Jackson praises heroics of UB team
Says civil rights lessons of 1958 still felt today
TORONTO — The University of Buffalo football team’s decision not to play in the 1958 Tangerine Bowl will go down in history as one of the pivotal points of the civil rights movement, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Friday.
“It was a heroic act . . . led by white players who defied the cult of segregation,” said Jackson, a world-renowned civil rights, religious and political figure.
Jackson was the keynote speaker at the International Bowl Kickoff Luncheon on Friday at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. He appeared at the luncheon in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebration of UB’s 1958 team that took a courageous stand against segregation.
“The story of Buffalo,” Jackson said, “must be told.”
The team declined its invitation to the Tangerine Bowl after learning that the Orlando High School Athletic Association, which held the lease to the Tangerine Bowl, had a standard rental agreement containing a clause prohibiting mixing of races in sports contests. That meant that Willie Evans and Mike
Wilson, the only African-American players on the ’58 football team, were not welcome at the Tangerine Bowl. The team decided unanimously against playing in the game.
Jackson, the founder and president of the Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition, said the team’s action created ripples of social change that are felt to this day.
“There’s a line from the University of Buffalo standing up to Barack [Obama] being the president in 2008,” he said. “There’s a line between them signaling that culture can change under a different environment.”
Jackson said UB’s decision not to play in the bowl game is momentous, akin to Jesse Owens winning four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which wounded Adolph Hitler’s vision of a resurgent Nazi Germany, and the integration of the Southeastern Conference in the late ’60s.
“Because of these changes, we are a better nation and a better world,” Jackson said. “No place has been more fundamental about being socialized and civilized than the athletic arena.”
Jackson said the lessons of the ’58 team should not be lost on the current members of both UB and the University of Connecticut, the teams playing in today’s International Bowl.
“Lessons learned in the pit of sweat last us for the rest of our lives,” Jackson said. “Some of the bigger decisions in our lives will be off the field of play. When the lessons learned on the field are applied off the field, we become better.”
“Most players when they get in trouble, it doesn’t happen on the field because they are under supervision. It’s how you perform those lessons off the field that lends itself to a lasting career.”
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