Post by longtimebooster on Dec 1, 2019 13:44:02 GMT -8
If you don't know the story about the Wyoming 14, please read this article. Remarkable.
After playing BYU and encountering bald-faced racism during a game in Provo in 1968, the black players went to their coach and asked if they could wear black arm bands to show solidarity with civil rights supporters during a game in Laramie the following year. The coach blew a gasket and summarily dismissed the players from the team and university. Fifty years later, the Univ. of Wyo., to their credit, apologized and took steps toward making amends. Personally, I think BYU should also apologize.
wapo.st/2r2SEmX
Excerpt:
It was three nights before game day when the black players gathered around their dorm room bunks, the campus buzzing with protest.
A campus activist group, the Black Student Alliance, had announced a boycott of the upcoming football game between the University of Wyoming and Brigham Young University. Students wanted to protest the Utah school, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because of a Mormon policy that then forbade black parishioners from becoming clergy. The group had asked the black football players to join their fight.
The players were skeptical. Similar protests of BYU in the past had not led to much change.
Then Tony McGee, a star defensive lineman, interjected.
When the team had traveled to Provo the year prior, BYU players spit on him and took cheap shots at his knees, McGee said. Referees, and even his own coach, had ignored his complaints about racist taunts. When Wyoming’s black players walked back to the locker room after the game, someone turned on the field sprinklers, drenching them.
“I don’t have a problem with Mormons,” he told his teammates. “I have a problem with my treatment on the field.”
After playing BYU and encountering bald-faced racism during a game in Provo in 1968, the black players went to their coach and asked if they could wear black arm bands to show solidarity with civil rights supporters during a game in Laramie the following year. The coach blew a gasket and summarily dismissed the players from the team and university. Fifty years later, the Univ. of Wyo., to their credit, apologized and took steps toward making amends. Personally, I think BYU should also apologize.
wapo.st/2r2SEmX
Excerpt:
It was three nights before game day when the black players gathered around their dorm room bunks, the campus buzzing with protest.
A campus activist group, the Black Student Alliance, had announced a boycott of the upcoming football game between the University of Wyoming and Brigham Young University. Students wanted to protest the Utah school, run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because of a Mormon policy that then forbade black parishioners from becoming clergy. The group had asked the black football players to join their fight.
The players were skeptical. Similar protests of BYU in the past had not led to much change.
Then Tony McGee, a star defensive lineman, interjected.
When the team had traveled to Provo the year prior, BYU players spit on him and took cheap shots at his knees, McGee said. Referees, and even his own coach, had ignored his complaints about racist taunts. When Wyoming’s black players walked back to the locker room after the game, someone turned on the field sprinklers, drenching them.
“I don’t have a problem with Mormons,” he told his teammates. “I have a problem with my treatment on the field.”
