Black Athletes Hall of Fame Induction Speech March 14, 1974

Black Athletes Hall of Fame Induction Speech

March 14, 1974

Ralph appeared on The Today Show on Thursday morning, March 14, 1974, a prelude to receiving induction in the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in the Imperial Ballroom of the Americana Hotel, where he chronicled the rise of the black American athlete, with emphasis on the role they played in creating acceptance.

I am proud to be here tonight and especially honored to be able to accept the Black Athletes Hall of Fame Award and to speak on behalf of my fellow inductees.

They represent the very best in athletics; they were all superstars in their individual sports. Yet, they all mean more to black people than simply the records they set. They represent black pride. They represent the great pain of battling overwhelming odds to accomplish a goal. And, they represent the sweetness of winning the battle, of knowing that in spite of the racism and the prejudice, a black person can still be a champion.

Black people have accomplished much in athletics in recent years. But, there is no sense kidding ourselves. It’s been a long, hard struggle. Before we could even begin to face our opponents on the track, on the court, or on the playing field, we had to defeat the racism and prejudice that prevents so many black athletes from even beginning their careers in sports.

When I say this, I think of men like Satchel Paige and Monte Irvin, who spent so many years playing in the Negro League before they could even get the chance to play major league baseball.

I also think of men like Josh Gibson, who for all his years of backwater towns and rickety buses, never did get a chance to earn the recognition and the salaries that white ballplayers with onehalf his talent did.

And I think of all those young black men and women who, because their future in sports looked so hopeless, never even really got past the sandlots. I can’t help but think that among them may have been the most talented black athletes of all. As these youngsters grew up, especially in the years before WW II, they saw that there were no black major league baseball players; that tennis and golf were segregated sports; that, with the exception of a few men like Fritz Pollard, Sr., there were no black professional football players and that between Jack Johnson in 1915 and Joe Louis in 1937, no blacks were even allowed to participate in a heavyweight championship fight.

For all those years, the only opportunities that black athletes had were in sports clubs, which were mostly segregated, and in college competition, which was also mostly restricted to black colleges although blacks did excel in some predominately white universities, especially state colleges like Rutgers or UCLA.

Only in track, where the competition was the clock and the times read the same whether you were black or white, were blacks given any opportunities to show how good we really were. When the name of the game was winning, it was simply not possible to overlook men like Jesse Owens, who was selected the greatest trackman in the first onehalf century. Jesse broke three world’s records in one day in 1935 and won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games. Or Eulace Peacock, who beat Jesse twice on the same day in 1935, and would have gone to the Olympics himself had it not been for a leg injury.

It was very important to the United States to win those 1936 Olympics, for political as well as athletic reasons, and when you want to win, suddenly race doesn’t make so much difference any more. The only thing that counts is getting the best and I think it’s fair to say that a great many of the best track men in those days were black.

Prior to the 1932 Olympics, there was only one black athlete participating in each of the Games. In 1932, however, there were four of us and in 1936, ten in the track events alone.

In the years since, innumerable black athletes, both men and women, have become champions in track. In 1948, Alice Coachman became the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the high jump. She was not the last.

A decade later, we all marveled at the amazing Wilma Rudolph. As a young girl, she had nearly died from scarlet fever. In the 1960 Olympics, she won three gold medals, the first time an American woman had ever accomplished that feat.

The most difficult event in track and field is the decathlon. It takes speed, stamina and great courage – qualifications that Rafer Johnson had to burn. In the same 1960 Olympics that Wilma dominated the women’s events, Rafer set the world record in the decathlon and won that most difficult of gold medals.

In the years before WW II, however, other sports were not as quick to provide their opportunities to black people.

Sometimes, however, an athlete of such exceptional abilities came along that even the strictest bars of segregation came down. Fritz Pollard, Sr. was one of those men. He had been the greatest star in BrownUniversity football history, later played pro football, and, in 1919, was named playercoach of the professional Akron Indians, making him the first black coach of any major professional sport.

Fritz was not the first black man to play his sport professionally, however. That honor belongs to Henry “Hank” McDonald, who played professional football for the Rochester Jeffersons in 1911. He was one of the finest players of any race and, along with Fritz Pollard, Sr. blitzed the trail for blacks to play professional football when it finally became integrated for good in 1947.

Things began to change for black athletes in the years before WW II and the man who had as much to do with that change as any other was a fighter from Lexington, Alabama named Joe Louis.

Joe turned professional in 1934 and, when there was no one left to beat, retired as champion in 1949. Joe won 61 of 62 fights before he left the ring but his greatest moment, and a great moment for all black people, was his historic second fight with Max Schmeling. As millions of Americans listened on their radios, Joe demolished the Nazi hero, Schmeling, and became a symbol of courage and freedom for all America and for black people everywhere.

After Joe Louis, nobody had much trouble accepting black boxing champions. Countless black men held titles at every weight, black champions could be found at every level of boxing.One of the most special was Sugar Ray Robinson. Sugar Ray won the welterweight title in 1946, beat everybody there was to beat, then won the middleweight championship in 1949, defended it and then in 1952, nearly won the lightheavyweight title. Sugar Ray fought for 20 years, won over 130 fights and was, as the saying goes, “Pound for pound the greatest fighter who ever lived.”

In the past few years, boxing has been dominated by two men, Joe Frazier and Muhanmad Ali. I’m not going to get into the argument of which one is the greatest, but I will say that the two bouts these gentlemen fought against each other were the two best I’ve seen in many, many years. And, I will also say that the work that both of these men have done with young people makes them both champions in my book, no matter who has the official title.

Despite black successes in track and boxing, there was still a long way to go to break the socalled color line in team sports. It was not until after WW II that any real breakthroughs were made. And the initial breakthrough was made in major league baseball at that time among the most racist of athletic institutions.

It took tremendous courage on the part of two men to make the “All American Game” a sport that really was for all Americans, both black and white. I don’t have to recount here what Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson did with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Both of them literally risked their lives to integrate baseball and both of them will be remembered as true heroes of the 20th century.

Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson were what America is all about. They showed what men could do if given the opportunity. With Jackie, and the black players who followed him, Branch Rickey built a baseball dynasty. And Jackie showed that, given the chance, he could be not only a great black athlete, but he could be the best baseball player of any race of his time.

After Jackie, it was relatively easy for black baseball players. They still had to endure the racial slurs and the spikings, but at least they had a chance to play. All I have to do is mention the names of Willie Mays and Henry Aaron for you to get an idea what black people did with their chance.

Willie literally personified baseball to millions of innercity kids for 20 years.

And Hank Aaron – this season he will become the greatest home run hitter in the history of baseball. In his quiet, methodical way he has earned a reputation as one of the top allaround athletes in his sport.

After the breakthrough in baseball, other sports followed relatively quickly.

Football, too, integrated in 1947, for the first time since the turn of the century. Buddy Young was among those who had the courage to make the breakthrough and, more than that, to become one of the top stars in professional football of the late 1940’s and early ‘50’s. Buddy, whose blazing speed made him an allpro selection for his first year in the AllAmerica Conference, was also the first black man to score a touchdown in the Rose Bowl. In fact, he scored two of them for the University of Illinois.

There was Jim Brown. He played football at Syracuse, the only black on the team, and left that school a legend. He was drafted by the Cleveland Browns and in nine years set eleven NFL records, scored 126 touchdowns and gained over 12,000 yards rushing. But, he did more than score points. Jim Brown, by himself, could literally demoralize a team, turn the powerful defensive players of the NFL into frightened men.

The last major professional team sport to be integrated was basketball. In 1950, three years after blacks played professional baseball and football, Chuck Cooper became the first black man to play in the NBA. Chuck came to pro basketball with top credentials; he had been a star center and one of the best players of all time for DuquesneUniversity.

Following the trail blazed by Chuck, blacks quickly rose to superstar status in basketball. This list of black stars in both the NBA and college ranks is endless. Superstar Bill Russell played his college ball at the University of San Francisco and they won 60 consecutive games and two NCAA championships. In 1957, he joined the Boston Celtics, then an alsoran team, and turned them into nothing less than a dynasty with his leadership and tremendous talent. Bill is now doing the same thing for the Seattle Supersonics as their coach.

Another great star in the NBA in the late 1950’s was Maurice Stokes, a top rebounder and playmaker for the Cincinnati Royals. In 1958, Maurice fell during a game and tragically became permanently disabled. Maurice spent the rest of his life confined to a hospital, incurring enormous medical expenses. Jack Twyman, a teammate of Maurice’s and a white man, devoted years of his time and money to seeing that those bills were paid and that Maurice got the best treatment possible. The story of Maurice Stokes and Jack Twyman is one that goes beyond basketball. It is a story of the true meaning of sportsmanship, of that special relationship one athlete, one man, can have for another, regardless of race or background. It is a story that should inspire us all.

Two sports that resisted integration for many years were the socalled country club sports of tennis and golf. In spite of severe economic handicaps, blacks excelled at golf for many years on a segregated tour. One of the few occasions when blacks were allowed to compete against whites was at a tournament at the University of Michigan. Two black men tied for first place.

Charlie Sifford was the first black to win a major tournament on the PGA tour, in 1957. In spite of segregated courses where blacks were expected to be only caddies, Charlie played often enough to become a big money winner and to open the door to other blacks on the golf tour.

Althea Gibson became the first black to compete in the United States Lawn Tennis Association championship in 1950. What Althea did in tennis was probably more difficult than the pioneers in other sports. While segregation in baseball was an unwritten law, in tennis it was almost literally in the rule book. The only way a player could be selected to play in the USITA championship was to make a strong showing in regional championships, which were “by invitation only.”

After Althea made the breakthrough, however, the door was open for other black tennis stars and the best of these had to be Arthur Ashe. He has played on the Davis Cup Team, he has won nearly every international tennis championship there is to win, and he has shown that a black man can compete with, and defeat, the beat that his sport has to offer.

In spite of these great strides by black men and women, we still have a very long way to go. There are still no black managers or head coaches in baseball or football, and there remain few blacks in the front office of major professional sports teams.

In many ways we have made it. We have finally seen success on the playing field, we have finally achieved competitive salaries with white players, we have seen men like Monte Irvin become high ranking officials with the Commissioner of baseball, we have seen Bill Russell as a professional coach and Rafer Johnson doing his indispensable work with retarded children.

The worst thing that we can do now is rest on our past glories and stop working for continued progress of black people. The best tribute we can offer to the memory of men like Jackie Robinson is to keep fighting for the opportunity to prove that we can be winners in life.

The success that black people can achieve in sports, as well as in politics or business or education, will make us a stronger people. And, as the black people of America become stronger, so America as a whole will become stronger.

And, only when we achieve in other areas what we have achieved in athletics will we be able to realize Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of a nation where we all can live in equality and as brothers.