{"id":1098,"date":"2018-12-31T15:38:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1098"},"modified":"2018-12-31T15:38:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:38:36","slug":"glenn-dromgooles-texas-reads-column-appears-weekly-at-lonestarliterary-com-71","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1098","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Dromgoole’s Texas Reads column appears weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

10.22.2017\u00a0\u00a0 Author looks at black high school football in Texas before integration<\/h1>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>Historian, journalist, and author Michael Hurd <\/span>has produced the very readable and authoritative Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas<\/span><\/a><\/span> (University of Texas Press, $24.95 hardcover).<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book,\u201d writes Hurd, director of Prairie View A&M\u2019s Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture, \u201cis about \u2018black folks\u2019 who coached and played high school football behind the veil of segregation in Texas for half a century, 1920\u20131970, as members of the all-black Prairie View Interscholastic League.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurd explains the book\u2019s title: The all-black schools played their games \u201cprimarily on Wednesday and Thursday nights in most towns, Tuesdays in others, some on Saturdays, but rarely on prime-time Friday nights, when games for white schools were played.\u201d<\/p>\n

The author includes a six-page section on Abilene\u2019s Carter G. Woodson High School Rams, featuring a get-together of several former players swapping tales about playing for Coach James Valentine and hanging out eating \u201cthe best burgers in Abilene\u201d at Larry\u2019s drive-in after their games.<\/p>\n

At one out-of-town game, they remembered, the team bus pulled in to a service station to fill up with gas. But when the players were denied use of the station\u2019s restroom, Coach Valentine ordered the white attendant, \u201cShut that pump off! We don\u2019t want to fill up here!\u201d<\/p>\n

The book includes photographs of former Woodson players Andrew Penns and Louis Kelley.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe PVIL football honor roll,\u201d Hurd writes, \u201creads like a who\u2019s who of national prep, college and professional gridiron greats,\u201d with six of them in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In the first combined NFL-AFL pro football draft of 1967, five of the first thirty-three draft picks were former PVIL players.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack high school football flourished in a time when it seemed no one outside the black media and its audiences cared about \u2026 the abundance of talent bursting from the underfunded schools that competed under the PVIL banner,\u201d Hurd notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe PVIL created pride and ambition, and its games revived spirits battered by the day-to-day burdens of racism\u2026. For black players, the game was a vehicle to propel them from poor hardworking disenfranchised communities into better lives that could include a college education.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMean\u201d Joe Greene, Bubba Smith, Dick \u201cNight Train\u201d Lane, Jerry LeVias, Ollie Matson, and Charley Taylor all played at PVIL schools, to name just a few. The late Barbara Jordan, the first black woman elected to Congress from a southern state, was a PVIL debate champion.<\/p>\n

Hurd tells about some of the legendary coaches, teams, and rivalries in the PVIL, including the Houston matchup of Wheatley vs. Yates played for years on Thanksgiving Day, and the extraordinary talent coming out of Beaumont\u2019s Hebert and Charlton-Pollard high schools.<\/p>\n

The last chapter deals with integration of the University Interscholastic League in 1967 \u2014 \u201cthe good, the bad, the end\u201d \u2014 that closed the books on the PVIL three years later.<\/p>\n

Hurd tells the PVIL story with conviction, attention to detail, and great affection.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

Glenn Dromgoole\u2019s<\/span> latest book is West Texas Stories<\/span><\/a><\/span>Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 10.22.2017\u00a0\u00a0 Author looks at black high school football in Texas before integration Historian, journalist, and author Michael Hurd has produced the very readable and authoritative Thursday Night Lights: The Story of Black High School Football in Texas (University of Texas Press, $24.95 hardcover). \u201cThis book,\u201d writes Hurd, director of Prairie View […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}