I bet most whites don't even know about this story...........
Fifty years after the ‘Black 14’ were banished, Wyoming football reckons with the past
LARAMIE, Wyo. — It had been nearly 50 years since the University of Wyoming banished 14 black players from its football team, but the decades-old dispute was all Tom Burman could think about as he guided his car across the grain-colored plains stretching from the Denver airport to campus. The university’s athletic director had spent the previous night in Orlando watching the players — known as the “Black 14” — accept an award and explain how they had been kicked off the team in 1969 after trying to ask their coach if they could wear black armbands during an upcoming game. They had wanted to show solidarity against racism at a time when civil rights protests were common on the nation’s college campuses.
Instead, they were immediately banished, sending many of their lives into turmoil. Some transferred away from Wyoming, others left school, never to return and never to receive a degree. Burman hurt for the men as he heard how they had been villainized throughout the state as insubordinate and ungrateful, how most fans sided with their white coach and his strict “no protest” policy.
Over beers at the hotel bar later, Burman listened as the players, now in their 60s and 70s, talked of keeping tabs on their former team’s wins and losses, even though most had not been back on campus in decades.
“I thought to myself: These guys, they don’t have a school,” Burman said. “As simple as that was, that was important to me.”
And so, as he drove back to campus in September 2017, Burman decided he had to do something. As it turned out, the school’s president at the time, Laurie Nichols, had been thinking the same thing, working to educate herself on the Black 14 scandal, which remained perhaps the most divisive incident in the school’s 132-year history. When Burman mentioned the idea of trying to repair the university’s relationship with the players, Nichols readily agreed. “It is a time when universities are really grappling with their histories,” Nichols said. “We can’t go back and change history, but there are times when you can come back and have an appropriate response to it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...YMTa1Y-iN8sgwHCLTEqL-1NcUkooISWnMwE7Kl5OmGdjw
Fifty years after the ‘Black 14’ were banished, Wyoming football reckons with the past
LARAMIE, Wyo. — It had been nearly 50 years since the University of Wyoming banished 14 black players from its football team, but the decades-old dispute was all Tom Burman could think about as he guided his car across the grain-colored plains stretching from the Denver airport to campus. The university’s athletic director had spent the previous night in Orlando watching the players — known as the “Black 14” — accept an award and explain how they had been kicked off the team in 1969 after trying to ask their coach if they could wear black armbands during an upcoming game. They had wanted to show solidarity against racism at a time when civil rights protests were common on the nation’s college campuses.
Instead, they were immediately banished, sending many of their lives into turmoil. Some transferred away from Wyoming, others left school, never to return and never to receive a degree. Burman hurt for the men as he heard how they had been villainized throughout the state as insubordinate and ungrateful, how most fans sided with their white coach and his strict “no protest” policy.
Over beers at the hotel bar later, Burman listened as the players, now in their 60s and 70s, talked of keeping tabs on their former team’s wins and losses, even though most had not been back on campus in decades.
“I thought to myself: These guys, they don’t have a school,” Burman said. “As simple as that was, that was important to me.”
And so, as he drove back to campus in September 2017, Burman decided he had to do something. As it turned out, the school’s president at the time, Laurie Nichols, had been thinking the same thing, working to educate herself on the Black 14 scandal, which remained perhaps the most divisive incident in the school’s 132-year history. When Burman mentioned the idea of trying to repair the university’s relationship with the players, Nichols readily agreed. “It is a time when universities are really grappling with their histories,” Nichols said. “We can’t go back and change history, but there are times when you can come back and have an appropriate response to it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...YMTa1Y-iN8sgwHCLTEqL-1NcUkooISWnMwE7Kl5OmGdjw
