TEXAS SPORTS
Jeff Miller, with foreword by “Mean” Joe Greene
The Game Changers: Abner Haynes, Leon King, and the Fall of Major College Football’s Color Barrier
Sports Publishing
Hardcover 978-1-61321-937-9, 241 pages, $24.99; also available as ebook
October 2016
Reviewed by Carlton Stowers
With all due respect to Charles Dickens, it was the best of times and the worst of times.
In the mid-1950s, the Texas education system was moving toward integration. The good news was that black students would finally be given places in the classrooms of formerly all-white public schools, colleges, and universities. The bad news was that integration was most often carried out in an atmosphere of political warfare, hateful racial slurs, and angry demonstrations.
Even in academic outposts where things went “smoothly,” it was rarely pretty.
Recapturing those unsettling times, in The Game Changers: Abner Haynes, Leon King, and the Fall of Major College Football’s Color Barrier Texas journalist Jeff Miller follows the travels of two gifted young athletes, products of all-black Lincoln High in Dallas, who chose to continue their education and football careers at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas). When Abner Haynes, a standout running back, and Leon King, a talented receiver, reported for legendary coach Odus Mitchell’s first practice in the fall of 1956, they became the first African Americans to be part of a major Texas college sports program.
Through the efforts of school president J. C. Matthews, Mitchell, and mostly accepting teammates, the groundbreaking appearance of the youngsters caused only a mild stir. Certainly nothing like when a black Beaumont running back named Jerry LeVias had enrolled at SMU almost a decade later and endured death threats and a steady stream of hate mail.
Still, as Miller notes, the climate was far shy of an open-armed welcome on the Denton campus. Haynes and King were not allowed to join their white teammates for meals in the athletic dining hall and could not reside on campus. No black student was even allowed on campus after dark or on weekends unless attending a class. If blacks chose to go to a movie at a theater near the campus, they sat in the balcony, isolated from the white patrons. Most Denton eating establishments were also for whites only.
Neither did rival schools demonstrate hospitality. When three Mississippi universities on the Eagles’ schedule were advised by Mitchell that he would be bringing black players, future games were cancelled. Rather than battle with anti-black restaurant owners on road trips, the team would often order to-go meals that were eaten in public parks. Racial slurs were routinely part of the opponents’ game plan.
Despite it all, North Texas had outstanding seasons and invitations to bowl games, and found its way into the nation’s Top 20 rankings. Haynes went on to star as a pro in the American Football League, while King gained the distinction of becoming the first black student to earn a bachelor’s degree at UNT and went on to an applauded career as an educator.
Far more than a sports book, The Game Changers is a finely crafted portrait of bygone times. While it is the exploits of the North Texas team that the author uses to move his story along, it is also an enlightening tale of social struggle, an example of the hard miles society has traveled.
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