The day after a black woman refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, the United States’ latest battle for civil rights grabbed the headlines. The various facts which caught the attention of the country at the beginning of December 1955 did not however concern Rosa Parks, but the footballer of the University of Pittsburgh Bobby Grier.
The 22-year-old black full-back with a hesitant knee has been propelled into the national spotlight not because of his footballing exploits but because of the color of his skin. At a time when many southern states barred African Americans from attending public universities, officials in segregated New Orleans invited Grier’s team to play Georgia Tech in the 1956 Sugar Bowl.
Although the integrated teams have already received invitations to the game of bowls, no black player had entered the competition since its inception in 1935. Instead, the black players watched the action from the press box and sat down. are prohibited from training or staying in the same hotel as their teammates.
Segregation spread to the stands at Tulane Stadium, where white supporters carried tickets stating that they were “issued for a person of the Caucasian race”.
Although northern colleges regularly benched black players when they traveled to the Deep South, the change came slowly in December 1955. That month, three black starters from the the University of San Francisco, including future Hall of Fame members Bill Russell and KC Jones, played in New Orleans against Loyola University.
But when Sugar Bowl officials accepted Grier’s participation as well as Pittsburgh’s request to join its 10,000-seat section at Tulane Stadium, a segregationist governor sparked national controversy.
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Georgia governor tries to ban Georgia Tech from playing
In the wake of 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education in power, Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin has pledged to defend his state’s segregationist policies. “No matter how hard the Supreme Court seeks to coat its bitter pill of tyranny, the people of Georgia and the South will not swallow it,” he said.
When the Georgia State Rights Council, co-founded by Griffin, called on Georgia Tech to boycott the Sugar Bowl rather than playing an integrated team, the governor turned the game into political football. He urged the Georgia Board of Regents to prevent the state university from going into the field.
“The South stands in Armageddon,” he telegramed. “The battle is on. We cannot make the slightest concession to the enemy in this dark and lamentable hour of struggle. There is no more difference in compromising racial integrity on the playing field than in the classroom. One break in the dike and the relentless enemy will rush in and destroy us.
The modest Grier, the only black player in Pittsburgh, suddenly found himself in the center of a maelstrom. “I’ve never encountered this sort of thing before, either at home or in the team,” he told media. “I’m so sorry that happened.”
Grier had grown up in integrated neighborhoods and played integrated sports in Massillon, Ohio, before being directly segregated in college when Pittsburgh traveled below the Mason-Dixon Line.
“When we played down South, we were separated. Black gamers stayed at a black college or nearby motel, ”Grier said in a 2014 oral history interview with The Historic New Orleans Collection.
When the media asked Grier if he would agree not to participate in the Sugar Bowl if that meant his white teammates could play, the college rallied around the cry of “No Grier!” No gambling! “” Bobby Grier will travel, eat, live, train and play with the team, “the university said in a statement.
“We’re a team,” said tackle Don Agaton. “We don’t play without one man.”
Georgia Tech resists Georgia governor
Students at the University of Pittsburgh have shown their support for Bobby Grier, the Panthers’ only black player.
Bettman via Getty Images
As Pitt’s students rallied around their classmate, Georgia Tech’s all-white student body also challenged Griffin. A river of flames flowed down Atlanta’s Peachtree Street as 2,000 torch-bearing students marched two miles from campus to the governor’s mansion. They cremated Griffins’ effigies, uprooted parking meters, knocked over furniture inside the State Capitol, and placed tin cans and signs on Confederate statues.
Effigies of the governor were also set on fire at Mercer and Emory Universities, as even students from rival Georgia University joined in solidarity with signs that read, “This time we are for technology. “.
Only one in 50 telegrams to Georgia Tech supported the governor. “I’m 60 and have never broken a contract and I’m not going to break one now,” Georgia Tech president Dr. Blake Van Leer promised.
Undeterred, Griffin said the Sugar Bowl should be played with “southern rules” – that is, without black players. “In Rome, do like the Romans,” he said. “If we played in the North, we would play by the rules of the North. Although Louisiana is not Georgia, we should be playing by Southern rules. “
Regents did, however, approve Georgia Tech’s participation in the Integrated Sugar Bowl, although a member of the board expressed concern about its long-term impact: est. “
The spotlight on the sugar bowl remains on Bobby Grier
With the game set, Pittsburgh traveled to New Orleans and settled on the all-white Tulane University campus. “Come to think of it, I’m saying that I was probably the first black person to sleep in a dormitory in Tulane,” Grier recalled in the oral history.
When a training injury hit the starting back and the Pittsburgh safety, Grier was in the starting lineup when the Sugar Bowl started on January 2, 1956. After making the tackle on the kickoff opening, Grier quickly found himself in the spotlight.
On Georgia Tech’s second possession, the back judge signaled Grier a questionable pass interference penalty on a 32-yard throw into the end zone that went over the receiver’s header while Grier was flat on the ground. With the ball placed on the 1-yard line, Georgia Tech scored it for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead. It was the only score of the match.
Although he led Pittsburgh’s rushed offense with 51 yards on a hampered knee, Grier was in tears after the game over the costly pass interference penalty, which the Pittsburgh official later admitted as a error. “I’m on the ground, the ball is over his head. So how could I push him? He’s behind me, ”Grier remembers.
Although there were no screams from fans or opposing players during the match, southern hospitality was insufficient from the manager of the separate St. Charles hotel, site of the awards banquet. ‘post-game.
“If he does show up, I won’t block his way to dinner,” he said of Grier. “But you know he would never come.”
Not only did Grier take his rightful seat at the awards banquet, he also accepted an invitation to dine with a group of Georgia Tech players. (In 2019, the Sugar Bowl inducted Grier into its Hall of Fame.)
Racial change took place slowly on and off the football field after the Sugar Bowl of 1956, as segregationists adopted harsher lines. Louisiana has banned racially mixed events, and the Georgia Board of Regents passed a new policy prohibiting Georgia and Georgia Tech from playing against integrated teams in separate states.
Benjamin E. Mays, who has mentored civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., lamented that segregation in campus classrooms did not spark similar protests at the 1956 Sugar Bowl. the Board of Regents had refused admission of a black student to Georgia Tech or the University of Georgia, there would have been hardly any protest, ”he wrote. “But football is big business.”
Yet he has seen progress. “Years ago Georgia Tech would have said in Pittsburgh, ‘Leave Grier at home,’ and Pittsburgh would have left him at home. “
