1970s Black Football Player With 4 Letter Last Name
A Stadium at Iowa State Says His Name: Jack Trice
Iowa State is the only major college football team to have named its stadium after a Black man, a player named Jack Trice who died from injuries sustained in a game in 1923 and whose story resonates amid today's social justice movement.
Of the 130 universities that play major college football, only one — Iowa State — has a stadium named after an African-American person.
The namesake is Jack Trice, Iowa State's first Black athlete. Mr. Trice played tackle on the football team at Iowa State in the 1920s. And he majored in animal husbandry with the intention of heading south to help Black farmers just as the university's first African-American student, the prominent scientist George Washington Carver, had done three decades earlier.
Instead, Mr. Trice died tragically on Oct. 8, 1923, two days after being trampled during a game against Minnesota and sustaining severe bruising of his intestines and inflammation of his abdomen. It was only the second game of his varsity career. He was 21.
Scholars have long debated whether he was targeted for his race and his skill as a lineman at a time when football was overwhelmingly white and Black players regularly were singled out for rough treatment. Or whether his death was a terrible accident as Mr. Trice, feeling pressure to succeed, hurled his body with abandon into a game during an era when rules permitted especially violent play and deaths were not uncommon.
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While there appears to be no conclusive evidence either way, Mr. Trice's death cannot be removed from the context of the Jim Crow era in which he played. Nor can it be divorced from the racial justice movement today after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died beneath the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
For Jeffery Johnson, the chief executive of Iowa State's alumni association, the line connecting Mr. Trice and Mr. Floyd is one of acknowledging humanity.
"Does it take a tragedy to humanize people of color?" Mr. Johnson, who is Black, said in an interview. "It is a question that should be wrestled with."
Mr. Trice was one of three star Black players at Iowa universities who were seriously injured against white opponents between 1923 and 1951 and later commemorated with a stadium, a field or a trophy. The other two were Ozzie Simmons of the University of Iowa and Johnny Bright of Drake University, which named its football field after Mr. Bright in 2006 but does not play at the top Division I level, the Football Bowl Subdivision.
For 50 years, Mr. Trice was largely forgotten at Iowa State. Then students, Black and white, led a campaign for 24 years to get the stadium named in his honor while university officials resisted. The dedication came in 1997, during a period of racial polarization on a predominantly white campus.
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In her book, "Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory and Reconciliation in College Football," Jaime Schultz, an associate professor of kinesiology at Penn State, argued that through the years, injuries to the three Black players had become increasingly viewed through a racial lens.
The precise circumstances of Mr. Trice's death will most likely never be known, whether it was deliberate or accidental, but equally important is how he is remembered, Professor Schultz said in an interview. Today, Mr. Trice is widely considered a victim of racial violence, she said, "because it feeds into this narrative that there is a history of racial injustice in this country."
Mr. Trice's death, Rashomon-like, has fit a number of narratives, and the naming of the stadium in his honor has been explained from multiple perspectives.
Martin Jischke, Iowa State's president in 1997, recently told The Ames Tribune, in an article that revived Mr. Trice's legend, that the stadium was dedicated that year to him "to recognize what he represented."
Warren Madden, a retired senior vice president for business and finance at Iowa State who spent 50 years at the university, said in an interview that school officials considered the naming of the stadium after Mr. Trice a "reasonable compromise" to the pressure exerted by African-American students for more racial inclusivity as the campus became more diverse.
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Specifically, some viewed the dedication as an attempt to appease those who criticized Iowa State naming the botany building in 1995 after an alumnus who had made remarks supporting white supremacy.
Commemorating Mr. Trice was important, Professor Schultz said. At the same time, she added, the stadium memorial "can't be a way for Iowa State to pat itself on the back and say, 'Look how great we are because we named our stadium after this African-American student-athlete.'"
"It also comes with recognizing Iowa State hasn't really been that great in terms of race relations, historically and even today," she added. "My fear is, when we commemorate these things, who are we really congratulating?"
His First, and Last, Big Game
John G. Trice, known as Jack, was born May 12, 1902, in Hiram, Ohio, about 40 miles southeast of Cleveland. According to Iowa State researchers, he was a grandson of slaves. His father, Green Trice, served in the all-Black 10th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army, known as Buffalo Soldiers, during westward expansion after the Civil War. His troop skirmished against the Apache leader Geronimo in the waning Indian Wars.
Jack Trice attended Cleveland's East Technical High School, a Midwestern football power, and in 1922, followed his high school coach, Sam Willaman, who was white, to Iowa State. Only a small number of African-Americans — perhaps fewer than a dozen — had played major college football in the Midwest at that point. Less than 1 percent of Iowa's residents were Black.
Mr. Trice was widely liked, by all accounts, but still faced racial strictures of the time. None of the approximately 20 Black students at Iowa State were permitted to live on campus.
Mr. Trice married before the 1923 season, when he became eligible for the varsity team as a sophomore. On Oct. 5, he traveled by train with his teammates to face Minnesota. It remains unclear whether Mr. Trice stayed in a separate hotel from Iowa State's white players, but he was not permitted to eat with the team, said Steven L. Jones, the author of "Football's Fallen Hero: The Jack Trice Story."
The night before the game, Mr. Trice wrote a letter, said to be found later in his coat and now kept in a university archive:
"My thoughts just before the first real college game of my life. The honor of my race, family and self are 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."
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He continued: "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."
It seemed clear that Mr. Trice felt a huge sense of responsibility to pave the way for other Black players, a sense that "if you mess this up, or others mess up, you'll be blamed for it," said Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at Arizona State University.
He was sturdy at 6 feet, 200 pounds, but football was particularly brutish in those days with no face masks and limited restrictions on violent maneuvers. On the second play against Minnesota, Mr. Trice sustained a shoulder injury that was later diagnosed as a broken collarbone.
In the third quarter, according to some accounts, he dived into the legs of Minnesota blockers, trying to impede a ball carrier. The move — the roll block referred to in his letter — was later barred for being too dangerous. He landed on his back instead of on all fours and was stamped by a rush of cleats.
In the 1970s and '80s, conflicting accounts emerged. Two former teammates disagreed on whether Mr. Trice was injured deliberately. One of the teammates said he did not believe race was a factor. But a former Iowa State athletic official said he believed Minnesota sought to sideline Mr. Trice because he was Black.
Mr. Trice was taken to a hospital in Minneapolis, then accompanied his teammates back to Ames, Iowa, after a 20-17 defeat, lying painfully in a train car on a mattress fashioned from straw. A doctor considered his condition too risky to undergo an operation. On Oct. 8, two days after the game, Mr. Trice died in the Iowa State campus hospital. He was one of 18 college, high school and semiprofessional football players to die in October and November 1923.
Years later, Cora Mae Trice, his wife, wrote that she looked at her husband in his hospital bed and told him, "Hello, Darling," but he didn't respond. She heard the campus bell tower chime at 3 p.m., and "he was gone."
The next afternoon, classes were canceled, Mr. Trice's teammates carried his coffin and several thousand students attended a memorial service on campus, according to an account by Dorothy Schwieder, an Iowa State history professor who died in 2014.
Teammates set out five-gallon milk cans and collected $2,259 to cover funeral costs and settle the mortgage his mother had taken out to pay her son's tuition. One newspaper elegy that soon followed referred to Mr. Trice as "steel of character," a "true modern knight" who won glory "upon the fatal field."
His mother, Anna, wrote a letter to the university president saying that if Mr. Trice had inspired other Black students who came to Iowa State, "he has not lived and died in vain."
Yet she was inconsolable, adding that while she was proud of his honors, "he was all I had, and I am old and alone. The future is dreary and lonesome."
'It Was About Persevering'
Eventually, the memory of Mr. Trice faded at Iowa State. In 1957, Tom Emmerson, a journalism student, came across a plaque commemorating Mr. Trice in the university gymnasium. Mr. Emmerson had never heard of him. An article he then wrote for a campus magazine drew little response.
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The article did not gain traction until it came up in an English class with a diverse group of students taught by a professor named Charles Sohn in 1973, a period of campus activism around the country. Thus began a persistent 24-year drive by students and some faculty to get Iowa State's football stadium, opened in 1975, named for Mr. Trice. The effort included raising $22,000 for a statue and hiring a plane to carry a banner over the stadium during a game.
"People persisted because they viewed it as a compelling story, an injustice, but one that had been lost from Iowa State's memory for 50 years, except for a dusty plaque in an old gym," said Mike Reilly, Iowa State's student government president in 1984-85.
In 1984, the university sought to reach a compromise by naming the venue Cyclone Stadium and the playing surface Jack Trice Field. Many students, though, criticized this solution as a dodge.
Mr. Emmerson, who became a longtime journalism professor at Iowa State, said university officials most likely hesitated on the stadium name for several reasons: a desire to find a corporate sponsor; a feeling that many athletes were deserving of the honor; and what he called "unconscious racism" or "latent racism" among some alumni who felt the stadium should not be named for an African-American.
In 1997, the university changed its mind and dedicated the stadium to Mr. Trice. Mr. Jischke, then Iowa State's president, said Mr. Trice had "brought an enthusiasm and a promise" to the school.
Gladys Nortey, a track and field athlete at Iowa State in the 1990s, read Mr. Trice's last letter from 1923 at the dedication ceremony. Ms. Nortey said in an email, "We all strive to leave our legacy and Jack's was his life sacrifice for I.S.U. athletics."
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The dedication came during a period of racial turbulence at the university. Among other things, Iowa State in 1995 had named its botany building after Carrie Chapman Catt, an Iowa State alumna who had been a leading suffragist and a founder of the League of Women Voters. But a group of students protested that she had made remarks promoting white supremacy and sought to have her name removed from the building.
Officials declined. This led some students and scholars to theorize that the university named its football stadium for Mr. Trice to assuage those who accused the university of racial insensitivity. The building still bears Mrs. Catt's name, though demands to change it persist.
Referring to the Catt building and the stadium, Mr. Madden, Iowa State's former vice president for business and finance, said, "I don't think there were a lot of conversations that the two issues be coupled together."
As the 100th anniversary of Mr. Trice's death approaches, his story continues to resonate beyond the football field. Reginald Stewart, Iowa State's vice president for diversity and inclusion, recently told The Des Moines Register that Mr. Trice's name on the stadium dovetails with the urgency in the Black Lives Matter movement for victims of police brutality to be called by their names out of dignity and respect.
"It's important to recognize someone's name," Mr. Stewart, who is Black, said in an interview. "They become a person, not just a statistic. You have to realize the full extent of their character."
Efforts are underway to try to sustain Mr. Trice's memory with a documentary, a possible boulevard in his name and a scholarship fund.
"He went there knowing segregation was going on, knowing what he was doing was about more than football," said George Trice, a cousin of Jack Trice's and an Iowa State alumnus. "It was about persevering, changing your stars."
1970s Black Football Player With 4 Letter Last Name
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/sports/ncaafootball/Iowa-State-Jack-Trice-Stadium.html