Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Jerry Jones just a few steps from history, but why?
Cowboys owner answers for photo
ARLINGTON, Texas — Jerry Jones is a storyteller. Not in a fictional sense, though some of the stories the Dallas Cowboys’ owner has told over the years might leave you saying, “Did this actually happen?”
Jones’ stories come from 80 years worth of life experience.
Many stories we know, like when Jones’ father persuaded him not to purchase the San Diego franchise of the American Football League. We know he was in Cabo on vacation when he discovered the Cowboys were for sale.
We know his side of the story when it was time to part ways with Jimmy Johnson. We know why he stuck with Jason Garrett for nearly 10 years. We know the stories of when it was time to build AT&T Stadium.
Jerry Jones has lived a public life, and it appears he’s embraced most of it.
There is one story he hasn’t told enough, however, considering what he’s seen. It’s the one about the day he stood on the schoolhouse steps in North Little Rock, Arkansas, watching as six Black teenagers were denied entry into his high school.
The date was Sept. 9, 1957. It was a different time in our country. A time when the Supreme Court ruled schools could no longer segregate based on race. It was time for equal rights for people of color.
In the South, it was difficult to accept. Particularly in Arkansas. A black and white photo shows Jones, a month shy of turning 15, wearing a striped shirt and standing with a group of white people as the six Black teenagers were jeered while walking up the steps of Jones’ North Little Rock High School.
Why wouldn’t Jones want to tell this story?
Was Jones there to support the protest of desegregation? Or was he there as a teenage boy wanting to get a closer look at what was going on?
“Look, that was 65 years ago, I had no idea when I walked up there what we were doing,” Jones said after the Cowboys’ victory over the Giants on Thursday. “It just was a reminder to me how to improve and do things the right way.”
Jones’ presence at the shameful event in our nation’s history is a topic now because the picture, taken by The Associated Press, was unearthed and published this week by The Washington Post as the newspaper digs into the background of NFL owners in an effort to understand why some franchises, such as the Cowboys and New York Giants, have never hired a Black person as head coach.
“That was, gosh, 65 years ago and purest kid,” he said. “I didn’t know at the time (how) monumental (of an) event really that was going on, and I’m sure glad we are a long way from that. I am. And just that would remind me to just continue to do everything we can to not have those kinds of things happen.”
The world in 1957 was different.
In May 1954 the Supreme Court, in the historic Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) case, ruled the segregation of schools was unconstitutional.
In 1957, the Little Rock School Board voted to desegregate schools moderately with an expectation that all schools would be fully open to all regardless of race by 1963.
Court rulings delayed the process until a federal court finally ordered the schools to desegregate.
On Sept. 4, 1957, nine Black students were denied entry into Little Rock Central High School.
Then on Sept. 9, six Black students tried to enter Jones’ North Little Rock High School. Jones wanted to know what was going on at his school. He Told the Washington Post his high school football coach told the players not to go to the school. Jones went anyway.
“Seriously, that was curiosity,” Jones said. “I got criticized because I was more interested in how I was going to get punished by my coaches and everybody for being (there). Nobody there had any idea, frankly, what was going to take place. You didn’t. We didn’t have all the 70 years of reference and all the things that was going (on). You didn’t have a reference point there. Still I’ve got a habit of sticking this nose in the (wrong) place at the wrong time. I sure did.”
Jones wasn’t a part of history when it came to the desegregation of schools. He was a spectator watching the scene unfold.
Now, people are questioning why he was even there.