The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration

Jerry LeVias, Warren McVea and Leon Burton are major figures in college football history, but their accomplishments aren’t widely celebrated these days, even at their alma maters. The story of college football integration in the 1960s was ignored by sportswriters of the era, and schools saw little upside to trumpet their racial accomplishments.

The stories of these groundbreaking college football pioneers and the coaches who fought for integration—led by Michigan State’s Duffy Daugherty and his coaching tree, featuring the likes of Dan Devine, Chuck Fairbanks and Bill Yeoman—are compiled for the first time in The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration. From award-winning journalist Tom Shanahan, The Right Thing to Do addresses the official racial quota system in the 1960s college football world and the “Conspiracy of Silence” in the sports press, avoiding any mention of racial politics. It also addresses carefully crafted but totally false myths from the era, including the role of Alabama’s Paul “Bear” Bryant in college football integration—a role where Bryant was a laggard, not a leader.

The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration focuses on three big stories:

• His peers considered Michigan State’s Duffy Daugherty a pioneer, but the true extent of his impact on college football integration is still being discovered. Michigan State players represented an overwhelming 41 percent share of Black players throughout the nation to win a 1960s national championship ring, according to the titles voted upon by AP (writers) and United Press International. Daugherty’s coaching tree heavily impacted the college football game, going back to Dan Devine taking the reins at Arizona State, and the mentoring of Duffy’s Disciples, like Jimmy Raye and Sherman Lewis, reverberates today with subsequent generations of college and professional coaches.
• Student activism was key to progress in the Civil Rights Era, and that trend was reflected on the college football front—even when coaches did not respond well to activism. Sportswriters were unwilling to report on such efforts, such as when Colorado’s 1961 Big Eight champions declined an invitation to the Orange Bowl, wanting assurances that every player—Black and white alike—would be staying at the same hotels and eating at the same restaurants, practices not taking place in the segregated South. Student uprisings also put a halt to Bear Bryant’s backdoor effort to place his segregated Alabama Crimson Tide in the 1962 Rose Bowl, an effort called out by UCLA players and the Los Angeles Times’ Jim Murray—the only sportswriter in the country to cover the ill-fated effort.
• The groundbreaking players who braved the prejudice and abuse of the era: SMU’s Jerry LeVias, the first Black scholarship player in the Southwest Conference; Houston’s Warren McVea, the first Black player to sign with a major Texas college; Wake Forest’s Bob Grant and Kenneth “Butch” Henry, the first Black scholarship players in a major Southern conference; and Gary Steele, West Point’s first Black football letterman.

“Tom Shanahan has always been ahead of the curve when it does to writing about race relations in sport—dating to the great, integrated Duffy Daugherty teams of the 1960s. The Right Thing to Do is another example his unique ability to go inside stories that need to be told in rich detail.”

—John Feinstein, best-selling author of 44 books, most recently Raise a Fist, Take a Knee

“This is such an essential story in sports and society, a story that hasn’t been fleshed out and put into proper context until now. Tom Shanahan sets the record straight on a lot of things and does it with exhaustive reporting and details that will smack you in the face.”

—Joe Rexrode, senior writer and columnist, The Athletic

“I grew up reading Tom Shanahan’s writing, a lot of it about me as an athlete. I truly appreciate Tom’s unique ability to see more than just the surface of a sports story and to write about the real people and emotions. It is refreshing to have someone recognize the achievements of Black male coaches who opened doors for me, a Black female coach. After 25 years of knowing Tom, his writings still inspire and enlighten me, and it is always a pleasure to read his work.”

—Monique Henderson, two-time Olympic gold medalist, NCAA 400-meter champion and record holder and Golden West College men’s and women’s track and field coach.

Award-winning author Tom Shanahan is a veteran sportswriter specializing in college football and, specifically, the integration of college football in the 1960s. He’s also written for NFL.com, Chargers.com, MLB.com, Rivals.com and the National Football Foundation’s Football Matters. His book Raye of Light: Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the Integration of College Football and the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans explains Duffy Daugherty’s pioneering role and debunks myths that steered recognition away from him to Bear Bryant. His dedication to increasing awareness of college football integration’s true 1960s pioneers led to a 2022 First Place Award in Enterprise Writing from the Football Writers Association of America. His deeply researched article covered the 1962 Rose Bowl, when UCLA’s eight Black players and Los Angeles Times sportswriter Jim Murray stood up to segregationist Alabama coach Bear Bryant seeking a backdoor entry into the Rose Bowl in place of the traditional Big Ten entry.

The Right Thing to Do: The True Pioneers of College Football Integration 

Foreword by Ruffin McNeill
400 pages
Trade paperback
ISBN: 978-1-938532-73-3

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