Clinton Jones, Duffey Daugherty, and George Webster

The film will be on BTN on November 10th, 7 PM Central

On this episode of Jon’s PostLife Crisis, I interview Maya Washington: creator, producer, director, and person extraordinaire who made the film “Through The Banks Of the Red Cedar,” which will be shown on the Big Ten Network on November 10th at 7:00 PM central.

The film is about her father, Gene Washington, who played for the Michigan State Spartans from 1964-1966, and then was drafted into the NFL by the Minnesota Vikings.

Gene Washington was born and raised in a small town, La Porte, Texas, near Houston. His high school was segregated. He could not even attend a college in Texas or in the South because of racism.

Michigan State’s coach, Duffy Daugherty, had a recruiting network for black athletes across the South. He contacted Bubba Smith, who recommended he grab Gene Washington. Smith, Washington, George Webster, and Clinton Jones were all drafted in the first round of the NFL Draft with Smith going #1, Jones #2, Webster #5, and Washington #8.

Why is this important?

It’s relevant to NOW as our nation deals with racial inequality. It’s important to know where we came from and where we’re going. And it’s kind of a shame that Duffy Daugherty doesn’t get much credit, as he should, for the racial integration of college football.

Maya and I talk about:

• Her father’s culture shock in moving to East Lansing, Michigan, from Texas.
• The famous 1966 Spartan team that tied Notre Dame 10-10
• How Duffy Daugherty is largely forgotten as a coach, despite that he had 20 black players on his roster YEARS BEFORE PAUL BEAR BRYANT AT ALABAMA so stop giving so much credit to the 1970 USC-Alabama game
• The revisionist history myth that Bryant sent players to Daugherty (if you want to read more about this, read Forty four Underground Railroad legacy facts by Tom Shanahan, whose book “Raye of Light” is mentioned in the interview)
• Why it took her a decade to make the film
• What it was like doing a film with her father
• Her reflections on name, image, likeness, and that she had to license footage of her father but her father will never see a dime of that money

WATCH THE FILM ON BTN

Big Ten Network on November 10th at 7:00 PM central.

THROUGH THE BANKS OF THE RED CEDAR

There will be a quiz! (Not really, but it could be fun..... )

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Book Description

Jon Johnston was an active, healthy adult when he dropped dead suddenly of a widowmaker heart attack. He was not expected to live, after being dead for more than 20 minutes, but if he did survive, his brain would forever be damaged due to oxygen deprivation.Alternating between humor, sadness, and anger at his body’s betrayal, Jon takes us with him as he puts his life back together. At the beginning, he sees the trauma as a minor inconvenience and expects a speedy recovery. As he realizes the damage to his heart is permanent, he is hit with another setback when he is diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, leaving him with memory loss, debilitating headaches, and a loss of identity. Tasks that had been trivial had become onerous endeavors, and his life became an unexpected challenge.

Been Dead, Never Been to Europe offers a real-life view of what it takes to rebuild after a devastating event, to accept an unexpected present and future, and to discover a new identity. Been Dead, Never Been to Europe will appeal to readers who seek memoirs of resilience, and to those whose own lives have been affected by unexpected trauma.

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About the Transcript

Keep in mind that the following is a transcript. I use a service that automates the first draft. As much as “artificial intelligence” is included in the description of every bit of technology these days, it’s clear that computers understanding human speech is more artificial than intelligent. The transcript has been edited to take out human speech bites, you know, um, okay, uh, but it’s not been edited to be an “article”.

The Transcript

Jon Johnston: Welcome to Jon’s PostLife Crisis. I am your host, Jon Johnston, founder, manager of CornNation.com, your Nebraska Cornhuskers site of massive anticipation as we get ready to play North-Western. There is something else massive going on today, not going to bring that up right now.

Jon Johnston: We are talking with filmmaker Maya Washington. Maya’s film “Through the Banks of the Red Cedar” will be showing on Big Ten Network on November 10th, 2020 at 7 p.m. Central since we’re working in God’s time. The film is about her father, Gene Washington, who played wide receiver for the Spartans from 1964 to 1966. He was drafted eighth in the 1967 NFL draft by the Minnesota Vikings and went on to play from 67-72 for the Vikings and then his final year in the league in 73 for the Denver Broncos. Is that a fair introduction to through the banks of the Red Cedar or I really have kind of missed the point of the film and you need to tell us about that.

Maya Washington: Sure. Well thank you. Thank you for having me. You did pretty good with the bio. I mean that’s impressive. You did your homework. But the film’s premise really is, we go back into history and learn about how my dad was recruited from the segregated South to play for Duffy Daugherty in 1963. At the time we know our country was very different, maybe not quite as different as we think it was when we compare it to kind of the issues we’re dealing with now. But in that time, my dad could not attend any of the public universities in the South that were only for white people.

Maya Washington: So a lot of those Southern conferences that dominate the national cycle at the end of the season every year, those were not in play in the same way because there were no African-American players allowed at those institutions.

Maya Washington: So my dad had an opportunity to go to Michigan State under Duffy Daugherty, alongside a handful of other very talented African-American men from the South, as well as different parts of the US to play for Duffy Daugherty, they won back to back Big Ten titles. They were named national champions two years in a row. And as you mentioned, my dad was drafted to the NFL alongside three other African-Americans from Michigan State. So a lot of really important history happened during that time. I was not born. I wasn’t alive during my dad’s football career.

Maya Washington: He also had a pretty stellar track career. And all of those things happened before I was born. And so in 2011, when Bubba Smith passed away, I first heard about this unique history of Duffy Daugherty and what is referred to now as the Underground Railroad of college football that my dad was recruited in a really unique, important social experiment that ultimately led to the demographics that we see out on the field today. So through the film, I kind of go back in his history. It’s a father daughter story. So we strengthened our bond as I get to know more about him and his history.

Maya Washington: But that, in a nutshell, is the very complex, layered trajectory of Through The Banks Of The Red Cedar.

Jon Johnston: So let’s start with - your father was born near Houston, Texas, correct?

Maya Washington: Correct. Yeah, a really small town called La Porte, Texas, just outside of Houston. Very rural Gulf, adjacent town, right on the water.

Jon Johnston: How did he get from there to East Lansing, Michigan, and my understanding is he got actually recruited on a track scholarship first and then played football, also describe how that even happened.

Maya Washington: So in La Porte at the time, as I said, it was completely segregated, so he went to an all black high school. He actually had to be bussed because he wasn’t permitted to go to the high school in his own neighborhood. That was just blocks away from his house because he was black. So he was bussed to a school where he met my mom.

Maya Washington: So his big, cheeky joke is, hey, something came out of segregation and that was my mom and him. And I guess I have to agree, because I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t met each other as ninth graders who were bussed to the same school.

Maya Washington: But at that time, the black schools could only play high school athletics with other black schools. So one hundred miles away, there was this really amazing big kid whose dad was a coach at Charlton Pollard High School in Beaumont, Texas. And that big kid was Bubba Smith, who people who were around in the 60s and 70s remember him as this powerhouse. 230 pounds. I’m going to exaggerate.

Maya Washington: So he was like seven feet tall. He wasn’t.

Maya Washington: But this giant of a guy who was from a football family and his dad was the football coach in Beaumont, Texas, and his name was Willie Ray Smith. And so Willie Ray Smith had been part of Duffy’s effort to get to know black coaches in the South in hopes that he could help them develop players that might be a good fit for Michigan State and refer them. So my dad and Bubba Smith were actually opponents in baseball, basketball, and football. And when the time came that Duffy and his scouts were saying, hey, are there any other players down here to actually look at. The Smith family kindly said, you know, there’s a young man named Eugene Washington over there in La Porte, Texas. I think you should talk to him, and the Smiths, Bubba, and Coach Smith said to my dad, we’re going to put a good word in for you because Bubba was being heavily recruited. Everybody wanted Bubba. And fortunately for my dad, they made good on that, put in a good word. And Duffy Daugherty recruited him sight unseen. Really, they didn’t have the the reels and tape and, and things that kind of people start putting together with their five year olds. Now, he had to just go on Bubba Smith’s word and coach Willie Ray Smith’s word. And luckily, they made room for my dad on the track team for a track scholarship, but they had no idea that he would become an NCAA champion and that he would end up holding records to this day in the Big Ten and the NCAA and do that while he was playing football at the same time. So. I was inspired to make the film really because to hear that story about the Smith family and to learn it in 2011 when Bubba Smith passed away, it was too late. It was there wasn’t an opportunity for me to thank him for the impact that he had on my dad’s life and ultimately my own life.

Maya Washington: So I pretty much spent the last forever of my life saying thank you to Bubba Smith through this film.

Maya Washington: And it’s been a real beautiful journey.

Jon Johnston: So going from way south in Texas to East Lansing. I want you to talk about the culture shock, but I live in Minnesota and I know that, I’ve lived in Texas. And this the weather shock by itself is enough to knock you over on your keister. But your father had to tell you some stories about the culture shock of moving to East Lansing. Could you share a couple of those?

Maya Washington: Yeah, well, my dad grew up in a completely segregated environment. So going into the front door of a retail establishment, eating in a restaurant, going to a hotel, let alone having your academic life be in an environment where you have white teachers and white classmates. I can’t even imagine when you say culture shock, what that would have been like for him to go from one extreme to what must have felt like another extreme, even though now I’m a Midwesterner, too.

Maya Washington: So I grew up in Minnesota and ended up at USC for college. But for my dad, I mean, everything was the first. The first time he got on an airplane, the first time he arrives in East Lansing and a white coach picks him up and drives him in a car, sits in a restaurant with coaches. Orders from a menu for the first time. He’d never seen a menu before.

Maya Washington: All of these things that we take for granted now in 2020 as every day occurrences to just go about your life and be able to purchase the things that you need to purchase when you do your grocery shopping or to go on vacations or just all of those things that we take for granted today were not available to my dad and other black citizens in much of America.

Maya Washington: And when he got to Michigan State, he really kind of had to find his sea legs and navigate the space and learn the new rules, but do it while achieving academically and killing it in track and field and killing it in football.

Maya Washington: And really as a freshman trying to make sure they understood they made the right choice on him and the others. And so for a lot of the black players, there was only one option and it was winning, being noticed and working their tails off to make sure they made that varsity squad, that they would become starters and that they would ultimately make the contributions on the field that they did make. But everything was new for them and really hard to navigate. Ernie Pasteur talks about the first time it snowed.

Maya Washington: A lot of the brothers were like, I don’t know about this. Like, this is a really hard time. All this all this way away from my family.

Maya Washington: It’s cold. It’s completely different culturally.

Maya Washington: But they really band together and would give each other pep talks. So if someone was feeling down or out of sorts, that the others would come and be like, you got this, you can do this, we’re going to, we’re going to help you. And they really did help each other academically, help each other emotionally, as well as obviously in supporting each other on the field. But they have a pretty incredible bond. All of these men, the ones who have passed away, like Bubba Smith, George Webster, Charlie Thornhill, Maurice Haynes, a number of them have passed away. But those who are still with us, they continue to this day to have really beautiful, strong bonds with one another. And that extends to their white teammates, as well as the Pacific Islanders who were also recruited out of Hawaii, which was something that definitely Daugherty was doing at the time. So they really did face a lot of adversity adjusting to a new reality, but they had a great support system and one another.

Jon Johnston: Duffy Daugherty is important to Nebraskans listening to this because he was the guy that recommended Bob Devaney as Nebraska’s next head football coach and as Husker fans, we all know where that goes. We’re going to not go into Nebraska football because this isn’t about Nebraska football. This is about this great story that Maya is telling us and her film. Duffy Daugherty, let’s talk about him for a bit. He is the only coach and put it in context of the times. He is the only coach that had a recruiting network in the South for black players. He is the only coach that if I remember correctly, his roster had 20 black players.

Jon Johnston: There were black players on other rosters, but they never were more than four or five at a time. Tell us a bit what you learned about Duffy Daughtery. What kind of person he was and why did he do this? What was his motivation? He just wanted to win. He was a winner, right?

Maya Washington: Yeah. Yes, that emphatically.

Maya Washington: Yes. I think he saw a window of opportunity that other coaches in the South and even others in the Big Ten just really weren’t taking advantage of. So the climate, though, to sort of explain how and why he was able to do this, his son, Dave Dougherty, who has now passed away, but it appears in the film, expressed that his dad really believed in what Martin Luther King was preaching. That the values of their family as an Irish Catholic family who had had their own experiences of discrimination in America, who just really had connections to other black people in his formative years when he was coming of age, that that was a true value that he had. He also had in a university president, John Hannah, who happened to be on the Civil Rights Commission for the United States of America while he was president at Michigan State. So you’ve got a university president who is up to his ears in understanding the civil rights reality around the country because he was tasked with overseeing a lot of the investigation that was going on that led to major civil rights legislation, a lot of their findings and things that they published in 1963 and later about the state of civil rights in the nation and the experience of African-Americans in the nation really had an impact on on the laws that eventually changed.

Maya Washington: But to have that be like your boss, you have a big human athletic director, and then you have the president of the university who has these values.

Maya Washington: And uniquely for Duffy Daugherty is he had started the coach of the year clinics. So it was this network of coaches all over the country, even professional coaches. When I talked to Bud Grant a few years ago, he shared with me that he had gone to one of these clinics. Bud Grant, my dad’s Vikings coach, had actually gone to a Duffy Daugherty clinic. And and like I feel like he said it was like in Fargo, Minnesota, or somewhere up north. And because Duffy Daugherty sort of had this network and relationships with other college coaches, high school coaches, he sort of had a foothold on ways to get into places and spaces because of those relationships.

Maya Washington: So because of those coaching clinics in the South, if there were black football coaches, they couldn’t be taught or be given clinics in the same room as the white coaches.

Maya Washington: So Duffy Daugherty would go out of his way to create these sort of separate experiences that black coaches could participate in, and also went so far as to bring some of them up to Michigan State to spend some time with him and the team and to get pointers on how to condition players and and how to actually cultivate the kind of talent that he wanted.

Maya Washington: So it’s a kind of a complex answer, because I think, of course, if you aren’t someone who wants to be on the right side of history or you’re not someone who believes in racial equality, you’re not likely to go out of your way, even if you think it might give you an edge. If you fundamentally believe that African-Americans are inferior, you’re not going to bother to recruit in the South. So clearly, he believed that these players deserved an equal opportunity.

Maya Washington: He believed that not only were they equal to white players, but in fact, in some ways in the athletic world, they might actually have an edge if he were to recruit the best of that talent in the south. So that’s kind of my take on it, that it was the right thing to do. But it sure didn’t hurt that it brought Michigan State quite a bit of public attention and really put them on top for a significant period of time.

Jon Johnston: What impact do you think Duffey Daugherty had on sports and I want to put this in context with the 1970 USC - Alabama game in which USC came in and beat Alabama, and it’s largely credited with starting the integration of college sports.

Jon Johnston: And Duffy Daugherty is kind of off over here. I would say 90 percent of college football fans don’t know who he is. In fact, I read an article or a book and there was a quote in it that said that the 1970 USC-Alabama game did more for the integration of college sports than Martin Luther King, which I thought, what the hell like. You know, the Alabama people, they try to consume everything. They try to take credit for everything. There was even a thing about the fact that Paul Bear Bryant sent players to Duffy Doherty and all of that is just B.S. Hit the Alabama people. Were you okay? Maybe not, but you know what I mean. Tell me about what do you think the impact was?

Maya Washington: I mean, you know, and what’s so funny about it, just so you know that I’m not biased.

Maya Washington: I’m a Trojan, okay? I went to USC and so this Sam Bam Cunningham story is my, you know, is my shared history as a as a Trojan as well.

Maya Washington: But you’re absolutely correct. Bear Bryant and a lot of his homies in the South were late, like very, very late to the party.

Maya Washington: Brown versus the Board of Education ruling decades late to the party.

Maya Washington: And so, you know, I was surprised, though, to be fair, that I didn’t hear about these stories or this history until 2011 when Bubba Smith passed away from my dad and his teammates. And I think even Duffey Daugherty, they were just living their lives. So it was one of those things that they were a part of connected to in some way, shape, or form.

Maya Washington: But I don’t think any of them thought 50 years from now we’re going to tell everybody what we did because we’re amazing and we’re going to do more for the sport and the African-Americans than Martin Luther King ever did.

Maya Washington: I don’t think that was their mindset or how how they were thinking about what they were doing. I think they just took for granted that they were doing something historical. And so you’re absolutely right. I mean, Duffey Daugherty had been and Michigan State had seen African-American players making significant contributions as early as the mid to late, late forties. And throughout the sixties, there were incredible black men who preceded my dad and his team. Their team is just sort of the one that gets a lot of shine because they went to the Rose Bowl and they were a part of that historic 10-10 tie, the infamous 10-10 tie with Notre Dame. These games were televised, but certainly Alabama and other institutions in the South were just dragging their feet. Integration had been the law of the land federally for a significant amount of time. Southern schools put black students, not even just athletes, through hell, just to enroll, just to enroll in classes. They, they were taunted, riots broke out. Those types of things happen at schools like Ole Miss. So it is really exciting to be able to put that sort of Alabama game, USC game in context, it’s still significant, it’s still relevant and important and okay, you know, like it’s a good thing that Alabama eventually integrated. But I think if you’re a true sports historian or a true sort of buff and you love to kind of know these facts and this information is just an important designation to make, to understand that a lot of institutions were making great strides and Alabama was really one of one of the last to get there. If you think about it, in 1970, my dad was playing in the NFL at that time. So that tells you our country was still segregated in 1970 when my dad was playing on an integrated Minnesota Vikings team.

Maya Washington: Another myth that you kind of brought out is that Bear Bryant is recommending players, one that has been debunked in a book called Raye of Light by Tom Shanahan that he wrote with Jimmy Raye, who was starting quarterback at Michigan State, very significant contribution that there was this myth that Charlie Thornhill, who’s from Roanoke, Virginia. At Michigan State, they called him Maddog Charlie. That he was somehow recommended by Bear Bryant in exchange for Joe Namath, that Duffy said Joe Namath couldn’t get into Michigan State academically, so they did some kind of swap or had some kind of conversation. And it’s really fascinating if you check out this book, Raye of Light by Tom Shanahan, that kind of he did his homework and he found the reporter in Roanoke who actually recommended Charlie Thornhill to Vince Care a lot at Michigan State. Bear Bryant. Yes, crossed paths with Charlie Thornhill, but was just a speaker at an awards ceremony where Charlie Thornhill got an award. He had already committed to Michigan State by that time. So it is really exciting to finally give some credit where credit is due, but also to kind of put these fun stories that we have about people’s heroes from the South just in their proper context. It doesn’t take anything away from Sam Cunningham or that game or the fact that Alabama got it together and they are in a very different place now in terms of a black player numbers. But I’m just really excited that people are hearing these stories for the first time. And I hope it doesn’t take another 50 years for people to become better versed in the reality of the desegregation of college football.

Jon Johnston: Should we talk for a bit about the 1966 team, or should we veer off into you making a film?

Maya Washington: I’m just excited to be here, so I’m happy to talk about whichever of those things that you’d like to talk about.

Jon Johnston: The 1966 Michigan State Spartan team is the team that’s famous for playing Notre Dame to a 10-10 tie and Ara Parseghian was the coach at Notre Dame and was forever held in poor light because he played for a tie. Notre Dame ended up national champions by the AP and coaches polls. Michigan State with a record of 9-0-1, that one tie ended up number two. And then, of course, Alabama claims that year as one of their national titles, because that’s what they do. We’ll stay away from them. That 1966 team had Bubba Smith, Clint Jones, Jean Washington, and your father George Webster on it, correct?

Maya Washington: Correct.

Jon Johnston: That those four players went in the top eight players in the NFL draft. That’s never been accomplished since. Tell us anything you can fill in there that I didn’t just spew.

Maya Washington: That 66 season was profoundly important because it was my dad’s senior year. In January of 1966, they lost to UCLA by two points in the Rose Bowl after also having a great undefeated season. Just really had also kind of beat up on UCLA or at least showed up earlier that season. So when they went to the Rose Bowl and lost by like two yards, just yards short of the goal line, they were on a mission. So going into that ‘66 season, they knew they had everything to prove. They knew that they needed to defend their being named national champions the year prior. And so they were hard core, serious that this is it. This is our final season as Spartan football players from my dad and others who are seniors that year. And you’ve got in that game of the century that 10-10 tie against Notre Dame.