University of Virginia Library

the sports scene

Orange, Blue,
Lily-White

by Bob Cullen

NOW THAT THE FOOTBALL season is over, George
Blackburn and his staff will be moving out to the hinterlands,
searching for new talent in an attempt to preserve winning
football at Virginia. By April, they will have signed 30 or so
high school athletes to grants-in-aid. Coaches have been doing
this for a long time

As always, some of these high school stars will become
regular performers for the Cavaliers; more will never play at all.
And, it is highly likely that, as always, all of them will be white.

This situation is a disgrace. It places Virginia in a class with
Clemson and South Carolina as the only schools in the ACC
which have no black athletes among the recipients of
grants-in-aid. Every time an all-white team represents the
University of Virginia, it is a blatant admission that the
University is racist in nature, if not in policy.

APART FROM IDEALISTIC considerations, there are
practical detriments inherent in recruiting a team with no black
athletes. A glance at the All-American team this year would
convince even George Wallace that a significant percentage of
the fine athletes in this country are black. Excluding them from
the Athletic Department's recruiting program is like playing
with a one-legged halfback. It doesn't make sense.

Which is why we don't believe that the Athletic Department
is primarily responsible for the 19th century rate of integration
in Virginia athletics. Coach Blackburn and his staff, with one or
two exceptions had always played and coached on integrated
teams before they came to Virginia. What's more they have been
beaten too often in the past by teams with Negro athletes to fail
to realize their ability.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY that there are no traces of common
bigotry over at University Hall. There undoubtedly is. But the
coaches do realize that black football players can help you win,
and that is their primary objective. Some of them may wish it
wasn't that way, but they know it is. They also know that if
they don't win, they may soon be selling life insurance, which is
not their favorite way of making a living. It may not be the right
motivation to integrate the teams, but at least it's something.

So, in recent years, they have made several attempts to
recruit some of the highly-sought-after black athletes. These
have been sincere attempts, after a fashion. They showed the
black students every courtesy they could think of. They got the
Human Relations Council to help. They got black citizens in the
community to throw parties for them. They showed them the
pretty stadium, the nice locker rooms, and all the other things
Virginia has to offer to the casual visitor.

WHAT THEY COULDN'T SHOW them was the girls they
could date, the fraternities they could join, the things they use
to impress white prospects. So they didn't get them. In effect,
all the University could promise to a black athlete was the
employment of his body and talent for four years, and a degree
if he was ambitious enough to get it. This is a racist community,
and any black student intelligent enough to be considered for
admission is perceptive enough to smell it a mile away.

Thus, the recruiters are going to have to be willing to do
more than just provide a football team to play on if they expect
to attract any black athletes to the University. They will have to
regard integration of the athletic program as a necessary and
worthwhile goal for reasons that will not be evident only in
Scott Stadium. They, and the rest of the community must
endeavor to provide the same opportunities that exist for white
students for all students.

BUT VIRGINIA'S ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, understandably
is solely concerned with winning, and they'd do it with green
players if they had to. They are content to do it with white
players if they can. They are not among those who take a
broader view of the progress of the University and realize that,
in the context of this time and this school, whether a team wins
is really less important than whether it is integrated. Like most
departments at the University, the Athletic Department
operates with relative autonomy. President Shannon and the
rest of the administration have not pressured them, and neither
have the alumni. On the contrary, Charlottesville and the
University are among the nicest places in the country to sit
around in, be segregated, and not be bothered about it.

Some time in the near future, a black athlete will enroll at
the University, perhaps solely because of the pioneering
challenge of it. But this will only be token integration,
admittedly the necessary first step on the road to real equality
of opportunity. Whether that first athlete derives all that he
should from his experience at the University will play a large
part in determining whether he is followed by many more. The
University will have accomplished nothing if it enrolls one or
two black athletes for the sake of appearance, and does not
make a concerted and effective effort to use their presence to
help provide an improved racial atmosphere here. Such an effort
must begin now, for until it does, even the pioneers will go
elsewhere.

(Tomorrow-a look at some things that should be done.)