DKR, the Bear and other Jim Crow Coaches

Nobody ever said that running a big-time football program is easy. You have to deal with pushy alumni, egg-heads on the faculty who want to abolish intercollegiate athletics and know-it-all reporters at the local newspaper, not to mention keeping your players academically eligible and staying off the NCAA’s watch-list. The main thing you must do, however, is win. You gotta win ball games and better yet championships if you want to remain the guy with the most prestigious job on campus. Not to exaggerate, but if you win all else is forgiven. And the key to winning is recruiting—convincing high school boys with good football skills to enroll at your university and not those of your competitors. An effective recruiter is hands-down more valuable than a smooth media operator, a coach who placates the alums or an X’s and O’s guy. No coach would knowingly shut his eyes to a segment of the population with, arguably, the most athletic talent. But that’s exactly what was done by coaches at the major universities in the South in the 1950s, 1960s and in a few cases the early 1970s. These fellows seemed to have a dispensation that permitted them to ignore the black players who then attended segregated high schools. Winning took a back seat to maintenance of the prevailing Jim Crow racial mores.

The existence of a “gentlemen’s agreement” among Southern coaches during those years can hardly be doubted. Obviously no document was written up, signed, notarized and filed at the county courthouse in Dallas, Gainesville, Winston-Salem and other places. But whether spoken or unspoken, this deal was understood and adhered to by every coach in the Southwest Conference, Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference. It would have taken a strong man, a man with direction and purpose, to buck his fellow coaches, school president and conservative-minded boosters (especially if they were donors). What’s a college football coach, though, if he’s not a leader? A leader says, “We’re going this way. Follow me.”

I have chosen eight coaches—all members of the College Football Hall of Fame—who deserve to be taken to the woodshed for their failure to confront the crucial matter of racial integration when they had the chance. Each would have had a far greater legacy if he bitten the proverbial bullet rather than dither, make excuses or stonewall.

• Darrell Royal (Texas). I will not cut my alma mater any slack. UT was one of the last schools to have a black player on its varsity football team—offensive lineman/tight end Julius Whittier, in 1970—and Royal is why. I knew him, interviewed him numerous times, liked him and admired him, but the truth is that he simply would not act. The years went by in Austin, and DKR’s Longhorns remained all-white. Mel Farr, Bubba Smith, Warren McVea and other excellent black players wanted to come to UT, but he feigned disinterest; he told Smith (twice all-America at Michigan State and No. 1 pick in the 1967 NFL draft) that he was free to try out. Royal’s inability or refusal to move is my main reason for opposing the renaming of Memorial Stadium after him in 1997. Let’s give credit to E.A. Curry and Robinson Parsons who were walk-ons with the 1967 freshman team and Talmadge Bluiett with the ’68 frosh. Since they had the gumption to do that, Royal should have found a way to get them on the varsity.
• Bear Bryant (Alabama). They called it “the heart of Dixie” for good reason. Montgomery was the original capitol of the Confederacy, Bull Connor used dogs and water cannons on civil rights protesters in Birmingham, George Wallace stood in UA’s schoolhouse door, state troopers brutalized black citizens at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and so on. Racism was deeply entrenched in Alabama, I realize that. And yet Bryant, respected and revered by almost every white citizen in the state, could have insisted on integrating the Crimson Tide football program. Had he done so, he would have prevailed and others would have gotten in line. Defensive lineman John Mitchell and running back Wilbur Jackson integrated the Alabama squad in 1971, although Dock Rone, Andrew Pernell, Art Dunning, Melvin Leverett and Jerome Tucker were gutsy walk-ons with the 1967 freshman team.
• Frank Broyles (Arkansas). His career parallels that of Royal in many ways; he got to Fayetteville in 1958, whereas Royal started at UT a year earlier, and they retired after the Horns and Hogs faced off one night in 1976. Royal was a caretaker athletic director, but Broyles did far more in that role over a 33-year span. Running back Jon Richardson (1970) has the honor of being the first black player on the Arkansas varsity, but maybe he shouldn’t have been. Darrell Brown, a walk-on with the freshman team in 1965, was subjected to malicious treatment by coaches and fellow players. Injured, isolated and discouraged, he never made it to the varsity. If Broyles had been wise—and had a heart—he would have ensured that the young man get a fair shot to become a Razorback, same as his white peers. What happened to Darrell Brown was one of the most shameful episodes in University of Arkansas history.
• Charley McClendon (LSU). Lots of athletic talent in Louisiana, and LSU is the only major school in the state. Jolly Cholly ran the program from 1962 to 1979, and won but a single SEC championship. Running back Lora Hinton and defensive back Mike Williams were the first black Tigers in 1972. This is indefensible, especially since federal courts had mandated full integration of the university in 1964. For what it’s worth, the 2016 LSU team is 84% black.
• Johnny Vaught (Mississippi). I am not about to pretend that integrating at Ole Miss was going to be easy or quick. This state has long been the poorest in the union and is synonymous with slavery, racism and the Ku Klux Klan. Of course, 1962 is the year James Meredith enrolled at Ole Miss, sparking an on-campus riot that left two dead and more than 300 injured. The Rebels went 10-0 and finished third in the nation, helping to assuage that scene; Vaught liked to say that in so doing, his team had “saved Mississippi.” Fans claimed that the Rebs deserved to be named national champs, but consider that those 10 games took place in Oxford, Jackson, Memphis, Baton Rouge, Knoxville and New Orleans—hardly a national schedule. Vaught retired in 1970, his 24th season at Mississippi, having never coached a single black player. However, he was called back to the sidelines in the middle of the 1973 season when Billy Kinard was fired. Defensive end Ben Williams had integrated the team the previous year.
• Frank Howard (Clemson). Thirty years as the Tigers’ head coach was enough time for Howard to put his stamp forever on the program. This guy was an overt racist who often said the “N” word: never. Never would Clemson so much as play against an integrated team (wrong—the Tigers met Oklahoma in Norman on September 21, 1963 and lost, 31-14), never would a black player be allowed to enter Memorial Stadium (wrong again—Darryl Hill of Maryland did so on November 16, 1963*) and never, never, never would one don an orange Clemson uniform (also wrong—it finally happened in 1971 when defensive back Marion Reeves took the field with his teammates, two years after Howard retired**). The bull-headed, bald-headed coach had changed his tune by the mid-1970s: “I wanted to integrate, but they would have rode [sic] me out of town on a rail.”
• Shug Jordan (Auburn). His career as head coach at Auburn is almost as long (25 years) as Howard’s over at Clemson. Jordan is rightfully thought of as one of those old-school men who grimaced when the topic of integration was raised. And yet he signed running back James Owens in 1969, making Auburn the first Deep South school to have taken that fateful step. Owens played two seasons, 1971 and 1972, for the Tigers.
• Vince Dooley (Georgia). Perhaps it’s odd to have Dooley on this list since he did not get the UGA head coaching gig until 1964. He was younger than the other seven (in fact, he is the only one still living), but that did not mean his views were especially progressive. The Bulldogs won SEC titles in 1966 and 1968, but they were just 5-5 in 1970, so Dooley rolled the dice by signing fiveblack players: receiver Richard Appleby, running back Horace King, defensive lineman Chuck Kinnebrew, linebacker Clarence Pope and defensive back Larry West. This was just a decade after the university got a court order to integrate, sparking a violent response from 200 white students. Dooley retired after the 1988 season with 201 victories, although he stayed on as AD until 2004.

* In pre-game warm-ups, Howard stood no more than 10 feet from Hill, puffed on a cigar and glared menacingly. Hill kept his cool—he was no fool—and responded by catching a school-record 10 passes, although the Terps lost, 21-6.

** Reeves later described the talent level at Clemson as shockingly low and that his teammates could not hold a candle to the players at all-black South Carolina State.

Abner Haynes’ Pro Football Career

I hope I have made it abundantly clear that Abner Haynes deserves to be in the College Football Hall of Fame. His exploits for the North Texas State Eagles in the late 1950s should suffice. Further proof is the fact that the process of racial integration of college football in Texas and throughout the South began with him.

It’s all too easy to be skeptical—I am sometimes guilty of it myself—about a guy who excelled at anything less than a 5-star school. The assumption is that he was a man among boys and thus his achievements are not what they appear; since he was outside the mainstream of the sport, his record is not quite legitimate. If he was so good, why was he there? By that measure, Dick “Night Train” Lane and Deacon Jones should never have gotten a chance to play in the National Football League. The former spent one year at a junior college in Nebraska and four in the U.S. Army, and was doing blue-collar work when he decided to try out for the Los Angeles Rams. He became one of the best defensive backs in NFL history. Jones played one year at South Carolina State, was suspended for taking part in a civil rights demonstration, sat out a season and then played one at Mississippi Vocational College. I can scarcely imagine a more obscure institution of higher education. The Rams took him in the 14th round of the 1961 draft and what do you know? He turned into a super-stud defensive end. Both Lane and Jones played for 14 seasons, and both are rightly in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Neither, needless to say, is in the College Football Hall of Fame.) Compared to them, Haynes’ college career was big time, glorious and above all stable.

Scouting today is far more comprehensive than in the 1950s. It may be hard to believe, but some teams drafted players sight unseen, basing picks on whether they had been named all-conference or all-America:

“Oh, look! Billy Bob Johnson of Iowa was an all-Big 10 offensive lineman. We need an offensive lineman. Let’s draft him.”

“It says in the newspaper that this quarterback, Jim Anderson, was all-SEC two straight years at Vanderbilt. I bet he’s good. Maybe we should draft him.”

“Our owner is a graduate of Texas A&M. The Aggies have a linebacker who made all-SWC and second-team all-American. What’s his name? Steve Smith. I think we should draft him. The boss would like that.”

“Hey, Joe Chryzshmelz was a big star at Notre Dame. Why don’t we draft him?”

Haynes’ credentials—two times all-Missouri Valley Conference—must not have impressed the men whose jobs it was then to draft prospective pro football players. The Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL took him in the fifth round, and the Oakland Raiders of the fledgling AFL also used their fifth pick on Haynes. The Dallas Texans worked a trade that would enable him to play at home, and Haynes signed with Lamar Hunt’s club. Not only was it a new franchise, but the entire league was new. There was chaos everywhere, and the future was never certain. Dallas was no exception. Haynes, a highly motivated young man who was determined to make the team, would not be distracted. On the practice field and in the early pre-season games, he was one of many contenders for a starting spot in the Texans’ backfield. Hank Stram and the other coaches seemed to hope that Jack Spikes or Johnny Robinson would be the main running back. Spikes hailed from TCU and Robinson from LSU, schools that were not close to integrating. Whether Hunt, Stram et al. liked it or not, Haynes proved beyond any doubt that he was the guy.

Joining him on the 35-man roster were three fellow African-Americans (Clem Daniels, Dave Webster and Walter Napier). The rest were European-American. The crosstown Dallas Cowboys also had four black players (Don Bishop, Frank Clarke, Woodley Lewis and Nate Borden) in 1960, and the Houston Oilers had two (John White and Julian Spence). Obviously, Hunt, Cowboys owner Clint Murchison and Oilers owner Bud Adams were very conscious of the racial makeup of their teams. “Not too many” may have been their watchword.

What an impact Haynes had! He led the league in rushing (870 yards) and punt returns (15.4-yard average) in 1960 and was named both player of the year and rookie of the year. Haynes scored a staggering 44 touchdowns his first three seasons, two more than Jim Brown when he started out with the Cleveland Browns. He took part in just one post-season game in his career, the Texans’ dramatic double-OT victory over the Oilers to win the 1962 AFL crown. Haynes went with the franchise to Kansas City in ’63 and spent his waning years with the Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins and New York Jets. Who holds the AFL’s record for all-purpose yardage with 12,065 (rushing, receiving and kick returns)? You know.

Those early years of the AFL were pretty hit-and-miss, as players (and coaches) came and went, and franchises moved or hung on for dear life. What the league most needed was a quality product, and no player provided that more than Haynes. The AFL derived credibility from guys like him. I dare say some NFL teams saw what he did with the Texans and wished they had drafted and signed him.

Haynes, who never earned more than $25,000 in a season, later served as an agent for some 90 NFL players, was an executive for the Zale Corporation and runs the Abner Haynes Heroes of Football Foundation. It serves to assist retired pro players dealing with injuries and conditions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy. A recent study of 91 retired players showed that 87 of them had it to some degree.

This summary of Haynes’ pro career has been compiled because it validates what he did at North Texas State. If he had been just a good player among lousy players there, he would have made no headway in the pros. The National Football Foundation and the College Football Hall of Fame put no stock in how well a guy did after leaving the amateur ranks, or whether he played at all. Pete Dawkins, Army’s 1958 consensus all-American and Heisman Trophy winner, chose to forgo pro football for the life of a scholar, military man and Wall Street financier. Dawkins, by the way, is in the College Football Hall of Fame (class of 1975). I give you another example. Oregon State quarterback Terry Baker was a consensus A-A and won the Heisman in 1962. His pro career—three seasons for the Rams in which he scarcely got off the bench—marked him as a flop. Good gosh a’mighty, he had been the number one pick in the NFL draft! I cannot help but wonder whether Baker was really so great in college. Of course, he got into the CFHOF (class of 1982).

Somebody in LA  didn’t do his homework on Terry Baker. If, by contrast, a scouting report had been done on Haynes before the 1960 draft, it might have read like this: “Has good size and excellent speed. Is a very elusive runner and can catch pitchouts and downfield passes with aplomb. Not afraid to block the biggest defenders. Versatile, in that he can run back punts and kickoffs. Would also make an outstanding DB. Haynes has no downside and should be a fine pro.”

I simply do not understand how Abner Haynes, who faced obstacles every step of the way and overcame them all, is not in the CFHOF. It’s true that he did not make first-team all-America but through no fault of his own. Nor can he be blamed for going to a middling place like North Texas State, since the coaches at all the big schools in Texas were willfully blind to his exceptional talent. Jim Crow called the shots in those days.

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I Miss the Southwest Conference

Almost 7,000 miles separate me from the land of my birth, so obviously I am not on the scene. My feel for what’s happening in the USA in the summer of 2016 is a bit shaky. That applies to numerous issues—Donald Trump winning the Republican presidential nomination, cops killing citizens, citizens killing cops, the rising number of homeless people and five years of El Nino-sponsored drought in the West, for example—but I speak here of something less weighty, intercollegiate athletics.

I no longer attend football games at Memorial Stadium or basketball games at the Erwin Center, and I don’t read the Austin American-Statesman sports page as I did in the old days. However, I am not completely out of the loop. I keep up with things via the online versions of the New York Times, Sports Illustrated and ESPN. I have a general idea of what’s going on with the UT Longhorns and their various competitors.

Change is a constant, but stability has its place. These, I admit, are the words of a man in his seventh decade. More and more, the fast-evolving world of big-time college sports alienates me. I have said before that I am irked by teams abjuring their school colors. The money involved is obscene, with head football coaches’ salaries dwarfing those of the presidents of the universities. Games are more frequently held off campus; Alabama and Wisconsin played at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium in 2015, for instance. The facilities, built or enhanced by tax-deductible donations, are on a scale inconceivable not so long ago. The players (were they ever really “student-athletes”?) are mercenaries with only the flimsiest involvement with the schools they purportedly attend. During Johnny Manziel’s sophomore year at Texas A&M, his education consisted of online classes. Kentucky’s basketball program has taken the one-and-done concept to the extreme. Former Texas coach Rick Barnes, now at Tennessee, really yanked my chain a few years ago with a statement meant to woo recruits: “I’m not trying to win a national championship at UT so much as prepare my players for the NBA.”

College jocks getting in trouble is surely not a new phenomenon, but it seems to have gotten out of hand as the schools and local police departments are in cahoots to cover up for these bad boys. One can hardly find a better example than Baylor University, where over a five-year period numerous football players committed rapes or other forms of sexual abuse but remained eligible to play on Saturday afternoon. God-fearing Baptists, indeed.

Perhaps too sentimental for my own good, I find that I miss the Southwest Conference (1914‒1996, although its dissolution began in 1991 when the Arkansas Razorbacks left for the SEC). I’m not saying I want to return to the old days when black athletes were excluded and black coaches were inconceivable. Not in the least. I have contempt for cowardly coaches like Bear Bryant of Texas A&M, Jess Neely of Rice, Darrell Royal of Texas and Frank Broyles of Arkansas who were happy to go on season after season with Jim Crow football. Maintaining the racial status quo was more important to them than winning games and championships. And let’s not talk about social justice.

When I was a boy growing up in east Dallas, the SWC was all we knew. What players would be all-conference, and who would win the league title and play in the Cotton Bowl? Such questions had our undivided attention, although of course we knew about the Big 8, the Big 10, the Pacific Coast Conference, the SEC and the ACC, not to mention Notre Dame, the ultimate media darling. There was a Humble filling station near our house, and it gave out small pennants for each of the SWC schools with that year’s schedule printed on the back. I had one of each—the SMU Mustangs in blue and red, the TCU Horned Frogs in purple and white, the Texas Tech Red Raiders in red and black, and so forth. Being young and impressionable, I was thrilled. Add to that Bill McClanahan’s witty cartoons in the Dallas Morning News and Kern Tipps’ golden-throated announcing of conference games on TV and radio; we had a good thing going in the SWC.

It was a bit insular, I admit. Other than Arkansas, every school was in the state of Texas. Then again, Texas was—and still is, to some extent—different. Football culture was deeply embedded in the Lone Star State. I have no wish to delve into the various and painful factors that led to the conference breaking up in the mid-1990s. But I was offended that only four schools (Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor and Texas Tech) joined the Big 8 to form the Big 12. Oh, we had some weak sisters? What conference does not? Since when are Iowa State, Kansas and Kansas State, long-time members of the Big 8, football powerhouses? Nobody told them to hit the road.

I had become reconciled to the idea of this conference merger and wanted it to succeed until 2011 when Texas A&M left for the Southeastern Conference (Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska also left of their own accord, to the Pac-10, SEC and Big 10, respectively). If any two schools have ever had a stronger love-hate relationship than UT and A&M, please name them. The Horns and Aggies would stay together, regardless of conference affiliation. So I assumed, and then the unthinkable happened. For reasons of their own—and one possibility is that they wanted to declare their independence from UT—the Ags departed. Although I could never have spent my student days in College Station, I respect and admire the Aggies. On Thanksgiving Day in even-numbered years, I used to go to Congress Avenue and watch them march up to the Capitol and then on to the stadium. It was a majestic scene.

The world is in flux, I know that. Some things that once seemed carved in stone have been tossed aside. We can adjust or we can perish, or at least become irrelevant. I have no idea who is favored to win the Big 12 football championship this year, although it’s unlikely to be the Longhorns who have been in an extended swoon. As for hoops, I am completely uninformed. Living abroad has afforded me a perspective I sure did not have back in the States. Even so, please cut me a little slack if I get wistful about the old Southwest Conference.

9880 Marlin Drive in Dallas

I have only two vague memories of life before my family moved into a red-brick home in far east Dallas in the summer of 1957. In the first, I was quite young—maybe one year old? I was in a crib, and there were a number of adults in the room. They took turns picking me up, passing me around and putting me back in the crib. I observed what seemed to be two kinds of people. One was taller, more angular in both body and face, and had relatively deeper voices. The other was shorter, rounder and spoke in a noticeably higher range. My perception was about gender, although I still did not know to which group I belonged. The second memory is of an older couple babysitting my brother and me at their home in Oak Cliff. I remember nothing else prior to taking up residence at 9880 Marlin Drive, about 4 1/2 years after my birth at Baylor Hospital.

Our home had a single bathroom and just over 1,000 square feet. It was new, as were all the others in the neighborhood. In fact, there were still some vacant lots. Of course, I knew nothing of real estate development or how land was being gobbled up in the name of progress or at least that of making a quick buck. Across the street was the Williams family, one of whose daughters, Cindi, was my first sweetheart. I sometimes played with her, Reba Jordan and Maureen Ward, but mostly I was in a male setting. Ronny Anderson and his brother Jerry, Mike Moore, Ray Boshart, Paul “Bubba” Polk, David Posey, Johnny Young, and Bruce Boog and Mike Stockton from around the corner were my best friends in those days. We played football, basketball and baseball, and improvised other games. I was in Cub Scouts.

On Halloween nights, I recall going out on trick-or-treat excursions with Cindi that were all too productive. We came home loaded with a shopping bag full of candy and stuffed ourselves over the next two weeks until every last bit was gone.

Just on the other side of our school, Edwin J. Kiest Elementary, was Harry Stone Rec Center, usually accessed by bicycle. Oh, the hours we spent playing games there. I do not mean to portray myself as such a hard-core jock at an early age, but this was my nature. Harry Stone did have non-athletic offerings. When a friend (not in my usual cohort) informed me that he liked going there and partaking of the arts and crafts classes, I was surprised if not staggered. That stuff was for girls and old folks, was it not?

I could reminisce at length, but I will relate just one other anecdote about Harry Stone. Some of us had put together a sandlot baseball game one hot summer day. I was playing first base, and the aforestated Mike Moore was at bat. Mike was at least three years older and thus bigger and faster—a key fact. The pitcher wound up and fired, and Mike hit a dribbler straight to me. I caught it and had only to run a few feet to get him out, but I saw that he had other ideas. Mike was barreling down the first-base line although he knew he had no chance of being safe. By doing so, he forced me to hurry and not just touch the base but go past it. Clearly, he sought to intimidate me. Was I such a wimp that I would concede first base? Impossible. I got there first, all right, but he made me pay a very high price with a collision that sent me sprawling 10 feet at least. I got up with the ball firmly in my hand.

Marlin Drive in the late 1950s and early 1960s was entirely European-American or “white” as we were once called. It took me many years to understand what racial segregation was, and injustice and oppression, Texas history, Southern history, American history. I learned, however.

I happened to witness a rather explosive scene next door in 1962 when Susan Ward and her husband Skip got into a screaming argument. But really, there was no violence or crime that I can remember. No drive-by shootings, and if that means I had a plain-vanilla childhood then so be it.

Some of the more sociable parents threw backyard parties with food and recorded music. I wish I could say people played instruments and sang or that some danced, but that did not happen. Looking back, we were a fairly tame bunch.

I can tell you another thing. We all spoke with thick southern accents—none more so than yours truly. Yet we fancied ourselves somehow better than those people just one block east. They lived in Mesquite, and we were in Dallas, the big city, and thus somehow superior. We regarded them as “country hicks,” and I regret to admit that is the term we used.

Sometimes our family invited relatives—Dot, Gary, Dennis and Shannon on my father’s side or Dub, Sandy, Allen, Cathy and Linda on my mother’s, plus the respective grandparents—to our house for a get-together. Invariably, chicken was cooked on the grill with charcoal briquettes underneath. And for dessert? Ice cream, but not what you buy at a store. This came from an old-fashioned hand-cranked machine. One of the grown-ups would pack the ingredients (milk, fruit, eggs and sugar) with ice on the outside of a metal cylinder. That fit inside a wooden bucket. Us kids did the cranking, naturally. We grumbled, but the result was the most mouth-watering ice cream. Delicious, succulent. In all the subsequent years, I have had nothing better.

I mentioned Johnny Young earlier. His father was kind and generous, and used to show movies in the family garage during the summer. There would be about 25 kids gathered around, watching whatever fare he could provide. The only two I remember are The Babe Ruth Story and The Incredible Shrinking Man. The former inspired me, and the latter scared the living daylights out of me.

At the end of the street, where Marlin intersected with Oates Drive, you would find a big field of maybe 200 acres. There was a pond close to the street and further south was an old, abandoned 3-story mansion astride a cemetery. This was the Motley Place, source of many stories. Built in 1903, it burned 64 years later, when my family had moved to a different part of Dallas. We all said it was haunted, just as we talked about some mysterious lady who lived in or around White Rock Lake. (That’s a very familiar myth, also appearing in the Philippines, Brazil, Estonia, Malta, the Netherlands, you name it.)

The descendants of Zachariah Motley sold the property to Dallas County, and in its place Eastfield College (the derivation of that name should be clear) was erected. This was where I took Freshman English in the summer of 1971 before heading off to UT.

I’ve been back to Marlin Drive quite a few times. Sure, it shows some wear. The street and sidewalks are ramshackle, and there are some busted-up cars sitting in driveways. The trees, newly planted when we got there, have grown. The houses must have been built sturdily because the old neighborhood is no slum. I would say it looks OK more than a half-century on.

Kim Jong-Un and his “Pleasure Squad”

The North Koreans are in the news again. I refer not to them testing a hydrogen bomb or sending another missile over the East Sea or hacking computers in South Korea and the USA or putting the clamps on desperate would-be refugees or sucking up to virtually their only supporter—China—or selling nuclear technology to other rogue regimes or expansion of their gulag or running a highly profitable counterfeiting operation in “Office No. 39” in Pyongyang or how so many of them are on the verge of starving. (According to the United Nations, 70% of the country’s people are “food insecure.” [How’s that for a euphemism?] Kim Jong-Un, by contrast, gorges daily on Kobe steak, Cristal champagne, sushi, caviar, shark fin soup and Emmental cheese, delivered in bulk from Switzerland.)

My reference is instead to Kim’s decision to bring back the so-called Pleasure Squad: young women (young indeed, some just 13) who are recruited from all over the country. Their job, after a period of intense training and indoctrination, is to demonstrate their feminine charms to Kim and his cronies at the top of the DPRK government, and a few visiting foreign dignitaries. I say he re-instated it because it was disbanded in 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il. There was a three-year mourning period, during which Kim was consolidating his power—a purge here, a purge there, public and private executions—and getting used to his role as leader of the most isolated nation on earth. In fact, he feared that the women who had entertained his father knew too many state secrets.

But apparently he could not resist the temptation. The idea of a troupe of young hotties appealed to the tubby dictator, and who could say no? Since 2014, a number of men, usually members of the army, have periodically gone in search of the most beautiful young women. Pretty is important, but height is another consideration; short girls do not qualify. Selection as a member of the Gippeumjo is presented as a great honor! The young woman’s family receives a financial boost, and she is among this select group. Just being in Kim’s presence is enough to make most people dissolve into tears. I do not pretend to understand the North Korean mentality, but it seems that no persuasion or coercion is necessary since making the big boy happy is perceived as patriotic or a heavenly mandate.

The Pleasure Squad is divided into three parts: gamujo, which sings and dances, sometimes half-naked; haengbokjo, which gives massages; and manjokjo, which provides sexual services to Kim et al. These women retire as early as age 22. They sign a pledge of secrecy and are given a sum of about $4,000 before returning to their respective hometowns. Some, however, marry members of North Korea’s elite.

Kim Il-Sung, a.k.a. “the Great Leader,” started the Gippeumjo. As we have seen, it’s been maintained by his son and grandson except for that three-year hiatus. In fact, a similar entity existed for much of the Joseon dynasty. Palace women were called gungnyeo, and they did everything from emptying chamber pots to cooking to sewing to calligraphy to taking care of royal brats to serving as concubines. The difference is only a matter of degree.

In researching this piece, I saw numerous photos of Kim Jong-Un surrounded by young women. Most are in clear emotional distress, smiling and crying simultaneously. He wears a big grin, and the girls are often holding onto his arms and clasping his hands. Now this is a significant contrast with his father; Kim Jong-Il was nothing if not dour. For that matter, I have seen pictures of Kim the younger with top military guys—medals all the way down to their waists—hugging him and beaming joyously. No wonder they’re happy. The generals, as long as they toe the line, clap loudly in affirmation of his every pronouncement and take copious notes, have comfy lives. They reside in nice homes, have chauffeur-driven Benzes and eat well.

Their welfare is of no consequence to me. My focus is the women who comprise the Gippeumjo. Young, powerless, poorly educated and cut off from the rest of the world, they cannot understand just how fraudulent the DPRK government is, and how they are being abused and even debased by Kim. I deplore what is done to them and believe the time is coming when the evils of this regime will be fully exposed. People will wonder, Why did we let it go on for more than 70 years?

My Books, My Library

Shortly after marauding British soldiers burned much of Washington, D.C. and the Library of Congress in 1814, former president Thomas Jefferson offered to sell most of his library (6,487 volumes—the largest private collection of books in the United States) to the government. A deal was struck, and he received just under $24,000. Jefferson was motivated by patriotism, but there was a bigger reason: The man was dealing with crushing debt. How it must have wounded him to part with his books! He was an omnivorous reader, and he treated his library tenderly. TJ was erudite. He was a bibliophile.

I understand because I am the same way. In lieu of flesh-and-blood children, I place a very high value on my library. I have often said that if anybody wanted to know who I am, he/she could do much worse than looking at all these books. More specifically, look inside them. Every one is heavily underlined and annotated, with my opinions, biases and passions on display.

When I came to Korea in late 2007, I had no problems with homesickness or culture shock. However, I did feel out of sorts and rootless for a few months because all my books had been placed in a dusty storage unit in Del Valle, Texas. Now, that—not having a library—was a weird sensation. With time, though, I developed a new one. I read a book and another and another, I started buying them at Amazon.com and having them shipped here, and on each of my trips back to the States I have made a bee-line to Half-Price Books. My selections, pertaining almost exclusively to history, were boxed up and came with me on the airplane. Sure, it cost money and was a little trouble, but I have no regrets. The pleasure and satisfaction derived from reading those books has been considerable.

My apartment in the Yesung Life Officetel features a closet, the top half of which serves as what might be called the RAP Book Depository. These are books that have been bought but not yet read. I have a ritual—some would call it a fetish, but that’s such a strong word, don’t you think?—wherein I open the closet door after a book has been completed. I survey those unread books and decide which one to take up next. There is no special logic in the process; sometimes I stay on a subject and sometimes I jump to a totally new one. They can be so different as to make me seem schizophrenic.

I am quite careful in purchasing books, but, to use a baseball expression, sometimes I strike out. Maybe I realize that a book is too dry and academic. Or that it contains excessive politically correct terminology. I have started reading a few books and quickly concluded that I was wasting my time. Perhaps I was not learning or my patience was being tested too often.

You see, a book has to be solid and well-written to win a spot on my crowded library shelves. Let me give three recent examples. In 2015, I started on a book about the Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn. He settled in Japan in the late 19th century and loved almost everything about it. But I became infuriated upon reading his praise of the Japanese government for colonizing Korea. I threw it out. Another example was the bio I had of the famous mountain climber Edmund Hillary, from New Zealand. The first 25 pages or so was too nice and sweet. Never was heard a discouraging word: Hillary was a great guy, he came from a fine family, his fellow mountaineers revered him, and so on. This did not pass muster. I really wanted to know about his ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, but no go. And finally, a book that purported to disprove the Black Legend (wherein the evils of the Spanish empire were overstated or simply untrue) was poorly handled by a female Spaniard who would have us believe that the Inquisition wasn’t that bad, the Indians were seldom mistreated, the Spanish did not enslave so many Africans, they did not ruthlessly extract wealth, and the country’s positive achievements have been ignored by historians from France, England and elsewhere. A book has to at least make a nod toward objectivity. This one, too, went into the trash can.

I cannot deny it—I am a demanding and discerning reader. If a book has substance and style, and tells me something I didn’t know, I gladly give it thumbs up. But if I judge a book to be puerile, predictable, pedantic or pusillanimous, it’s Katy bar the door. I can be merciless with an author or publisher who tries to get over on me. I hope I do not sound like I am full of myself, but I consider it an honor for any book to have a place in my library. Crummy books belong elsewhere.

What about those books in my storage unit in Texas? If not for them, I surely wouldn’t pay almost $1,000 a year to maintain it. More than one friend has suggested that I let all of that stuff go, and maybe I should. But my books? Impossible. When I was a freshman at UT (that’s 1971, dear reader), I decided to hold onto every book I read. They obviously mean a lot to me.

There was a GF in the early 1990s. Let’s call her Matilda. Matilda was far from dumb, but she had some ideas with which I could not abide. She used to buy books in bulk and arrange them tastefully on the shelves in her den. Matilda never read these books and had no intention of doing so. Their presence in her home was strictly aesthetic. In our parting conversation, I informed Matilda that in this way and others she was shallow.

There was another GF, about a decade later. Her pseudonym, I have decided, is Gertrude. I liked Gertrude a lot. In fact, she was quite alluring. But upon visiting my home in Travis Heights, she said something that displeased me considerably. Gertrude gazed at my library, and rather than commenting on the books, she criticized the admittedly shoddy shelves on which they sat.

At home in Korea, I like having my books—minus those in storage—around, I enjoy looking at them, and most of all I truly savor the knowledge and understanding I gain from having read them. Some people (Matilda and Gertrude, for instance) would not understand this. One of my brothers graduated from high school 40 years ago and is just slightly ashamed of the fact that he has not read a book since. A guy I worked with at a blue-collar job in the early 1980s considered me downright strange because I carried a book wherever I went. “Richard,” he once asked me, “why are you always reading?” There was no use in trying to explain.

I will leave you with a quote from Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator: “I have always imagined that paradise will be like a kind of library.”

My letter to Archie Manning of the National Football Foundation, dated June 21, 2016

Archie Manning

National Sports Foundation

433 East Las Colinas Blvd., #1130

Irving, TX 75039

USA

Dear Mr. Manning:

Greetings once again from Korea. I was recently sent a ballot for voting in the 2017 class of the College Football Hall of Fame. The players, from Morten Andersen to Marc Zeno, are an impressive lot. I had hoped to find the name of Abner Haynes, but it was not there.

As I have said before, Haynes should be first among equals in the 2017 class. He was a truly great player at North Texas in the late 1950s. Furthermore, he was the first African-American player at an otherwise European-American college in the South. He got the integration process started, and that is some serious stuff.

I think the NFF should find ways to be more flexible with its criteria, which seem to exclude Haynes. I can tell you why he was not a first-team All-American. He was at a remote, no-name school, only because racism and Jim Crow attitudes limited his choices. Graduating from a high school in Dallas, he wanted to attend SMU or TCU or Texas Tech or my alma mater, the University of Texas. He wrote to the athletic directors at those schools and was turned down flat. He had no choice but to lower his sights, which meant North Texas.

Sixty years ago this month, in June 1956, he and his brother drove to Denton. They parked their car outside of Fouts Field and walked to the office of Odus Mitchell, the Eagles’ head football coach. Haynes expressed an interest in playing at North Texas State. Mitchell, to his credit, did not turn him down. Nor did the president of the university or other key people in Denton. Haynes had the chance, and he made the most of it. He had a tremendous career in green and white from 1956 to 1959, made his grades, stayed out of trouble and moved on to a splendid career in the American Football League. Other black players were soon on the rosters of Southern colleges. The ice had been broken, for which we have Haynes to thank.

Mr. Manning, I tell you without fear of contradiction—Abner Haynes belongs in the College Football Hall of Fame. Surely there is a way. Give him an award or special honor. He is deserving, and I do believe he should be acknowledged at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on December 5.

Sincerely

Richard Pennington

The Longhorns’ Jimmy Saxton

It was an interesting setting and an interesting conversation. Prior to the Orange-White Game at Memorial Stadium sometime in the mid-1980s, the coaches and other staffers of the University of Texas athletic department were cooking up an eggs-and-sausage breakfast for a sizable number of football fanatics. Seems sort of quaint from the perspective of 2016, but there we were. The line moved slowly, so we had time to get to know our temporary neighbors.

I fell into a conversation with a man whose opinion I valued. It is important to point out that he was of African descent. Apparently a native of Austin, he had been attending UT football games for longer than I had—going back to the 1950s. Whether I asked him point blank or he volunteered the information, he was emphatic that the quality of football had improved since racial integration. I followed up by asking him whether even a single guy from the Jim Crow era could play and star today. Just one, he said, James Saxton, whose varsity years for the Longhorns spanned 1959 to 1961: “Whoa, man, he could go! That Saxton could really play some ball.”

Long before I left Austin for Korea, I knew Saxton was sick. He was descending into the maw of Alzheimer’s disease. For no particular reason, a few days ago I Googled him and found that he had died in May 2014. So more than two years after the fact, I would like to offer a reminiscence of this fabulous footballer.

A native of Palestine in east Texas, he was planning to go to Rice before Darrell Royal showed up late in the recruiting season. Saxton opted to be a Longhorn rather than an Owl. His first two years in Austin were inauspicious as he was a running quarterback and buried on the depth chart. Even so, his ability was evident. Saxton, 5′ 11″ and 164 pounds, ran “like a bucket full of minnows” and was “as fast as small-town gossip,” to recall two of DKR’s better known lines. Before Saxton’s junior year, he was moved to tailback in Texas’ wing-T formation. The results were splendid as he was named all-Southwest Conference in 1960. Saxton’s showing the next year must be what so impressed my friend at the Orange-White Game a quarter-century later: He scored nine touchdowns and carried the ball 107 times for 846 yards—a stunning 7.9-yard average. That remains a school record. He had scoring runs of 80, 79, 66, 56, 49 and 45 yards. Only a late-season upset by TCU kept the Horns from winning the 1961 national championship; they finished third in the AP poll. Saxton was an All-American and a Heisman Trophy finalist.

What follows is my most vivid memory of UT’s whippet-like running back. I was in the den of my family’s home in Dallas, watching a game on TV. The Horns were winning big. (Almost every game that year was a blowout.) Fairly close to the goal line, QB Mike Cotton handed the ball to Saxton. He sped around right end with breathtaking speed, scoring easily. Yes, I was enamored of the Longhorns’ No. 10, who appeared on the cover of the November 27, 1961 Sports Illustrated with the line “Football’s Fanciest Runner.”

Let me pause and say this was the last year UT wore bright orange jerseys at home. Royal claimed to have found proof that the original color was darker and somewhat muted. At his instigation, “burnt” orange has been our lot since 1962. I think this was a mistake, as I told the coach once in an interview—tactfully, of course. I much prefer the bright orange worn by Jimmy Saxton and his peers.

He had a brief and uneventful pro career. A third-round pick by the Dallas Texans of the American Football League, Saxton had no chance whatsoever of moving Abner Haynes out of the backfield. He carried three times—thrice, I tell you—in the 1962 season for a single yard. He caught five passes for 64 yards. No TDs. His biggest contribution came at Jeppesen Stadium in Houston where the Oilers and Texans played for the AFL title. He punted twice in Dallas’ 20-17 double-overtime victory. Lamar Hunt moved the franchise to Kansas City not long afterward, and Saxton declined to go north. He wanted to start a business career, and truthfully he was not big enough for pro ball.

Saxton became a prominent banker, and spent time as the head of the Austin Chamber of Commerce and the State Board of Insurance. His gridiron greatness was not forgotten, as he won induction into the UT Hall of Honor, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame.

 

 

Thomas Jefferson’s Convoluted Legacy

Back in the 1980s, I had a GF named Louise Montgomery. She was working on a doctorate in journalism at the University of Texas. Louise swooned for Thomas Jefferson, calling him brilliant, a man of protean intellect and vision. She was not alone, of course. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, third American president (1801−1809) and founder of the University of Virginia, has many admirers. I think he was pretty great, too, but not perfect.

You probably know where I am heading with this—Jefferson’s liaison of nearly four decades with Sarah “Sally” Hemings, one of the hundred or so slaves on his plantation known as Monticello. Hemings, it must be noted, was a mulatto, as was her mother Betty. They and other female relatives either married white men, or were white men’s common-law wives or concubines. The extent to which these women (and many thousands of others) voluntarily entered into sexual relationships with white men will never be known. But what is certain is that they had little power; coercion during the slavery days—1619−1865—took place on many levels.

Betty’s owner copulated with her and produced a half-dozen mixed-race children. Who was he? John Wayles, an attorney, slave trader, business agent and planter. His daughter Martha married Jefferson in 1772. This means Hemings and his wife were half-sisters!

In 1785, Jefferson, recently widowed, was named Minister to France. Joining him in Paris were his daughter Patsy and two servants, one of whom was Hemings’ brother James. Two years later, his other daughter, Polly, followed. She was accompanied by 14-year-old Sally Hemings. It was during this two-year span—1787 to 1789, when Jefferson returned to the USA to serve as Secretary of State—that his sexual relationship with Hemings began. The first of their six children, Harriet (1), was born in 1795, followed by Beverly (1798), Thenia (1799), Harriet (2) (1801), Madison (1805) and Eston (1808). Jefferson was careful about noting the fathers of slave children in his Farm Book, but rather curiously did not do so for these six. Although they were seven-eighths white, he regarded them as slaves under the principle of partus sequitur ventrum. Three of these very light-skinned people later chose to “pass”—that is, to identify as being of European descent.

In the Southern states during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, it was not at all uncommon for male slaveholders to bring comely young women to their beds. There was little social opprobrium against it as long as the men were discreet. (This is, of course, seeing the situation just from the position of the politically and economically dominant whites. Anger often boiled in the slave quarters about it.) So what Jefferson did with Hemings was by no means unique.

As one of the Founding Fathers, he could hardly have been more prominent. Acutely aware of how history would view him, he went to great lengths to cover his tracks about the Hemings story. He might have succeeded, if not for a few things that were out of his control. One is that the Hemings family’s oral tradition, very important in African culture, identified Jefferson as the father of both Harriets, Beverly, Thenia, Madison and Eston.

We should posthumously thank a man named James T. Callender. Portrayed as a liar, drunkard and scandal-monger by Jefferson’s defenders, he published pamphlets stating that the great man of Monticello had been consorting with a slave-girl. Jefferson did his best to play it cool, and he was aided by biographers who were not about to touch these sordid allegations. As for the paternity of Sally Hemings’ kids, in the mid-19th century the Jefferson family began fingering Peter Carr (Jefferson’s nephew) as the culprit. That was convenient since he had died in 1822 and was not around to refute the charges. Patsy and Sally had almost the same lifespans—1772 to 1836 and 1773 to 1835, respectively—and it strains credulity that Patsy did not know of this relationship. She and many others helped keep a lid on the truth.

More than a century passed, and historians such as Henry Randall, James Parton, Dumas Malone and Merrill Peterson were content to ignore the Jefferson−Hemings story or treat it as an unsubstantiated rumor. After all, Jefferson had written and spoken contemptuously about miscegenation. To him, children born of interracial couplings were nothing but “spurious issue.” In my view, Randall, Parton, Malone and Peterson are guilty of poor historiography. Malone, who spent decades on a magisterial six-volume biography, insisted that such a “vulgar liaison” was “virtually unthinkable in a man of Jefferson’s moral standards.”

In the 1950s, a new generation of historians began to look closer at the matter. The Hemings descendants had never stopped claiming that they were in fact part of the extended Jefferson family. Fawn Brodie’s Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (1974) showed that he had been present at Monticello when each of Hemings’ six children was conceived. For poor Peter Carr, exculpation came late. Annette Gordon-Reed’s Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997) offered more powerful evidence—some would say proof—that Jefferson was guilty as charged. The next year, Eugene Foster conducted a study of the DNA of Hemings’ great-great-grandson. The result? A match with the Y-chromosome of the Jefferson male line. That, combined with the circumstantial evidence, left little room for doubt.

Thomas Jefferson wrote stirringly about liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness. His words ring somewhat hollow now that we (almost certainly) know that he fathered six children with Sally Hemings. It seems clear that Jefferson, an elusive character, was duplicitous and had feet of clay.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which operates Monticello, issued a report in 2000 accepting Jefferson’s paternity. Since then, there have been several intense and emotional scenes between the two branches of Jefferson’s family at Monticello and at nearby UVA—a healing, as it were. Now, well into the 21st century, we can finally stand back and look at sobering issues like slavery and sexual intimidation with a clear eye. I can only suppose that Louise—my old-time used-to-be—would concur.

A Disturbing—and yet Comforting—Street Scene

Just after noon on a beautiful day in the spring of ’16, I was in the park adjacent to the Halla Classic Building in Gangnam. I sat on a bench and awaited the arrival of my friend Kathy Choi. She was operating on what she called “Korean time”: about 10 minutes late. I will describe what she missed and offer some comments.

I heard a loud noise from close by. It seemed to be a male voice, shouting in anger. My first inclination was to ignore it. I could hardly count the times I have witnessed Korean people, women and men alike, screaming and acting in a manner that is meant to be intimidating. Back and forth they go, until finally they cool down. This was different. I went to see what in the world was happening. On a narrow street I have walked hundreds of times, I saw a police car. Beside it were three officers doing their best to bring a large man under control. A fourth was standing there, giving orders. I can only assume he was telling the guy to calm down and allow the cuffs to be put on his wrists. He must have been either drunk or mentally ill, or some combination of the two. He was on the ground, struggling mightily and cursing. This man had made up his mind not to go without putting up a fight.

I was among perhaps 100 people staring with big eyes. Try however they might, the three cops could not subdue him enough to cuff him, put him into the back seat of the car and haul him to the station. After maybe 5 minutes of this intense battle, they brought him to his feet. Policeman No. 4 pulled out a Taser and warned the guy that if he did not cease and desist, he was going to get the biggest shock of his life. He refused  to listen to reason and kept on fighting. The first three officers managed to present his large back to No. 4 and then from a distance of no more than two meters, BOOM! The man was in immediate and intense pain. He screamed and fell to the concrete. With no delay, the first three cops pounced and cuffed him. He was not rendered unconscious, however. In fact, it seemed he hardly stopped yelling and cursing. They brought him to his feet and—with some difficulty—led him to the police car. Off they went.

My good friend Wikipedia tells me that a person struck by a Taser experiences stimulation of sensory and motor nerves, causing strong involuntary muscle contractions. The Taser is a non-lethal but very effective weapon.

What I saw was far from pleasant, but it could have been worse. First of all, the man was not being beaten. None of the cops ever hit him. No fists or batons were used to hurt the guy. As for the Taser, no doubt he suffered when the two electroshock darts hit him. It probably hurt like hell. But I do not need to tell you it hurt less than if a gun had been used. There have been a few instances of serious injury and death since Tasers have been made standard tools of law enforcement. Some cops have been known to use the Taser too quickly; these did not.

As for the suspect/perpetrator/criminal, he should have known that fighting the police is a losing proposition. Fight the cops and you will not win. At least in the USA, cops are trained in what is called “CQC”: close-quarter combat. They have more firepower, and they can always call in reinforcements. In fact, a second police car came racing up just as the situation reached its climax. Even if the man did not like it (and who would?), he should have just put his hands behind his back and submitted to cuffing and arrest. I see no great shame in saying, “OK, officers, you got me. Let’s go downtown.” He would have saved himself a lot of pain.

What would have happened to this guy 30 years ago? The police then were trained to apply all the force they wanted to. They were given wide discretion. That is, he would have been beaten in view of everybody. Punish him and let the others see what happens when you cross the police. When they got him to the station, it would have been more of the same—but worse. “Police brutality” is an accusation tossed about all too often. I am here to tell you, police brutality was not used on this street beside the park. I think the police displayed considerable professionalism and restraint in handling the man. I do not know the factors leading up to this confrontation, but I doubt the cops just busted him without reason. I was quite impressed with these four members of the National Police Agency. The way they handled the big bruiser reflected well on Korea itself. I dare say it was indicative of a mature and law-based country.

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