The forthcoming film Black Spartans mischaracterizes those associated with MSU’s trailblazing integrated football teams of the 1960s.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is the second of a two-part series about films fictionalizing actual people and circumstances to the point of fabrication. Part 1 focused on the film, The Express and its false depiction of events associated with the 1959 Syracuse-West Virginia football game. As he did in Part 1, the author dives into history, establishing the context for why (in this case) he believes Black Spartans does an injustice to what happened at Michigan State over a half-century ago. (Note: The author is a long-time Spartan football fan and former season ticket holder, and he was an MSU faculty member from 1978-2012.)
Let’s first set the stage for what filmmakers present in Black Spartans.
Younger fans can’t imagine the state of college sports I witnessed while growing up. Nearly all college football and basketball teams were segregated, and game-shifting change didn’t occur until the late 1960s (college basketball) and early 1970s (college football). Each change was catapulted by what happened in a game–a national championship contest in basketball and a season-opening intersectional football game.
In basketball, it was the 1966 NCAA national championship game between Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso) and the University of Kentucky Wildcats. Western, an independent and relatively unknown team nationally, fielded an all-Black starting lineup. Iconic Adolph Rupp, who had already won four national championships, coached UK’s all-White team with a roster that included future NBA star and coach Pat Riley. Western won the game, and the face of college basketball soon changed.
Rupp, known as “The Baron of the Bluegrass,” couldn’t recruit Black players at Kentucky, and he went so far as to ask the UK administration if the school would consider leaving the Southeastern Conference so that he could integrate the team. The answer was no, and in football, another SEC coach, Alabama’s iconic Paul “Bear” Bryant, tried a different approach. He’d show why integration was necessary by scheduling a season-opening home game against a powerful and integrated West Coast team, the Southern California Trojans.
The teams met in Birmingham on September 12, 1970, in the first integrated football game played in Alabama. USC gained nearly 600 yards that night, including 135 yards by rugged Sam “Bam” Cunningham, and USC doubled the score on the Tide, 42-21. Football segregation in the South would soon end.
Not too many years later, I landed as a faculty member at Michigan State. I knew the Spartans had a tradition of recruiting a diverse football team, but I didn’t realize the Spartans were trailblazers until I took the time to become more knowledgeable about why and when. Here’s an excellent introduction to the subject, a video narrated by NFL great and Jackson, MI native Tony Dungy.
Here’s the backstory. MSU president John Hannah (featured in the video) was keen on elevating Michigan State’s national standing, and football figured into the equation. A big step (with help from Notre Dame’s then-president Theodore Hesburgh) was scheduling powerhouse Notre Dame. While the teams had a tradition of playing in the early years of the sport (1897-1921), they hadn’t played for decades–until the series was re-initiated in 1948. The timing was perfect. Hannah secured Michigan State’s admission to the Big Ten (replacing Chicago) in 1949, beating out Nebraska and Pitt for the honor. It was a big deal because Michigan State was a college at the time, not yet a university until 1955.
Hannah needed a head coach that would lead the Spartans to the big time. In 1946, he hired Clarence “Biggie” Munn, a former Big Ten player (Minnesota) and Syracuse head coach. Hannah made that call on potential. Munn had a modest portfolio, having served only three years as a head coach, two years at Albright College, and one year with the Orangeman. Hannah’s gamble paid off; Munn went 54-9-2 over seven years, including a 28-game winning streak (1950-53) and two national championships (1950-51).
Hannah and Munn were strategic thinkers, adept at gaining a competitive edge. One strategy involved recruiting African Americans to play for the Spartans. One of those players, Willie “Mitts” Thrower, came from Western Pennsylvania. In 1952, Thrower became the first Black quarterback to play in the Big Ten, and Thrower replicated that fete in the NFL. He became the league’s first black QB with the NFL’s Chicago Bears.
Expanding the net was the key, and it paid off. Called “The Underground Railroad,” MSU recruited Southern Black players who were barred from playing at their home-state schools. And many of those Spartans became stars, including Bubba Smith and Gene Washington (Texas), George Webster (South Carolina), and Jimmy Raye (North Carolina).
This story is important because it began decades before college football was integrated nationally. One reason it happened is Duffy Daugherty. Daugherty, a former Syracuse player, came to East Lansing from Central NY when Munn was named MSU’s head coach. Daugherty served as Munn’s line coach at both schools and succeeded Munn in 1954 as the Spartans’ head football coach. What Daugherty experienced as a SU player in 1937 set him apart on the matter of integrating college football.
Daugherty watched as Maryland Terrapin officials told Syracuse that the 1937 game scheduled for Baltimore would be canceled if the Orangemen’s travel squad included a player named Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, the team’s quarterback. The reason for the no-play declaration? An enterprising reporter had discovered that Sidat-Singh’s birth name was Webb and that his father was an African American. Maryland was a segregated campus then, and the school’s teams didn’t compete against Black players. Syracuse capitulated and lost the game, 13-0.
Daugherty vowed he’d do things differently as a head coach. And with Hannah as president, Munn as athletic director, and Daugherty as head football coach, MSU became America’s first fully integrated college football team.
Mind you, rarely is anything as straightforward as it seems. Yes, Michigan State was committed to integrating its football team, but asserting that the only reasons were equality and social justice would be an overstatement. It was a source of pride for many. For others, it was primarily about winning football games and gaining national attention. But for those who might think that’s a criticism, I ask you to think again. Rarely do true believers make change possible singlehandedly. Others need to buy in for other reasons, often self-serving reasons. And even when things work out, change is still a struggle because changing one thing doesn’t mean other things will change with it. For example, as MSC/MSU recruited Black players nationally, Black assistant coaches (and other African Americans) couldn’t purchase homes in East Lansing because of racist housing covenants.
But in the end, the Spartans became a national leader in integrating its football team, and that’s why it makes sense to chronicle that accomplishment, mainly because of the time when it took place. Enter Black Spartans.
The “what” of the film is consistent with what I’ve penned here: “In the mid-1960s, social upheaval paved the way for the new order of college football, following the (lead of) the first fully integrated college football team (MSU) that forever changed the face of the sport” (producers description from IMDb).
But a Google search of the film Black Spartans raises questions about the “how.” Consider these headlines:
‘Black Spartans’ movie about the 1966 Michigan State team has some ex-players unhappy (MLive)
‘Black Spartans’ Film Thrown Cease-And-Desist Letter From Famed Players & Families; Defamation Lawsuit Threatened (Deadline)
‘Completely fabricated’ Duffy Daugherty film embroiled in controversy, legal battles (The State News).
What’s going on? Several MSU football players from that era authored a letter through legal representation addressed to various parties associated with the film. The complainants assert, among other things, that “Black Spartans is being produced without any input, much less cooperation or authorization by our clients. Critically, we are informed that even though the Black Spartans’ script features characters dressed “head to toe” in MSU gear, the University has not, and will not authorize or license, any rights to use or exploit its marks, logos, or other intellectual property.”
The complainants, which include Gene Washington, Jimmy Raye, Bob Apisa, and the family of the late Bubba Smith (among others), also contend that “this is their story to tell,” which team members and family members have done. For example, Bob Apisa directed and narrated Men of Sparta (2016).
Another example is the book Through the Banks of the Red Cedar: My Father and the Team That Changed the Game, written by Maya Washington, Gene Washington’s daughter. She also produced a liked-titled PBS documentary.
While it is not difficult to counter the claim that anybody’s story is only theirs to tell and others do not have the right to tell it, the complainants raise other objections that can best be described as a tangled web of issues.
The filmmakers say Black Spartans is based on David Claerbaut’s 2018 book, Duffy Daugherty: A Man Ahead of His Time, published under the Greenstone Books imprint of the Michigan State University Press. That would seem good: a recent sourcebook published by the same University where the original story unfolded. The problem is the book’s credibility, specifically the author’s sourcing of material (there are few citations) and the use of text drawn from sources without attribution. To further complicate the matter, Claerbaut’s stepson, James Velissaris, is one of the film’s producers, and he co-wrote the script based on his stepfather’s book.
There’s more. Multiple athletes from the time say that the film depicts several players as ethnic caricatures. For example, in a statement published in MSU’s independently operated student newspaper, The State News, Gene Washington wrote, “I am falsely depicted as frequently partying–even drinking “jungle juice”–and offensively portrayed as speaking in broken and crude English.” In the same article, Bob Apisa–who was the first Samoan to be selected as a college football All-America–said he is “profoundly dismayed” to be portrayed leading the team in a native dance, attributing the scene to being “nothing more than an ethnic stereotype.”
If all of that wasn’t enough, multiple scenes in the film ring true to the claim that fictionalizing what happened back then amounts to fabrication. In other words, there are scenes in the film that did not happen. For example, in Black Spartans, a racist white player attacks a teammate and his girlfriend.
Where do things stand with Black Spartans? Now in post-production, the film’s future will likely be determined by how financing and legal matters turn out. That said, other issues go well beyond the circumstances associated with this film.
For me, the primary issue is that screenwriters, executive producers, and production companies need to tell a story truthfully, which means refraining from embellishing circumstances with false depictions. It also means telling it critically. In other words, it is completely appropriate to present beneath-the-veneer matters as long as what’s presented is backed by facts and presented responsibly.
The problem with Black Spartans is that there is evidence to suggest that it fails to meet the screening factors I have just presented–just as The Express (discussed in Part 1 of this series) did not. Hollywood needs to up its game.
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In 1966, two superb teams, Notre Dame and Michigan State, ranked #1 and #2 in the country, met in East Lansing at season’s end in what analysts dubbed The Game of the Century. Living at a distance at the time, I couldn’t watch the game on TV because it wasn’t shown in my area; the outcome of a rule restricting the number of times a university’s football team could be shown on national television. So, I listened to the game on the radio in my college dorm room, realizing I was experiencing college football history.
