leveling the playing field

Reviewed by Amy Essington

16 february 2016 archive

In the year when the football players of the University of Missouri went on strike to change racial conditions on their campus, Syracuse University Press published the story of football players at Syracuse University who challenged the status quo during the 1969-1970 season. After a forward by Syracuse alum Jim Brown, author David Marc tells the story of protest by football players. In the first part, Marc recounts Syracuse football history from the 1930s to the strike season. The second part provides biographical information about each of the nine players along with transcribed interviews with the surviving seven players. The media labeled them the Syracuse 8, but the group included nine players: Gregory Allen, Richard Tyrone Bulls, John Willie Godbolt, Dana Jon "D.J." Harrell, John Lobon, Clarence "Bucky" McGill, Abdullah Alif Muhammad, Duane "Spoon" Walker, and Ron J. Womack.

In Part One, "Injuries," Marc provides historical and social context to understand what led to the events of the 1969-1970 season. After a discussion of protests in sport centered on Harry Edwards, Marc examines Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, the first African American player at Syracuse, whose collegiate career included discrimination. Athletic Director Lew Andreas prevented the quarterback from participating in a University of Maryland game in Baltimore in 1937 and attempted to enforce a racial ban the next year. While the 1940s and 1950s saw the integration of professional sports, the culture at Syracuse was one of second-class citizenship for African Americans athletes.

In 1949, Athletic Director Lew Andreas hired Floyd Burdette "Ben" Schwartzwalder as head football coach, a position he would hold until 1973. Schwartzwalder fielded integrated teams that included African American players such as Art Baker, Jim Brown, Bernie Custis, Ernie Davis, Billy Hunter, Floyd Little, John Mackey, Jim Nance, and Avatus Stone. Although the school accepted the students of color to a degree, Marc demonstrates that these players faced those who questioned their athletic abilities, tried to manage their social lives, and imposed "gentlemen's agreements" to restrict their participation when playing in the South. In 1964, Billy Hunter distributed a petition that demanded that Syracuse not schedule games in venues with segregated seating. In the early 1960s, Syracuse players challenged discrimination in society broadly. As the decade progressed, their activism would turn to the racism on their own campus.

In the late 1960s, black football players requested that the team add a black assistant to the coaching staff. Black players voiced the racial discrimination they experienced from Coach Schwartzwalder. In the spring of 1970, ten of the eleven black players signed a document with specific complaints about their treatment on the team: bias in academic support, bias in the depth chart, an all-white coaching staff, and medical care. With no response from their head coach, the students began boycotting drills and scrimmages. In July, Schwartzwalder supposedly sent eight of the students a letter stating withdrawal from practice meant withdrawal from the team. According to Marc, five of the players denied ever receiving such a letter. Coaches invited two players to return to the team. Eventually, the school deemed four players academically ineligible and four were required to take a physical, which delayed their eligibility. After several weeks, it became clear that the football careers of the eight players had ended. (The ninth player was injured during the 1970 season and played in 1971.) Each player graduated from the university, which issued a formal apology in 2006 and presented the players with the Chancellor's Medal for Extraordinary Courage.

Part Two, "Interviews," includes a chapter for each of the nine players involved. David Marc interviewed each of the surviving seven players and includes their transcribed interviews. After providing the historical events in part one, part two allows participants to tell their stories in their own words. The interviews capture the events of 1969-1970 from the perspective of the players which include their reflections forty-years after the events.

A narrative story more than an academic study, the story of the Syracuse 8 adds to what Jacquelyn Dowd Hall labeled the long civil rights movement. The history of sport, in general, and the history of integration, in particular, connect to and reflect society. Marc links the actions of the players in Syracuse to activism happened across college campuses and the nation in the late 1960s. While the purpose of the book is to focus on the events in Syracuse, which it does, additional links to the broader society could have strengthened the connection of this event to the activism in sport during the 1960s. David Marc provides an account of individuals who did not accept the status quo and made personal sacrifices in support of social change.

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