Reconsidering the Black 14

October 17, 2019 marked the 50th Anniversary of Coach Eaton unceremoniously tossing fourteen black University of Wyoming football players off the team, thereby wrecking the team for the season and effectively for the remainder of Eaton's career.  Indeed, recollection wise, that's now what Eaton is remembered for.

In 1969, when the action happened, the student body largely supported Coach Eaton, although the faculty in significant numbers did not.*  Governor Hathaway sought to have Eaton and the players reconcile, followed by a similar action by Federal District Court judge Ewing T. Kerr, which also failed.

Around the state feelings were strongly in support of Eaton, in 1969  Now, the opposite is overwhelmingly true. Some years ago it effectively shifted, symbolized, perhaps, by the fourteen players being featured in a mural in downtown Laramie.  This year, 2019, the players were invited back to speak at the University and the University officially apologized for what had occurred.

But what did occur, and what are the dynamics of it? And does that even matter now.

Much of the story, as the fourteen players have noted, was mythologized right off the bat and their story never managed to get out.  To most Wyomingites in 1969, the height of the period of 60s unrest, the players were demanding to convert their status as UW football players into active protesters for something, with that something having something to do with the Mormon church.  Visions of black radicalism of the period circulated in people's head, such as black athletes raising their fists in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.  But in reality what the UW football players were seeking didn't go that far at all.

The players did want to protest, in the form of wearing black armbands at the upcoming game with the Brigham Young University Cougars.  Why?

The reason was two fold, both of which had their roots in Mormon religious tenants. While very early on Mormon church did include a small number of black in the priesthood category, following Joseph Smith's death the church under Brigham Young moved away from that.  Young was noted to be strongly opposed to blacks being Mormon priests and the religion came to have a tenant of prohibiting it.  This remained the case in 1969 but it is no longer today, having been changed in the 1970s.

The Mormon's certainly did not condone racial epithets in the 1960s and in fact culturally they emphasize politeness which doesn't tend to be a universally held American quality (note the thread on Syria and New Yorkers).  Be that as it may, where ever there is a racial view held of any type a prejudice that expresses itself will follow, and certainly any living American, even in 2019, has heard such views expressed about some group by people who surprise you when they state it.  The UW football team, with its starting black players, had accordingly endured racial slurs from the BYU students at the games at BYU.

With both of these in mind, the racial slurs and the Mormon policy of excluding blacks from the Mormon priesthood, the black players determined to seek to wear black armbands at the BYU game.

Now, let's stop here for a second as what they were doing is important to note correctly.

They were seeking to wear black armbands.

They were not demanding to do so.

And that's what they went to see Coach Eaton about, their desire to wear black armbands.

Eaton wouldn't give them a hearing, and simply tossed them off the team.

Now, let's go into this a little deeper.

Eaton's action was wrong.  The fourteen players were his players and they deserved a hearing.  He wouldn't give them one, and he wouldn't even reconsider giving them one.  He just flat out fired them, so to speak.  They weren't even given a chance to change their minds, assuming they had them fixed, which they did not.

It destroyed the team, but beyond that, it was deeply unfair.  They were seeking a hearing at that point, that's all.  Being tossed off the team deprived them of their scholarship and put them in distress.  Ten of them managed to graduate from the University of Wyoming, but the difficulties they were then forced into were severe.

But what about the proposed protest?  That's a bit more tricky.

The change in views that has happened over the years would have occurred in any event, and that's how we view this matter today.  Part of that, however, is that the Mormons themselves changed their views and reverted to their original policy of allowing blacks into the Mormon priesthood.  Given this, the underlying difficulties presented by student athletes protesting a religious tenant of a religion that sponsors a university is now basically removed.  Nobody anywhere would feel compelled today to defend the tenant and indeed Mormons themselves do not hold it any longer and, in addition, are undoubtedly embarrassed by the epithets used by the BYU students at the time.

Be that as it may, Eaton was faced with a serious two part question, that being, should he allow a protest that: 1) was directed at voiced racial slurs and 2) protested a tenant of a religion.

That's not an easy question to really answer.  Eaton himself didn't try to really answer it as he simply grossly overreacted and fired all fourteen players.

Starting off, should student athletes be allowed to protest things by using their student athlete status at all?  Most Americans would say yes, but if we stop to think about it, we generally become uncomfortable with the concept.  Most likely, in 2019, most Americans now would still say yes, and indeed such a protest would be regarded, for the most part, as an individual act.

Having said that, the last few years have certainly demonstrated that people don't feel that way universally.  Black football players taking the knee in the NFL have been met with storms of protest by individuals who feel that they should not be able to use their highly paid status in protest.  Indeed, I have to wonder what would occur (assuming that it hasn't occurred) if this occurred in large scale in university games.  I suspect it would be tolerated now, but lots of people would be outraged.  I'm sure there'd be cries for them to forfeit their scholarships just as there seems to be a view that professional football players should not protest on the field with many feeling that they should forfeit their careers if they do.

Focusing in just a bit, however, almost all Americans today would be comfortable with some sort of protest that was aimed at racial exclusion generally.  Many, however, would not be comfortable with protest that have something racial underlying them with specificity.  In spite of what we may think, we've come a long ways in fifty years and blanket racism is no longer really tolerated in the United States. Subtle racism is, but that's a different matter and harder to recognize.  Outsiders have a difficult time, for example, seeing it quite often.  But, to give a really minor example, I suspect that most people wouldn't get too excited about players protesting the use of an Indian mascot team name.  But if players sought to support something like BLM is some definitive way, the opposite is likely true.

And all of this is 2019 when racial protests, in spite of our belief to the contrary, really don't have the same edge that they did in 1969.  In 1969 there were plenty of examples of openly held racism that was publicly voiced all over the country.  And in 1969 the spirit of the times was becoming increasingly radical.  Today we have BLM, of course, but in 1969, the age had the Black Panthers.  That's quite different.

The point is that a team tolerating a protest of this type is hard to imagine in 1969.  It's impossible to imagine in 1959.  It's difficult to imagine in 1979.  So, had the players received a hearing, it's unlikely that any team anywhere would have allowed it.

Beyond that, the aspect of protesting a religious tenant is a really difficult one.  In 69 the black exclusion was a Mormon tenant. By 1979 it would no longer be.  So its all in the past now.  But that doesn't remove the fact that a religious tenant that is unpopular with the population as a whole is still a religious tenant.

In our own times there have been examples of various western societies really reacting to the wearing of female Islamic dress.  I have a hard time grasping why this is controversial, but it very much is among some people who are very willing to voice their opinions.  In Europe this has been particularly controversial with some efforts to preclude it legislatively.  Given that there are no Islamic universities in the US, it's hard to make an analogy to the Black Fourteen in 1969, but would the U.S. Olympic team allow athletes to protest a foreign team that mandated Islamic dress for its athletes and culture?  Probably not.

A better analogy may be the question of what would occur is students at a state school like UW sought to protest religious tenants that apply to women today.  In recent years there's been a culture wide evolution towards allowing women to be ordained as clergy in Christian and Jewish denominations, but this is not universal.  In the Apostolic Churches the opposite is true and there's not only no indication that this will change, but in fact at least in the Catholic Church most theologians regard this question as settled with infallibility.  There is dissent, of course, and therefore its not impossible to imagine female athletes of a state school wearing those pink "kitty hats" (yes, I'm changing their name) when playing against a Catholic university, save for the fact that most American Catholic universities are Catholic in name only.

Many Catholic high schools, are not, however, and you can imagine the controversy in that context.  Would the women volleyball players of Broderdorp Central High be allowed to wear the aforementioned caps if they were playing against Broderdorp Catholic High?  Of course the fact that I'm putting this down at the high school level complicates this a bit further.

Also complicating this example is that anti Catholicism is the last safe prejudice in the United States and perhaps the Western world.  If I changed the example and changed it to a contest between New Wessex High School vs. New Wessex Orthodox Jewish Academy, what occurs?

All this sounds rather unlikely, of course, but probably not as unlikely as it may seem.  Sooner or later one of these examples is going to occur.  And hence the problem faced by Eaton, which he never addressed, in 1969.  No matter how you may feel about it, can you license players on a team protesting a religious tenant?

Now, again, many feel yes.  But the bounds of that are pretty problematic. At some point, something occurs that crosses an uncomfortable threshold.

Indeed, the reverse, or perhaps something analogous, has occurred in recent years.  Locally, a stand out high school wrestler sat the state championships out every year while he was in high school as his religious tenants (he was Mormon) precluded him from wrestling against girls.  Frankly, I highly admire his actions, which many would have not undertaken, and it was not in protest, but it something like this rose to the level of a protest in which those of a religious faith demanded that their views be taken into consideration, then what?

Not exactly of that nature, but close, something like this has been occurring in some schools where women have found themselves competing against men who identify as transgender.  Transgenderism is of course a hot story but no matter what a person feels about it, those who "trans" their gender are genetically their original gender, and in the case of men, they still have the male attributes of strength that men have. This has proven to be a real controversy in female athletics as women have suddenly found themselves grossly outclassed where this has occurred, and some have taken to official protests as a result.**  Women's athletics only very recently have started to reach the same level of prominence that male athletics have had for years, and so this sudden development has been distressing to female athletes rather understandably.

So what should have occurred at UW in 1969?

Bare minimum, Eaton should have heard them out.  By all appearances, they appeared to be fairly reasonable in their views. Chances are that if he could have made a compromise. An obvious one would have been to tell them they couldn't wear the armbands, but nothing could keep them from making a public statement on their own time prior to the game.  If given that option, I suspect they would have taken it.

Easton would have taken heat for that, but its not like he would have lost his position for it.  Probably most people would have supported him at the time, although a surprisingly high number I'm sure would not have, including probably a surprisingly high percentage of the student body at the time.

Of course, Eaton's firing them deprived them of the chance to be voluntary martyrs for their views, which is always the ultimate test for the committed.  I.e, would they have had the courage of their convictions if Eaton had refused them any leeway after hearing them out and giving them a choice.  I suspect they would have.  Ironically however, his actions granted them that status anyhow and the attention they received was likely at least as great as that which they would have received had they carried out the protest while members of the team.  In suffering the sanction for their actions, they remained remarkably dignified and almost uniformly carried on with their educations, which says a lot for them.
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*Some faculty members stepped in to make up portions of the resulting lost scholarships so the ejected football players could continue on in their educations.

**It's also a very hot topic in feminist circles as one class of feminist reject transgenderism outright on genetic and social grounds, their thought being that their struggle for equality for their gender is damaged by people of another gender seeking to claim that status through chemical and surgical means.