Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football
240
Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football
240eBook
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Overview
Jaime Schultz focuses on the historical and racial circumstances of the careers of Trice, Simmons, and Bright as well as the processes and politics of cultural memory. Schultz develops the concept of “racialized memory”—a communal form of remembering imbued with racial significance—to suggest that the racial politics of contemporary America have generated a need to redress historical wrongs, congratulate Americans on the ostensible racial progress they have made, and divert attention from the unrelenting persistence of structural and ideological racism.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803285033 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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Moments of Impact
Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football
By Jaime Schultz
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Jaime SchultzAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8503-3
CHAPTER 1
Resurrecting Jack Trice
Life, Death, and the Campaign for Jack Trice Stadium
"It seemed to me," remarked Des Moines Register columnist Donald Kaul in 1984, "that the story of a young black man who literally gave his life in the service of Iowa State football was the stuff from which legends are made." Indeed, since his death in 1923, Jack Trice's story has reached legendary proportions. Over time members of the Iowa State University (ISU) community have remembered, forgotten, and resurrected their memories of Trice, re-narrativizing his legend according to contemporary circumstances.
"It is impossible to overstate the significance of narrative in cultural memory," asserts cultural theorist Annette Kunh, for the ways that collectives remember the past is dependent upon their scripting of history. In creating narratives, Hayden White contends, historians emplot, or fashion particular kinds of stories, according to a series of four archetypal forms: romance, satire, tragedy, and comedy. Critic Peter Burke extends White's theory to argue that emplotment "is to be found not only in the works of historians, but also in attempts by ordinary people to make sense of their world." From the time of Trice's death to the student-led efforts to memorialize him fifty years later, the changing emplotment and, especially, its racialization have been central to the ways in which the Iowa State community remembers Jack Trice.
The initial, romantic version of the tale glorified Trice's "transcendence of the world of experience, his victory over it, and his final liberation from it," to borrow from White. Before long, however, this interpretation began to fade, as did memories of the fallen athlete. When students rediscovered Trice in the 1970s, they resisted the romantic imaginings of the past. No longer a noble hero exalted in death, Trice had become a wretched victim in a racialized drama. Administrative resistance to memorialize him, students argued, compounded the racism that cut short Trice's life. Thus, the Jack Trice Stadium initiative sought to reimagine his story as a tragedy so that there could be a "gain in consciousness for the spectators" when it came to issues of race, sport, and institutional memory.
The Legend of Jack Trice
In the near century since Trice's death, the same preliminary, expository "stuff" has stayed relatively constant in this protean tale. In 1902 John G. "Jack" Trice, the grandson of slaves, was born in Hiram, Ohio, a virtually all- white, rural town. His father, a member of the all-black U.S. Tenth Cavalry, fought in the Indian Wars and, in 1909, died of a sudden heart attack. Jack's mother, a woman of reported "wisdom and dignity," was left to raise her only child. As Jack prepared to enter high school, Mrs. Trice insisted he live with his uncle in nearby Cleveland, wishing, according to one of his elementary schoolmates, "to get him among people of his own kind, to meet the problems that a negro [sic] boy would have to face sometime, and to give him an opportunity to make social contacts with people of his own race."
In Cleveland Trice attended East Technical High School. Although his mother hoped the environment would be racially diverse, he was the only African American football player on the squad (fig. 1). Recognized as "one of the best linemen ever graduated from the school," he was a standout athlete on an excellent team. In his 1919 sophomore season, the East Technical football team lost only one game. The next year it ranked as the best team in the Midwest, setting up Trice and his compatriots for the national championship against the Pacific coast titleholder, Everett (Washington) High School. (Everett won 16–7.) In Trice's senior year, East Tech went undefeated, but while coaches from Notre Dame and similar schools recruited his white teammates, most northern football teams maintained their tacit policies of racial segregation.
During Trice's senior year of high school, his coach, Sam Willaman, accepted the head football position at Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now Iowa State University). Willaman convinced Trice and several white teammates to attend the land-grant institution in Ames, a central Iowa town with a population of a little more than six thousand residents, nearly all of whom were white. It is reasonable to surmise that because of his race it was the only offer Trice received to play the sport at a PWCU, though his talent, size, and speed should have made him a highly desirable recruit at any school in the country (fig. 2).
That Trice had few postsecondary options was sad but not surprising, considering the tumultuous state of race relations in 1920s America. Around the time of World War I, more than 900,000 African Americans moved from the South to northern cities, hoping to find jobs and escape the grinding racism that met them at every turn. Although the northern industrial centers offered greater freedoms, they were not bastions of racial tolerance. Segregation, both de facto and de jure, characterized black lives. It was a period of racialized violence, and riots, beatings, and murders plagued the era. In the first half of the decade, mobs lynched more than 250 people; African Americans made up all but twenty-three victims.
Paradoxically it was also a time of racial progress with the emergence of the "New Negro" movement and the Harlem Renaissance that highlighted the rich intellectual and artistic talents of African Americans. Activist groups including the NAACP and the National Urban League waged campaigns to improve the lives of black Americans, and early civil rights leaders, such as Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois, rose to prominence. The circulation of black newspapers and magazines expanded, providing outlets to herald black achievement as well as "to attack, expose, to marshal public opinion against all wrongs and injustices, all discrimination and inequality, but especially those adversely affecting the aspirations of the Negro." These publications regularly extolled the exploits of black athletes, though it would take another decade for journalists to consistently assail sport's racial injustices.
Chief among these offenses was a lack of opportunity for African American athletes in the 1920s. The vilification and incarceration of boxer Jack Johnson in the previous decade effectively served to ban black fighters from title shots. A series of organizational policies, bylaws, and "gentlemen's agreements" set in place in the early 1900s excluded black athletes from the League of American Wheelmen, the Jockey Club, the United States Lawn Tennis Association, the United States Golf Association, Major League Baseball, and other white-governed sports leagues. The leaders of professional football had not yet drawn the color line, but less than a dozen African Americans took the field in the twenties. And while football began to flourish at HBCUs, predominantly white institutions allowed no more than a handful of black players to join their squads. Jack Trice therefore found himself an outsider, even while a rising star in the college ranks.
The makeup of Iowa State's student body must have magnified Trice's feelings of isolation. He began his schooling there in the fall of 1922 as one of only "10 to 15" African Americans among 4,500 total students. He was the university's first black student-athlete, though in 1891 noted scientist George Washington Carver had preceded him as the school's first black student. Trice was apparently ill prepared for the rigors of the college classroom and struggled academically, but as often noted in the legend of Jack Trice, he quickly caught up and averaged higher than 90 percent in his classes. He majored in animal husbandry and, as Carver had, planned to use his degree to assist southern black farmers, an element that melds the legacies of two noble men of color at the predominantly white institution.
Playing in the era before athletic scholarships, Trice supported himself by working on the "bleacher gang" in the school's gymnasium and as a custodian in a local office building. In Ohio his mother took on a second job to help pay her son's tuition. At the time the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) banned freshmen from varsity programs, but as one of ninety members on the Iowa State freshman football squad, Trice's 6-foot, 200-pound frame and obvious skill impressed the coaching staff. He also showed talent in track and field, placing first in the shot put and second in the discus event at the Missouri Valley Conference freshmen track meet.
Jack Trice returned to Ohio in the summer of 1923. He worked for the Highway Department and trained nearly every day for the upcoming football season. Most accounts claim that he married Cora Mae Starland during this time (though they may have been married in 1922). At summer's end the two made their way to Iowa State, where Cora Mae began taking courses in home economics. Trice reported for preseason practice and continued his schooling.
So begins the exposition of the "legend of Jack Trice." At this point in the narrative the hero has already overcome quite a bit — positioned in a way that highlights his strength of character in the face of adversity. Against the odds Trice managed to play college football in Iowa. He rose above his humble beginnings and seemingly subpar preparatory education to achieve academic excellence, which he intended to direct toward a worthy cause. A supporting cast of characters, including his widowed mother and his young bride, soon to be widowed herself, add additional heartbreaking elements to the story. This is not to imply that these aspects are not real or are undeserving of admiration or compassion; rather, they serve to draw attention to a particular characterization of Trice — one in which his determination and valor set the stage for his subsequent heroism.
Trice's athleticism contributes to this narrative. Coaches, peers, and the media touted his physical size and defensive talents when he joined the Cyclones' varsity program in 1923 (fig. 3). Before he even stepped foot on the field, Iowa State's student newspaper announced that Trice, "the fast and crafty colored boy, is the most outstanding." Following his inaugural game against Simpson College (Indianola, Iowa), the campus press declared that he was "by far the most outstanding performer and gave evidence of being one of the best tackles in the Missouri valley this year." Teammate Harry Schmidt felt that Trice would have "certainly made All-Conference his sophomore year, because he was really tremendous. I think he would have made All-American. ... He would have made all the teams that would recognize a Negro at that time." Schmidt's brief statement provides three important commentaries: it recognizes Trice's abilities, it indicates that Trice's potential was snuffed out too soon, and it alludes to the exclusionary practice of omitting deserving black athletes from prestigious lists and awards. Over the years each aspect played a pivotal role in the legend of Jack Trice.
But a series of events that took place in and around the University of Minnesota contest of October 6, 1923, truly set this legend in motion. Leading up to the game, the press speculated that the Gophers, outweighing the Cyclones by an average of fifteen pounds per man, would be the dominant team. Minnesota boasted several all-conference veterans, and many football experts considered it the best team in the Midwest. As Trice and his teammates took the Minnesota field, it did not take long for them to bear the brunt of the Gophers' force.
In one of the first plays of the game, Trice injured his shoulder but continued to play. At halftime, with the score tied at 7–7, Coach Willaman supposedly asked, "How are you, Jack?" Trice supposedly answered, "I'm okay, but my shoulder hurts a little." His shoulder, doctors later determined, would have certainly caused him pain; however, this conversation between coach and player did not come out until fifty-three years after Trice's death. The press relayed no such account in 1923. The apocryphal exchange suggests that journalists took poetic license in retelling events, inventing dialogue to undergird the athlete's resolve, and therefore played pivotal roles in emplotting the legend of Jack Trice.
Equally if not more important to the emplotment were journalists' interpretations of the events that caused Trice's death. Perhaps all one can say with any degree of certainty is that a play at the beginning of the third quarter found Trice on his back, and several opponents trampled his supine body. Teammates helped Trice from the field, and medical personnel took him to a local hospital. Without his defensive prowess, Iowa State lost to Minnesota 20–17. Meanwhile, doctors determined that Trice's injuries were not serious and deemed him fit to travel back to ISU. Lying on a makeshift straw mattress aboard a railroad car, he made the nearly 250-mile return trip in terrible pain. He arrived in Ames on Sunday morning, and team officials immediately rushed him to the Iowa State College Hospital.
Initially doctors thought that Trice's condition was improving, but his breathing became shallow and irregular. They detected severe abdominal distress and discovered that his sore shoulder was a broken collarbone, an injury sustained at the start of the game. Physicians at the Minnesota hospital had failed to diagnose either problem. The following day the hospital staff summoned an internal specialist from nearby Des Moines who pronounced Trice's abdomen and intestines so severely damaged and his condition so precarious that the athlete could not withstand surgery. Years later Cora Mae Trice recalled the moment of her husband's death: "When I saw him I said, 'Hello Darling.' He looked at me, but never spoke. I remember hearing the campanile chime 3 o'clock. That was October 8, 1923, and he was gone."
Remembering Jack Trice
Iowa State administrators canceled afternoon classes the following day so that the community could pay its respects to Jack Trice. Acting as pallbearers, his teammates carried his casket to the memorial service, held in the center of campus (fig. 4). Before an estimated three thousand to four thousand mourners, Iowa State's president Raymond Pearson read what journalists alternately called "Jack Trice's Creed" and his "last letter" (fig. 5). It was, as the story goes, a note Trice wrote to himself the night before the Minnesota game. Hospital employees apparently found it in the breast pocket of his coat just hours before the service. The words scrawled across a sheet of Curtis Hotel stationery have become the cornerstone of the legend of Jack Trice, for they depict a man who saw his performance on the field as larger and more significant than a game and indicate his determination to prove his personal worth, as well as that of his entire race. He wrote:
To whom it may concern,
My thoughts just before the first real college game of my life. The honor of my race, family, and self is at stake. Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will! My whole body and soul are to be thrown recklessly about on the field tomorrow. Every time the ball is snapped, I will be trying to do more than my part. On all defensive plays I must break thru the opponents' line and stop the play in their territory. Beware of mass interference — fight low with your eyes open and toward the play. Roll-block the interference. Watch out for cross bucks and reverse end runs. Be on your toes every minute if you expect to make good.
(meeting) 7:45 Jack
This "creed worthy of general emulation" clearly struck a chord with those who attended the memorial service. Students there announced their plan for "a fund to express in a material way the sympathy of the college" and ultimately collected $2,259 to help ease the Trice family's financial burdens. The impressive sum covered funeral expenses, reconciled the mortgage his mother had placed on her home to assist with her son's tuition, and provided her and Cora Mae each with $580. Soon thereafter officials preserved Trice's letter in the university's archives.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Moments of Impact by Jaime Schultz. Copyright © 2016 Jaime Schultz. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations,Acknowledgments,
Introduction: Telling Exceptional Tales,
1. Resurrecting Jack Trice: Life, Death, and the Campaign for Jack Trice Stadium,
2. Iowa State University's Commemorative Balancing Act: Jack Trice Stadium and Carrie Chapman Catt Hall, 1995–97,
3. Ozzie Simmons, Floyd of Rosedale, and a Tale of Two Governors,
4. Photographic Memory and the Johnny Bright Incident of 1951,
Afterword: Coming to Terms with the Past,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,