John Paul McCrumbly Should Have Stuck to Football

The process by which the all-black Prairie View Interscholastic League was absorbed by the all-White University Interscholastic League began in 1964 and was completed six years later. Texans on both sides of the divide had their own reasons for wanting to delay it as long as possible as well as to embrace it. Competing as equals in high school football, basketball, track and other sports—in fact, both the PVIL and UIL encompassed far more than athletica—would be something new. It had, by turns, challenging, frightening and inspiring aspects. I remember my two basketball coaches at Bryan Adams High School in Dallas (Larry Covin and Ralph Zietz), urging us to play fearlessly against black opponents. By the same token, I would love to know what the coaches at black schools like Lincoln, Madison and Booker T. Washington told their players; it might have been something else entirely.

Let’s be honest. Integration, at its core a confluence of cultures, was seldom easy, as adjustments big and small had to be made by everybody. Misunderstandings, conflicts and problems were the norm. The story I am about to relate was by no means the worst, and I know of it only because I happened to be present. It involves primarily Woodrow Wilson High School, known to Dallasites not as “Wilson” but as “Woodrow,” so I will follow that usage. Both my father and aunt graduated from Woodrow in the mid-1940s. Its list of notable alumni is, I do not mind saying, longer and more impressive than BA’s. This is the only high school in the United States that can boast—and Wildcats often boast about it—two Heisman Trophy winners: Davey O’Brien of TCU in 1938 and Tim Brown of Notre Dame exactly 50 years later.

The central figure in this episode played football for Woodrow in the 1968, 1969 and 1970 seasons. I am not sure whether John Paul McCrumbly played baseball or did anything on the school’s track team, but he did play varsity basketball in the 1970 season when he was a junior for the red and white. McCrumbly had been among the first black athletes to “cross over” to an erstwhile White school in Dallas. (Segregation be damned, there had been a few black students at Woodrow beginning in 1958, but none ventured to play sports.) Both at Long Junior High and at Woodrow, he was a rampaging 6′ 1″, 210-pound running back/linebacker. A key figure in the Cats reaching the state semifinals in 1969, he was honored by Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine as a member of its 1970 “Super Team.” I will briefly jump ahead and point out that McCrumbly became an all-America linebacker at Tyler Junior College, started at Texas A&M in 1973 and 1974 and had one season with the Buffalo Bills.

Forester Field House, where these events took place, was named after Herschel Forester Sr. A veteran of World Wars I and II, he taught and coached at various schools in the Dallas Independent School District. Although it is not pertinent here, his sons Herschel Jr. and Bill went on to play football at the hometown college, SMU, and then in the pros. The former won two NFL championships (1954 and 1955) with the Cleveland Browns and the latter won two (1961 and 1962) with Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. Forester Athletic Complex, at 8233 Military Parkway in southwestern Dallas, also has venues for football, track and softball.

All right, on to the story! I had come to Forester Field House that night to see BA, coached by Zietz and Covin, play a team representing some other school. My failure to remember the specific team does not matter since this involves the preceding game—Woodrow Wilson vs. W.T. White. The Longhorns had gotten a lot of attention from the Dallas Morning News and Dallas Times-Herald; their two starting guards (names also forgotten) were slick and talented. The entire W.T. White team was White, and McCrumbly was—to the best of my recollection—the only black player for Woodrow.

What I observed was McCrumbly out there on the court with a smirk on his face, crashing into one W.T. White player after another. It resembled nothing so much a (black) bowling ball going full speed down the lane and then crashing violently into those (white) pins. Time after time, he put the hurt on opposing players. The two referees, both of European descent, seemed oddly disinclined to call fouls on McCrumbly, much less issue him a warning. There was no doubt that he was doing his bull-in-a-china-shop act intentionally and then making it worse by grinning and all but laughing when one or more of the Longhorns went sprawling.

Finally, the fathers of two W.T. White players had had enough and came running down the stands to the guard rail. Enraged, they screamed, “Throw him out, ref!” Needless to say, both refs and all players and coaches—indeed, all fans on both sides of the court—were looking in our direction. I use the first-person plural because this drama took place quite close to where I was standing. A split-second after those two dads made their feelings known, two black guys (one of them McCrumbly’s older brother Donald Ray) sprinted down the same stands with blood in their eyes. They seemed intent on a confrontation with the W.T. White fathers. I don’t know what would have happened if Bob Cowsar, the Bryan Adams football coach, had not intervened. In a very manly way and without hesitating, he put himself in the middle of this volatile situation and defused it.

I wish I could tell you with certainty what happened next, but five-plus decades have had their effect. Did the refs toss McCrumbly, as they most certainly should have done? I don’t know. Maybe they started calling fouls on him until he had five and could be sent to the Wildcats’ bench. The Woodrow coach may have called a timeout and told him, “Good grief, John Paul, this is basketball, not football! Comport yourself with a little bit of class, would you?” Perhaps Donald Ray and his friend met the two W.T. White dads after the game with harsh words and threats, or maybe apologies were offered all the way around. The cool-headed Cowsar might have taken it upon himself to bring the four gentlemen together, ensuring peaceful relations. Your guess is as good as mine.

Woodrow Wilson in the early 1960s…

The year before McCrumbly got to Woodrow. As you see, the team is all White…

McCrumbly in action…

Forester Field, where McCrumbly played numerous times between 1968 and 1970. Forester Field House is adjacent…

The 1969 Woodrow team, with two black players–McCrumbly (40) and older brother Donald Ray (75)…

Cowsar (seen here in the 1971 BA annual) was the man of the hour…