The Life of a Black Scholar-Athlete
The Double Life of Sports and Academics
Dartmouth Football Team (1970)
Though many Black students at Dartmouth were not athletes, many students lives’ were centered around athletics. Black athletes like Wesley Pugh excelled in a number of sports as collegiate athletes across the nation. Still, maintaining commitments to both sports and academics was often a challenge, especially as discrimination was experienced on both fronts. Scholar-athletes often actively participated in protests and Black activism on campus, but they also spent most of their time on nearly all-white teams. In his book Integrating the Gridiron, Lane Demas describes the complexity of the situation:
“Largely unknown, underappreciated student-athletes used college football to both change the racial landscape at America’s universities and reconfigure the role of African Americans in the public sphere. Such pressure fell on the shoulders of young Black college students, who struggled to keep up with their coursework and fit into campus social life; they were not professional athletes, properly groomed race heroes, or eloquent cultural critics.”
Demas, pg. 27
By becoming scholar-athletes, Black students were expected to navigate a number of roles and challenges. Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of this lifestyle was maintaining academic performance. Due to academic discrimination, social isolation, and a heavy commitment to athletics, many Black athletes describe feeling “exploited for their athletic abilities and academically underserved” (Logan et al. 1). However, some students, like Stanford’s Donald Stevenson, found support as a member of a team:
“You did your athletics, you did your sports, and there was a lot of enforced focus. But also there was the mutual support of my teammates and I was surprised to discover that many of the athletes, when they were not practicing, they were studying. We were all very serious about our studies.”
Donald Stevenson '77 (Stanford)
Cornell vs. Dartmouth Football Game (1972)
However, even in instances where Black athletes found support and friendship with white teammates, there was often a lack of understanding on the issues Black students faced. Speaking on the subject, Pugh noted that “many of the guys on the football team from that period... they didn't even know about” the racial discrimination and Black Campus movement at Dartmouth. There was also a significant amount of discrimination occurring on the field, levied by athletes, but just as often by coaches. Speaking on his decision to quit the team his junior year, Pugh commented:
“Because coaches had not come to understand how to effectively deal with students of color, particularly those who were talented athletes. And I remember when I was talking to my African American teammates, I described to them how I just felt like it was like being on a slave plantation where the coaches tell you what to do. And you don't have any say. And I just wasn't willing to come back and play under those circumstances.”
Wesley Pugh '73
These pressures, combined with academic mistreatment, placed a huge burden on Black college athletes. Scholar-athletes occupied a unique space where they were expected to maintain both academic and athletic performance, all while also experiencing discrimination in both areas. Many calls for academic and institutional reform, like the “Redding Report,” brought up athletics in parallel to calls for educational reform. Calls for Black Power in higher education were incomplete without addressing Black athletes. The excellence, resilience, and accomplishments of these athletes cannot be emphasized enough. But to create an equitable environment for them as scholar-athletes, institutions across the nation needed to change how they viewed Black players. Therefore, the fight for educational and institutional reform was often embedded in sports.
An excerpt from the "Redding Report" outlining the forms of discrimination football players faced at Dartmouth (1975)