Communist
15th February 2010, 23:07
______________________
Louisiana Museum Confronts Segregation (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/13grambling.html)
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
New York Times
February 12, 2010
BATON ROUGE, La. - When Eddie Robinson was growing up
here in Louisiana's capital city about 80 years ago, he
discovered the only way a black person infatuated with
football could attend a game at the state university: He
showed up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to clean the stadium.
(http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/13/us/13grambling-2.html%27,%20%2713grambling_2%27,%20%27width=720,h eight=484,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes %27%29)http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/13/us/13grambling-2/13grambling-2-articleInline.jpg
(http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/13/us/13grambling-2.html%27,%20%2713grambling_2%27,%20%27width=720,h eight=484,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes %27%29)A statue of Eddie Robinson stands in the middle of the
museum.
In 55 years of coaching the Grambling Tigers, Eddie
Robinson sent more than 200 players to the pros. Some of
Grambling State University's greatest players will be
honored in the new museum.
Wilbert Ellis got the idea for the museum from one for
Paul W. (Bear) Bryant in Alabama.
In addition to photos of Mr. Robinson, there will be
photos of every Grambling player who went pro, more than
200 of them.
To take his first job as a football coach, in 1941, Mr.
Robinson had to travel several hundred miles north, to a
segregated teachers' college in an unincorporated hamlet
called Grambling. Mail arrived by train, and students
helped harvest peaches and sweet potatoes from the
college farm.
As for the white world, it was if anything more hostile
than Baton Rouge. Just three years before Mr. Robinson's
arrival, a black man had been raped with a hot poker,
then lynched in the neighboring town of Ruston.
Yet Mr. Robinson worked and lived nowhere else for the
rest of his life. In 55 years of coaching the Grambling
Tigers, he amassed 408 victories and an .844 winning
percentage and sent more than 200 players to the pros.
He also personally oversaw their regular attendance at
class and church.
And now, three years since Mr. Robinson died at age 88,
the state that once subjugated him has put its money and
imprimatur on a museum devoted to his life and legacy.
Some 900 coaches, admirers, and former players,
including the head coaches of the Pittsburgh Steelers
and Notre Dame, are streaming into Grambling for the
official opening of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum on
Saturday.
Should anyone get lost, billboards along Interstate 20
direct drivers toward the museum on the campus of
Grambling State University. A sign being hoisted into
place this week at the Grambling exit promotes the
museum as part of the state's African-American Heritage
Trail.
"This would be the answer to his prayers," Doris
Robinson, the coach's widow, said in an interview this
week. "He was doing things that were lasting, and he
wanted the world to know."
The impact of the museum, though, far surpasses the
familial. "There has been a real effort on the part of
the state to expand the history, to be more inclusive,
to finally catch up," said Petra Munro Hendry, a
professor of educational history at Louisiana State
University and the author of a history of black Baton
Rouge ("Old South Baton Rouge: The Roots of Hope").
While that effort ultimately involved a number of
elected officials from both parties and both races, it
began with one of Eddie Robinson's coaching comrades,
Wilbert Ellis. In the late 1990s, toward the end of his
43-year career leading the Grambling baseball team, Mr.
Ellis paid a visit to the museum in Alabama honoring its
legendary football coach, Paul W. (Bear) Bryant.
"I looked at it," Mr. Ellis recalled the other day, "and
I said to myself, `This is the way Eddie should be
honored.' "
The inspiration was both appropriate and paradoxical. On
the one hand, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Bryant had maintained
a personal friendship and a professional respect for
decades. On the other, while Mr. Robinson was confined
to a black college by Jim Crow, Mr. Bryant fielded all-
white football teams whose triumphs were upheld by
bigots as proof of racial superiority.
The Bryant museum, which opened in 1981, also had
benefited from the financial support of the state's
university system. Mr. Ellis, in contrast, started fund-
raising with about a dozen longtime friends of Mr.
Robinson's. Over several years, they managed to collect
$300,000 - a substantial sum for amateurs but far short
of the amount needed to build, stock and staff even a
modest museum.
Two state legislators from the northern Louisiana area
helped by pushing through a bill to formally designate
the nascent museum as a state project. They could not,
however, loosen purse-strings. And meanwhile, Mr.
Robinson's Alzheimer's disease worsened for several
years before his death.
His papers and memorabilia, the future collection,
landed everywhere from a storage locker outside Atlanta
to the state archives in Baton Rouge. One former player
rescued a batch of game films that were being tossed
into the trash outside the Grambling football office.
The coach's death did succeed in infusing the museum's
cause with a sense of urgency. The State Legislature
appropriated $3.3 million for it in June 2008, and early
in 2009 construction began in the original women's gym
on the Grambling campus, which by this time was being
used mostly for dances and intramural activities.
"Eddie Robinson always said he only had two things," Mr.
Ellis recalled. "He had one wife and he had one job. So
where else but Grambling would you want to have the
museum?"
As final work proceeded at a frenetic pace before this
weekend's opening, exhibits took their places within the
18,000-square-foot building. Over the entrance to a
small theater that will show a brief documentary about
Mr. Robinson hung a replica of the Temple theater's
marquee. At that black landmark in Baton Rouge, a young
Mr. Robinson played basketball, boxed and watched Tom
Mix westerns.
Two facing walls display photos of every Grambling
player who went pro, from Glenn Alexander to Coleman
Zeno. A scale model of the Cotton Bowl scoreboard
captures the final score of Grambling's victory over
Alcorn State in 1985, which give Mr. Robinson his 324th
victory, putting him ahead of Mr. Bryant on the career
list.
Less visibly, but perhaps more important, the museum
will also hold the primary-source materials of interest
to scholars: oral histories, playbooks and game plans,
handwritten letters from teenagers pleading for the
chance to play at Grambling.
"We're not going to see anybody else like Eddie Robinson
again," said Michael Hurd, the author of "Black College
Football, 1892-1992," an authoritative history. "Not so
much because of the number of wins but for where he
started and for what he went through. He never made
racism an issue, but it was a hurdle he had to clear. So
for him to be recognized is a recognition of black
college football."
Louisiana Museum Confronts Segregation (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/13grambling.html)
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
New York Times
February 12, 2010
BATON ROUGE, La. - When Eddie Robinson was growing up
here in Louisiana's capital city about 80 years ago, he
discovered the only way a black person infatuated with
football could attend a game at the state university: He
showed up at 5 a.m. on Saturdays to clean the stadium.
(http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/13/us/13grambling-2.html%27,%20%2713grambling_2%27,%20%27width=720,h eight=484,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes %27%29)http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/13/us/13grambling-2/13grambling-2-articleInline.jpg
(http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:pop_me_up2%28%27http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/02/13/us/13grambling-2.html%27,%20%2713grambling_2%27,%20%27width=720,h eight=484,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes %27%29)A statue of Eddie Robinson stands in the middle of the
museum.
In 55 years of coaching the Grambling Tigers, Eddie
Robinson sent more than 200 players to the pros. Some of
Grambling State University's greatest players will be
honored in the new museum.
Wilbert Ellis got the idea for the museum from one for
Paul W. (Bear) Bryant in Alabama.
In addition to photos of Mr. Robinson, there will be
photos of every Grambling player who went pro, more than
200 of them.
To take his first job as a football coach, in 1941, Mr.
Robinson had to travel several hundred miles north, to a
segregated teachers' college in an unincorporated hamlet
called Grambling. Mail arrived by train, and students
helped harvest peaches and sweet potatoes from the
college farm.
As for the white world, it was if anything more hostile
than Baton Rouge. Just three years before Mr. Robinson's
arrival, a black man had been raped with a hot poker,
then lynched in the neighboring town of Ruston.
Yet Mr. Robinson worked and lived nowhere else for the
rest of his life. In 55 years of coaching the Grambling
Tigers, he amassed 408 victories and an .844 winning
percentage and sent more than 200 players to the pros.
He also personally oversaw their regular attendance at
class and church.
And now, three years since Mr. Robinson died at age 88,
the state that once subjugated him has put its money and
imprimatur on a museum devoted to his life and legacy.
Some 900 coaches, admirers, and former players,
including the head coaches of the Pittsburgh Steelers
and Notre Dame, are streaming into Grambling for the
official opening of the Eddie G. Robinson Museum on
Saturday.
Should anyone get lost, billboards along Interstate 20
direct drivers toward the museum on the campus of
Grambling State University. A sign being hoisted into
place this week at the Grambling exit promotes the
museum as part of the state's African-American Heritage
Trail.
"This would be the answer to his prayers," Doris
Robinson, the coach's widow, said in an interview this
week. "He was doing things that were lasting, and he
wanted the world to know."
The impact of the museum, though, far surpasses the
familial. "There has been a real effort on the part of
the state to expand the history, to be more inclusive,
to finally catch up," said Petra Munro Hendry, a
professor of educational history at Louisiana State
University and the author of a history of black Baton
Rouge ("Old South Baton Rouge: The Roots of Hope").
While that effort ultimately involved a number of
elected officials from both parties and both races, it
began with one of Eddie Robinson's coaching comrades,
Wilbert Ellis. In the late 1990s, toward the end of his
43-year career leading the Grambling baseball team, Mr.
Ellis paid a visit to the museum in Alabama honoring its
legendary football coach, Paul W. (Bear) Bryant.
"I looked at it," Mr. Ellis recalled the other day, "and
I said to myself, `This is the way Eddie should be
honored.' "
The inspiration was both appropriate and paradoxical. On
the one hand, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Bryant had maintained
a personal friendship and a professional respect for
decades. On the other, while Mr. Robinson was confined
to a black college by Jim Crow, Mr. Bryant fielded all-
white football teams whose triumphs were upheld by
bigots as proof of racial superiority.
The Bryant museum, which opened in 1981, also had
benefited from the financial support of the state's
university system. Mr. Ellis, in contrast, started fund-
raising with about a dozen longtime friends of Mr.
Robinson's. Over several years, they managed to collect
$300,000 - a substantial sum for amateurs but far short
of the amount needed to build, stock and staff even a
modest museum.
Two state legislators from the northern Louisiana area
helped by pushing through a bill to formally designate
the nascent museum as a state project. They could not,
however, loosen purse-strings. And meanwhile, Mr.
Robinson's Alzheimer's disease worsened for several
years before his death.
His papers and memorabilia, the future collection,
landed everywhere from a storage locker outside Atlanta
to the state archives in Baton Rouge. One former player
rescued a batch of game films that were being tossed
into the trash outside the Grambling football office.
The coach's death did succeed in infusing the museum's
cause with a sense of urgency. The State Legislature
appropriated $3.3 million for it in June 2008, and early
in 2009 construction began in the original women's gym
on the Grambling campus, which by this time was being
used mostly for dances and intramural activities.
"Eddie Robinson always said he only had two things," Mr.
Ellis recalled. "He had one wife and he had one job. So
where else but Grambling would you want to have the
museum?"
As final work proceeded at a frenetic pace before this
weekend's opening, exhibits took their places within the
18,000-square-foot building. Over the entrance to a
small theater that will show a brief documentary about
Mr. Robinson hung a replica of the Temple theater's
marquee. At that black landmark in Baton Rouge, a young
Mr. Robinson played basketball, boxed and watched Tom
Mix westerns.
Two facing walls display photos of every Grambling
player who went pro, from Glenn Alexander to Coleman
Zeno. A scale model of the Cotton Bowl scoreboard
captures the final score of Grambling's victory over
Alcorn State in 1985, which give Mr. Robinson his 324th
victory, putting him ahead of Mr. Bryant on the career
list.
Less visibly, but perhaps more important, the museum
will also hold the primary-source materials of interest
to scholars: oral histories, playbooks and game plans,
handwritten letters from teenagers pleading for the
chance to play at Grambling.
"We're not going to see anybody else like Eddie Robinson
again," said Michael Hurd, the author of "Black College
Football, 1892-1992," an authoritative history. "Not so
much because of the number of wins but for where he
started and for what he went through. He never made
racism an issue, but it was a hurdle he had to clear. So
for him to be recognized is a recognition of black
college football."