John C. Walter - Better than the Best: Black Athletes Speak, 1920-2007

THE ORIGINS OF THIS BOOK ARE TWOFOLD. FIRST, I WANTED TO provide a first-person account to demonstrate that black athletes have historically acted with a consciousness of their significance in the struggle against racism. The second is more personal, but part of the same consciousness. In January 1953, I came to the United States from Jamaica on a track scholarship to Philander Smith College, a small, black liberal arts college in Little Rock, Arkansas. For a long time I had wanted to attend college in the United States. This was against the wishes of my mother and father, who wanted me to go to Oxford, Cambridge, or Heidelberg University. I longed for America, however, because in American movies there was so much student enthusiasm at college sporting events, including track and field. One such film, Crazylegs, told the story of Wisconsin University football player Elroy Hirsch, called Crazylegs because when he ran with the football his legs would fly in every direction. The students in the stands were cheering for him, and I wanted to be part of that college milieu. I also was fascinated by a number of cowboy movies that, for some reason, I thought were set in the Southwest. When the opportunity came to go to Arkansaswithout any knowledge of what went on thereI seized the moment. Furthermore, Les Laing, a graduate of my high school, had attended Fresno State College on a track scholarship and was part of the 1948 Jamaican Olympic team. On a visit to our high school (Dinthill, which was located in Linstead, a major town in the island's interior), he spoke enthusiastically about college life in America and about the superior training afforded by American schools. Anyone aspiring to become an Olympic athlete, he said, would be best served by obtaining a scholarship to an American college. Becoming an Olympic star was not on my agenda; just being in America, and competing and winning for my college, was my dream.

My dream was reinforced in 1952 when I won the schoolboy Jamaican championship in the 800-yard run. Consequently, my coach, Ted Lamont, put me in a race against my two heroes, the Jamaican Arthur Wint and the American Mal Whitfield, silver and gold medalists in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, respectively. At that time we did not have a national stadium so the race was held on a field that served the high schools in Kingston. The stadium came much later, in the 1960s, and was named after the same Arthur Wint against whom I ran in 1952. As expected, I came in third, but Whitfield remembers that race even today. It occurred two years before he won the coveted James E. Sullivan Award for America's outstanding amateur athlete. Mal tells his story in this book from his boyhood in Texas and Los Angeles, where he first saw his heroes, the Olympians Eddie Tolan and Ralph Metcalfe, at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Luckily for me, a recruiter from America saw me run and, a few weeks later, Philander Smith College offered me a full scholarship. I knew nothing about Philander Smith. All I cared about was that it was an American college in the Southwest and, therefore, it would be a wonderful place to be. To my parents' dismay, I accepted the scholarship. All my dreams had come true! Philander Smith College recruited five of us together to create, as the coach later said, an instant track team: two sprinters, two middle-distance runners, and myself, a multipurpose runner who ran the 440 yards, the 880 yards, and the mile. My teammates were twins Roy and Willy Taylor, the sprinters, and Alan Moore and Oswald Winter, the two middle-distance runners. Before our arrival, Philander Smith did not have enough runners to compete in the various meets of the Southwest Conference and, furthermore, no one at the college had a good enough record to compete in the Penn and Drake Relays, national, integrated meets. The expectation was that with additions to this Jamaican nucleus, Philander Smith would have a winning team. To compete successfully, a school had to have four people who could capably run 100 yards to compete in the 4 x 100-yard relay. Similarly, in competitive times, to get accepted at the integrated big meets a school needed four people who could run 440 yards to compete in the 4 x 440-yard relay. These athletes would also compete in individual events such as the 100 yards, 220 yards, and so on up to the mile run. We did not have four people capable of running 440 yards at good speed, so we improvised. In the 4 x 440 relay, we had two men who ran 440 yards at very good speed, and I would run 440 yards even though my specialty was 880 yards. We would then dragoon one of the 100 meter specialists to run the 440. We usually gave this person the third slot and tried to give him a nice lead. That way, we could compete as a team. Astonishingly, we competed successfully with these jury-rigged relay teams and excelled in our individual events. I usually won the 880 yards and the mile run.

Arriving in America in January 1953, we knew nothing of racism and segregation. The American Olympians I had met had not mentioned it and the concept of segregation was foreign to us, coming from Jamaica. Before reaching Little Rock, however, our introduction to American segregation began. Because of fog, our aircraft landed in Memphis and we were to continue on by bus to Little Rock. We needed to use the bus station restroom before continuing our journey, so all five of us strolled toward the places indicated by the signs. We saw White and Colored signs, but I thought the Colored sign meant a colored tile finishing on the floor perhaps a beautiful restroom for womenso we entered the nearest one marked White. In brief, there was an African American janitor in there, who after questioning our origins, suggested that perhaps we should not be in there. Thinking he was mistaken, we ignored him and he said nothing else to us, so we used the facility and boarded our bus to Little Rock. We mentioned the incident to our coach that night.