Praise for
AFRICAN-AMERICAN ATHLETES IN ARKANSAS
Demirels storytelling is enticing and fluid, which makes him the perfect guide to walk readers through the riveting racial history of sport in Arkansas. This is a hugely important, complicated, and beautiful book, both disturbing and inspiring.
Rus Bradburd,
author of Forty Minutes of Hell: The Extraordinary Life of Nolan Richardson
Really well written, informative stories about the Arkansas greats and people who paved the way for my dad, Almer Lee, Martin Terry and others. It will speak to athletes, coaches and history lovers across the state and region, and should be read by Razorback fans of all backgrounds. But its reach should be widerits national history as well.
Fayetteville native Ronnie Brewer,
two-time All-SEC Razorbacks basketball player
Sports teaches so much about lifegiving your best, the power of a team, unity and love. I wish America could live that way. I hope many more get to read this refreshing journey.... its a book every sports fan in Arkansas should read.
Helena native Ken Hatfield, Razorbacks
head football coach 19841989
It brought back memories of growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood and the Arkansas School for the Deaf where my parents taught skin color blindness for 34 years. A really good read about African-American men, like my coach Eddie Boone, who journeyed through the states history and some of the steps they had to take for the next generation.
Little Rock native Houston Nutt,
Razorbacks head football coach 19982007
Educational as well as entertaining. I especially found the information about the baseball years in Pine Bluff of interest, as I grew up in neighboring Grant County and our family often drove by the baseball fields in Pine Bluff. It is obvious from the documentation provided Demirel has done excellent research. I believe libraries across the state would benefit from having a copy of this work in their Arkansas History collections, as well as in their circulating collections.
Sheridan native Carolyn Ashcraft,
Arkansas State Librarian
AFRICAN-AMERICAN ATHLETES IN ARKANSASAFRICAN-AMERICAN ATHLETES IN ARKANSAS
Muhammad Alis Tour,
Black Razorbacks,
& Other Forgotten Stories
Evin Demirel
Copyright 2017 by Evin Demirel
All rights reserved. Published by ED Productions, LLC. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief passages quoted within reviews, without the express written consent of the publisher.
Published by:
ED Productions LLC
First edition: July 2017
ISBN (hardcover): 978-0-9990083-0-0
ISBN (paperback): 978-0-9990083-1-7
ISBN (e-book): 978-0-9990083-2-4
Cover design: James T. Egan
Book design: H. K. Stewart
Front Cover: (upper left) Muhammad Ali spoke at the University of Arkansas in March, 1969; (middle left) Arkansan Sidney Moncrief starred in the NBA in the 1980s; (lower left) Eddie Boone (no. 34) played quarterback for Stuttgarts Holman High in the early 1950s.
Back Cover: An aerial shot of the University of Arkansass football stadium in August, 1937.
Printed in the United States of America.
This book is printed on archival-quality paper that meets requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences, Permanence of Paper, Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
DEDICATED TO
EDEN CARA DEMIREL,
THE LIGHT OF MY EYES
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INTRODUCTION
A long time ago, as a young reporter, part of my job was scanning obituaries in the newspaper. Id find an interesting one, interview relatives and then write about that persons life. The gig entailed boiling down a life into mere paragraphs, but even now I wonder how anybodyprofessional writer or notcould pull off such a seemingly impossible task well. How does one neatly wrap the totality of a persons journey across this orb into 800 words?
The answer: One cant. But perhaps, if were lucky, we accomplish a few things in our lives we would be proud for future generations to see high in our own obituaries. This book represents that kind of hope for me. I have poured my heart and mind into it.
All good and well, a reader may wonder, but why does a white guy like me care so much about African-American history?
For starters, my own story pales in significance to the ones covered in the following pages, so Id rather get on with those and the urgency of the mission at hand as soon as possible. But I understand the question. Id ask it, too. So, to preface, lets start with the concept of race.
I have firsthand experience of how slippery this concept is. I definitely look white, and I label myself as such for the sake of simplicity. Its the checkbox that feels the least like lying when Im speeding through government forms. Still, I know while my mother is a white American, my father is not. He is Turkish, a different ethnic group from most of the lighter-skinned peoples who populated northern Europe for centuries.
My father grew up in the Asian part of Turkey. Therefore, following one line of logic, I should be considered Asian-American. Ive never considered myself this, however, and I likely never will. The concept of race may appear clear-cut on the surface, but peel back that layer, probe a bit and it emerges as complicated as humans themselves. When accounting for the ways our genetics have intermingled throughout the centuries and the diversity of ethnicities within Africa itself, for instance, there can be no consensus definition of white and black.
Growing up in Little Rock, I preferred to think of myself as white and simply get on with life. Yet I always felt different from most people I met. There was, for one, the constant and eternal tripping over the pronunciation of my last name. And none of my white friends (or any friends for that matter) had a Muslim dad who spoke a language sounding so strange.
My father loved sports, especially soccer, basketball and football, and by late elementary school I came to play and watch them on TV, too. My dad, who traveled often, wasnt around as much as my friends dads. My younger brother and I treasured the sporadic times we could watch and play sports with him.
These timesthe years around the Razorbacks 1994 NCAA championshipwere heady times. It felt as if Arkansas was on top of the basketball world. On top of that, in the late 1990s, I was exposed to more basketball supremacy by attending Little Rock Central High School. Our class produced a state championship basketball team featuring four future Division I signees including Joe Johnson, who became a seven-time NBA All-Star.
Such lofty success helped fuel an intense interest and passion for basketball to the point where I consider it part of my very soul. NBA superstar Dwyane Wade once wrote an actual love letter to the game. While he would express the depths of his passion by going on to practice and play it at the highest levels, I want to show how much I love this game through the sheer effort it took to create this book.
In 1997, Little Rock Central High celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Little Rock Nines integration of its grounds. As a student newspaper reporter, I was aware of the national media that regularly descended onto our school to interview students. Discussions of local race dynamics and Civil Rights history frequently filled our classrooms and auditorium. I wrote about a form of segregation that persisted at our school through the white/black divisions in the Advanced Placement and regular classes. A museum, now the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, opened on our campus. Instead of skipping class to get high, I skipped to tour our museum.
