Apology accepted
Wyoming’s Black 14 are “Cowboys again”
“I was angry for quite a while. I was disappointed in terms of the outcome, in terms of a person who perceived us as outcasts or militants. All we wanted to do was talk to him about wearing an armband. The immediate impact was that I was a young man that became a man. My whole life was altered in about five minutes. We as a group decided a long time ago that we were not going to be defined by the incident.” John Griffin, one of the Black 14
Says here you left Wyoming … A glance at Ted Williams. A glance at the résumé. A glance at Williams again. Says here you left Wyoming … … Were YOU on the Black 14? Williams would nod.
The headhunter would take a long breath. “they never did.”
He pauses.
“I never mentioned Wyoming anymore.”
Forgiveness is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes the road takes a hairpin turn you never saw coming. Today, Williams wears a University of Wyoming letterman’s jacket proudly. He has a letter of apology from the school framed and hanging up in his home in Illinois.
Last month, to honor the 50th anniversary of one of the worst days of Williams’ life and one of the seminal intersections of sports and civil rights, Wyoming had Williams and seven of his former teammates, eight survivors of the Black 14, take a victory lap at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie. They were among 14 African-american football players who were kicked off the Wyoming team on Oct. 17, 1969, for wanting to wear black armbands in protest of BYU, the Cowboys’ opponent that weekend.
Last month was the first time they’d been on that field, togeth
er, since Oct. 11, 1969, a reunion tour they thought might never happen. Instead, they were treated like rock stars. “Everywhere you went, people wanted to take pictures with you,” Williams says. “I’m not used to that — people pulling you aside and wanting to hug you and take pictures and apologize. I’d go, ‘Wow, this is weird.’
“You started walking around and people started coming up to shake your hand. It was sort of nice. It’s nice to know that people go back and tell their parents that everything they were ever told was wrong.”
They were told the Black 14 were quitters. That they were troublemakers. That they were selfish. That they put themselves above the team, above the university, above the state.
“My interest is in dispelling the myths and telling the truth and letting people figure it out,” says John Griffin, a Denverite for decades, a flanker on that 1969 Wyoming team and one of the 14 dismissed.
“And for us to get that letter of apology, and as (Wyoming athletic director) Tom Burman read it, and we just went, ‘Wow. Goodness gracious.’ My wife was sitting there and my daughter, and they just looked at me like, ‘Oh, my goodness, you guys got what you asked for.’ And you’re darned right we did.”
They asked for an apology. They asked for transparency. They asked for honesty. They asked for closure.
They got a heck of a lot more than that. A plaque was unveiled, with their names embossed, on the southeast side of the stadium. They were issued formal letters of apology, signed by Burman and former Wyoming president Laurie Nichols. The eight on hand were given jerseys and letter jackets, mementos long overdue.
“It was heart-wrenching, in a good way,” Griffin says. “I’m a pretty stoic guy, and it got to me. I had tears in my eyes.
“I looked at my niece, and tears were streaming down her face. And I had to look down on the ground to get myself together. To get my letter jacket, it was an indication that, yes, we were Cowboys again.
“It felt like the book could be closed. We received the letter. We were recognized on the field. We got a standing ovation. The icing on the cake was getting that letter of apology on Friday night and being on the field that Saturday. That was the icing on the cake for all of us.”
“I tried to forgive”
Just keep your nose clean …
A Chicago Bears scout sauntered up to Tony Mcgee during the summer of 1971, not long after the team had plucked him out of Bishop College in the third round of that spring’s NFL draft. Sauntered up and uttered five words that Mcgee, a standout defensive end, would never forget. Just keep your nose clean … … because the only reason we got you was that the Rams were going to draft you in the first round. That is, until they called up Wyoming. And Wyoming told them that you were the main troublemaker.
“I tried to forgive,” Mcgee says now, “but never forget.”
Forgiveness is about strength. The strength to let go of the spite, the hurt, the pride, the words. Especially the words.
Mcgee and his 13 teammates had walked into coach Lloyd Eaton’s office the day before the BYU game, that fateful Oct. 17, and asked if they could wear the armbands against the Cougars the next day in silent protest. They explained that it was in response to how BYU players had taunted them with racial epithets the season before, a response to the Mormon Church’s policy of forbidding African-americans from becoming priests of the faith.
Eaton’s response was fury. He brought them down to the bleachers inside the field house and summarily dismissed the 14, on the spot, for violating a team rule regarding religious or political statements.
“We never got to ask him,” Tony Gibson, a fullback on the 1969 team, says of Eaton, who had steered the Cowboys to a 4-0 record that season, and to 30 wins in their previous 35 games. “If he’d said no, we’d decided that we were just going to play the game (against BYU). He never gave us the opportunity. He just insulted us, said we should’ve gone to Grambling State and Morgan State and, ‘You don’t even know who your fathers are.’ He never told us of any rules (before).
“He was a hardhead. I have another word, but yeah, he was a hardhead.”
An emergency meeting of the board of trustees was held at Wyoming’s Old Main building. After the players met with Gov. Stanley Hathaway and university president William Carlson, expressing their displeasure with Eaton, the board voted unanimously to uphold the coach’s decision.
“We would do it again”
Only three of the 14 decided to return for Wyoming’s 1970 season. Mcgee transferred to Bishop, the launchpad to a 14-year career in the NFL and more than three decades as a television host.
Griffin graduated from Wyoming in 1972 and had a cup of coffee with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League before life took him to Denver and managerial stints with United Airlines and with Sports Authority.
Gibson, who was married at the time, left Laramie and returned home to Massachusetts, spending the next four decades as a lineman with a utility company. His daughter, Megan, always tried to wear the number 14 in her athletic endeavors in honor of her father.
“A lot of people really don’t know the true story,” Gibson says. “That’s been my main focus in life, to get people to know the true story. And I (wanted) an apology from the university for what they did. And they did us wrong.”
Williams, Gibson’s backfield mate, enrolled at Adams State in Alamosa, eventually playing two years of semipro ball before embarking on nearly 50 years in the industrial coating business.
“My dad didn’t drink until that (incident) happened, and he ended up dying of a stroke,” Williams says. “I guess I blamed (Wyoming) for a long period of time after that.”
Which made last month’s formal apology especially cathartic. During a segment taped for Mcgee’s television show, Williams recounted the passing of his father, and how he’d always tied it directly to Eaton’s actions.
Years of pent-up grief, on camera, spilled out into tears.
“I finally came to terms,” Williams says. “I broke down. Everyone said I needed to do that. I’d held it in all that time.”
No one holds anything back anymore. Of the 11 surviving members, nine have formed a Black 14 LLC for the purposes of educating and empowering future generations — and enlightening some past ones as well.
“I like to be able to relate to kids, give them some insight as to what happened to me and how me and the other 13 guys refused to let Eaton define us that day,” Griffin says.
“At United, I received every award that an employee could’ve gotten. And Lloyd Eaton told us we weren’t going to be anything. He said we’d be on social services for the rest of our lives. No, pal. That ain’t going to happen. We might be African-american — and he used some other words that were pretty demeaning and degrading — but I said, ‘OK, all, right. You can do this now. But watch us in about 40 years.’ ” Try to forgive. But never forget.
“I’ll say one thing,” Gibson says softly. “We would do it again. We really would.”