosa Parks’ moment of social protest, their revolutionary act. They received icy stares but no incidents. They went home and back to their normal lives.
Newspaper coverage of a white banker killing an African-American athlete dodged the race question. [Dallas Times Herald, July 28, 1980, Fair Use]
Deflecting icy stares and worse was part of everyday life for Ruben Triplett and Nancy Patrick for at least a few months in 1980. Triplett was used to breaking color barriers. In Galesburg, Ill., he easily made friends with kids from all backgrounds at an early age. Former Texas Rangers catcher and executive Jim Sundberg was among Triplett’s childhood friends; both played on Galesburg High’s baseball and basketball teams and made that school’s Athletics Hall of Fame. They remained in touch in Dallas to the point that Sundberg got his friend autographed baseballs to give to children. 2
At SMU, Triplett became the first African American to earn a basketball scholarship in 1971 with the aid of Galesburg High coach John Thiel, whose son, Zack, also signed with the Dallas-area private university that same year. Triplett continued to date outside his race, even after having a daughter with a common-law spouse.
https://medium.com/@kevinjshay44/it-sho ... c78519ed2a
Kevin James Shay
Did racism help kill SMU basketball star Ruben Triplett?
Almost 40 years later, questions remain about a triple killing in Dallas that authorities classify as ‘solved’
----------
The couple standing in the North Dallas movie theater line to see newly-released The Empire Strikes Back stood out for several reasons that warm May evening.
For one thing, they were playing Yahtzee as they waited. Who does that in a movie line? They were attractive and well-dressed. The man was extremely tall at 6-foot-7.
But what made them truly memorable was their mixed racial backgrounds: he happened to be black, she white.
This was 1980 ― not 2018 ― in Dallas ― not New York. For decades, “segregation of the races” had literally been a formal policy in Dallas, written into the city charter until 1969. Interracial marriage, mostly defined as between “negroes” and whites, was officially outlawed in predominantly Southern states, including Texas, until a 1967 Supreme Court decision that was vehemently opposed by most Americans. At least Texas was not like two defiant states that held onto bans following the national ruling; South Carolina did not remove the clause until 1998, Alabama until 2000. In the latter state, some 546,000 voters ― 40.5 percent ― still wanted to keep the ban. In 2000.
Such marriages grew slowly. In 1970, only 65,000 couples nationwide were black-and-white. That more than doubled to 167,000 by 1980, but that was still only 0.3 percent of the marriages. By 2009, the number expanded to 550,000 ― still less than 1 percent of the total ― although more newlyweds married outside their race. However, a study released in 2014 found that only 26 percent of white Americans favored a close relative marrying an African American, compared with 54 percent of blacks supporting a family member marrying a white. Even in 2015, there were many more marriages between whites and Hispanics [42 percent of the total] than whites and blacks [11 percent] and slightly more among whites and Asians [15 percent]. 1
In Southern cities like Dallas, black-and-white dating was still frowned upon by many for decades after the 1967 ruling. Even black members of the adored Dallas Cowboys had to live in segregated housing developments much farther away from the team’s practice facilities until lawsuits forced change in the 1970s. During those years, the KKK regularly marched through downtown without inciting a riot.
Interracial dating was such a taboo around that time, so rebellious of the established social order, that members of the Richland College basketball team and cheerleaders decided one evening in 1978 to walk arm-in-arm into a small North Texas town diner as black-and-white couples. That was their Rosa Parks’ moment of social protest, their revolutionary act. They received icy stares but no incidents. They went home and back to their normal lives.
Newspaper coverage of a white banker killing an African-American athlete dodged the race question. [Dallas Times Herald, July 28, 1980, Fair Use]
Deflecting icy stares and worse was part of everyday life for Ruben Triplett and Nancy Patrick for at least a few months in 1980. Triplett was used to breaking color barriers. In Galesburg, Ill., he easily made friends with kids from all backgrounds at an early age. Former Texas Rangers catcher and executive Jim Sundberg was among Triplett’s childhood friends; both played on Galesburg High’s baseball and basketball teams and made that school’s Athletics Hall of Fame. They remained in touch in Dallas to the point that Sundberg got his friend autographed baseballs to give to children. 2
At SMU, Triplett became the first African American to earn a basketball scholarship in 1971 with the aid of Galesburg High coach John Thiel, whose son, Zack, also signed with the Dallas-area private university that same year. Triplett continued to date outside his race, even after having a daughter with a common-law spouse.
https://medium.com/@kevinjshay44/it-sho ... c78519ed2a