1655-16 African American/Black Boycott mh WHEN 'CANES BROKE COLOR LINE 11/10/1998
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1998, The Miami Herald
DATE: Tuesday, November 10, 1998 EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial PAGE: 19A LENGTH: 72 lines
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: HOWARD KLEINBERG, Special Contributor
MEMO: VIEWPOINTS
WHEN 'CANES BROKE COLOR LINE
THE 1950 University of Miami football team is best known for its upset
defeat of Purdue just one week after Purdue ended Notre Dame's three-year
unbeaten streak. But something else that season took on far more social
significance.
When the Hurricanes hosted the University of Iowa team at the Orange Bowl
on Nov. 24, it was the first time that the school competed at home against an
opponent that included African-American players. For stiffly segregated
Florida, it was a precedent-setting event that would not take hold on the rest
of the state for almost another decade.
It also helped to blur, but not erase, the embarrassment of the 1946
season, when the Hurricanes canceled a home game with Penn State because the
Nittany Lions had two black players. The reason, according to printed reports,
was that such an integrated game might result in "unfortunate incidents. "
(A year later, in 1947, the University of Virginia shattered the South's
sports color line by playing an integrated Harvard team in Charlottesville. )
Charles Martin, a professor of history at the University of Texas-El Paso,
in a monograph that he wrote for the fall 1997 Journal of Sports History
issue, documented the 1946 confrontation through articles in The New York
Times and the University of Miami student newspaper -- The Hurricane -- in
which the student sports editor and two professors of government took strong
umbrage at the snub of Penn State. The confrontation also is discussed in
Charlton W. Tebeau's 50-year school history: The University of Miami: A Golden
Anniversary History, 1926-1976.
While much of the blame for the 1946 cancellation fell on the university,
there was enough to go around for everyone, particularly the city of Miami,
which did not want an integrated game in its stadium.
Perhaps the echoes of the 1946 embarrassment played a role in the school
booking Iowa into the Orange Bowl in 1950 knowing that the Hawkeyes had five
blacks on the team. The game, despite concerns of "unfortunate incidents"
four years earlier, went off without a hitch.
The newspapers, to their credit, did not play up the racial angle. I found
first notice of it in a Nov. 22 spqrts column by Guy Butler of The Miami News.
"In reply to several queries, the Iowa team has five Negro players on its
squad, four of whom are scheduled to play. "
On the day of the game, Miami Herald Sports Editor Jimmy Burns noted in his
column: "The Iowa squad went directly to its headquarters at the Shelborne
Hotel and Thursday night held a workout at Memorial Field. (Flamingo Park in
Miami Beach. ) "
One had to presume that the African Americans on the team were at the
Shelborne with their teammates, which also would have been precedential.
Both Butler and Hurricanes-beat writer Luther Evans of The Miami Herald
noted in their game-day stories that this would be the first time that blacks
and whites played in the same game at the Orange Bowl.
(By comparison, the annual Orange Bowl Classic football game was not
integrated until Jan. 1, 1955, when Nebraska used two black players in its
loss to Duke. )
Miami won the game, 14-6. Iowa's lone touchdown was scored by its black
halfback Bernie Bennett. While the game was integrated, fan seating was not.
Special seating was set up in the east end zone for black fans; the rest of
the stadium was reserved for whites.
The 1950 'Canes were precedent-setting. They not only led the way to
integrating sports events in Florida, but they also finished with the highest
national ranking -- 15th -- of any previous Hurricane team and had the
school's first All-American in tackle Al Carapella. They finished the regular
season unbeaten -- with nine victories and a tie against Louisville. In the
Orange Bowl Classic football game on Jan. 1, they finally lost, to Clemson,
15-14.
Despite its breakthrough in sports, the University of Miami did not admit
its first black students until the summer of 1961. Even then it was a slow,
deliberate process for the private school.
Integrating the Hurricane team itself still was years away. That did not
happen until Ray Bellamy, a split end and flanker, joined the team for the
1969 season, 17 years after the historic 1950 Miami-Iowa game.
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