In 1970, nine members of the Syracuse football team, erroneously remembered as the “Syracuse 8,” took a stand for racial equality. When their demands were denied, they boycotted their team’s season. They sacrificed their athletic careers, and it took the university over three decades to formally apologize.
Despite what happened, the sacrifices of Gregory Allen, Richard Bulls, John Godbolt, Dana Harrell, John Lobon, Clarence “Bucky” McGill, A. Alif Muhammad, Duane Walker, and Ron Womack—all working-class kids from inner cities—led to fundamental changes in the school’s football program.
Left to Right: Godbolt, Allen, and Newton (photo, New York Times)
–There was a lack of playing time, especially against other schools that weren’t integrated.
–They were told they couldn’t date white women.
–They were not allowed to take advanced courses while on the team, while white athletes allegedly had no such policy.
–They also asked that the program hire a Black assistant coach.
The players first met at Syracuse in the late 1960s, after Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations. Syracuse was a nationally prominent football program—national champion in 1959—with the proud legacy of Jim Brown, one of the greatest football players of all time, and Ernie Davis, who, in 1961, became the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy.
When Allen first arrived at Syracuse, the coach who had recruited him picked him up at the airport. Allen told WBUR radio about his ride to the university.
Gregory Allen: We get in the car, and we begin, you know, the small talk. You know, ‘Greg, Gee, I’m glad you’re here. We want you to have a good time while you’re at Syracuse. We want you to get a good education. We want you to grow. We want you to have a great career as a football player. But the one thing we’re gonna ask you to do is not date any white girls while you’re here. It was a little bit of a shock for me because I knew that I had traveled north of the Mason-Dixon Line, not below it.
Later, Allen was told he couldn’t be a biology major because he wouldn’t have time to participate in labs, a policy that didn’t apply to white players. He also said the team doctor was hesitant to touch Black bodies. “You know, there were two sets of latex gloves. And anything that could be avoided was avoided,” he said.
Harrell told WBUR that Syracuse and other northern schools followed unofficial rules about how many Black players could be on the field simultaneously, even at home games. “You could have three outstanding halfbacks, but you wouldn’t play them all together because you didn’t want the ‘big money boosters’ — that’s what I call them — the big money boosters to accuse the program of going Black,” he said.
Ben Schwartzwalter with Jim Brown (center) and Ernie Davis (photo courtesy National Football Foundation)
Allen attended a meeting where students and university leaders discussed starting a Black studies program at Syracuse. A few days later, he got a call to meet with head football coach Ben Schwartzwalder. “So I walked into the coach’s office, and I sat down, and he peered at me over his glasses,” Allen said, “and he looked at me, and he said, ‘What’s this I hear about you and this Black crap?’ ”
Allen started to explain his position, but he said the coach wasn’t paying much attention. “So he looked me in the eye and said, ‘Well then, you have a decision to make. You can’t be Black and be a football player.’ Of course, I was a little taken aback. I said, ‘Well, coach, you know, I’m going to be Black all my life. I’m only going to be a football player for a short time, but I don’t see how one would interfere with the other.’”
The players had been asking for a Black assistant coach for a year without results. Former SU great Floyd Little, then of the Denver Broncos, was brought to Syracuse for two days of practice in April 1970, but players soon learned that this was a common occurrence. “The misrepresentation of Mr. Little as the black coach,” the players wrote in a statement, “was a breach of promise made to us. Thus, we initiated a boycott of spring practice.”
They boycotted in May 1970. All nine were suspended from the team. Some of their white teammates threatened to boycott if the Black players were allowed back. The nine went home for the summer, not knowing what would come of their protest.
Courtesy Syracuse.com
In July, SU Chancellor John Corbally ordered Schwartzwalder to hire a Black assistant. However, Corbally also sent a statement to the suspended athletes that he required them to sign before they could return to the team. The players thought the document was demeaning and rejected reinstatement. Only Allen and Lobon would ever play for SU again.
However, SU created a committee to investigate its athletic department. After a 10-week study, the committee concluded in December that “racism in the Syracuse University Athletic Department is real, chronic, largely unintentional, and sustained and complicated unwittingly by many modes of behavior common in American athletics and longstanding at Syracuse University.” The committee went on to say that the “Athletic department showed an unwarranted insensitivity to attempts by black players to question (offensive) treatment” and criticized the “long-standing authoritarian role of Head Coach Schwartzwalder.”
The nine celebrated the decision. Eight went on to graduate from SU, four earned master’s degrees, and Harrell went to law school.
They received further vindication in 2006 when they were invited back to SU to receive the Chancellor’s Medal — the university’s highest honor — and their letterman jackets, which were handed out during halftime of a home game against Louisville.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take another three decades for the demands of today’s Black athletes for racial equality in our nation to become a reality.
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Matt Sieger, now retired sports reporter/columnist who worked for New York State and California newspapers, did his undergraduate work at Cornell University and received a master’s in journalism from Syracuse University. He is the author of The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978. This article first appeared in The Vacaville Reporter on August 27, 2020.
