Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007 - (Page 21)

the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. The Golden Hurricane accepted a second consecutive Sugar Bowl invitation, but only six players had returned from the previous season. Twenty-four of the 40 players were classified 4-F (draft ineligible) or had been discharged for medical reasons. Another nine had not yet been called up because they had recently turned 18 or were still under 18. Despite its handicaps, Tulsa led Tech for much of the game before bowing to the Yellow Jackets, 20-18. By the mid-1950s, the Civil Rights Movement was unfolding, and with the 1955 Navy-Ole Miss matchup, the Sugar Bowl witnessed the first stirrings of the sweeping social changes to come. Although game tickets indicated that entrance to the stadium was limited to whites only, African Americans had been attending the Classic since its inception, albeit in a segregated section. In 1954, the NAACP’s Clarence Mitchell filed a complaint about the tickets with the Navy, which had recently come under President Truman’s 1948 Executive Order 9981 desegregating armed forces. U.S. Secretary of the Navy Charles S. Thomas countered that the Navy had distributed its allotted tickets without regard to race. Sugar Bowl president Bernie Grenrood confirmed Thomas’s assertion that both blacks and whites would be allowed entrance. Racial tensions escalated the following year when Georgia Tech played Pittsburgh. Pitt planned to play African-American fullback Bobby Grier. Georgia governor Marvin Griffin requested that the Georgia Board of Regents Chair, Robert O. Arnold, forbid Georgia college teams from competing against opponents who fielded African-American players. However, Arnold insisted that he had no control over university athletic departments, and Tech refused to break its Sugar Bowl contract. The game went on, but, unfortunately, not without several controversial incidents, one involving Grier. A referee flagged Grier for push- Tulane Stadium, 1951. photograph by Leon Trice, gift of the Sugar Bowl ing while guarding Tech’s right end Don Ellis. To this day, Grier maintains that Ellis actually pushed him. However, Tech kept possession of the ball and scored the only touchdown of the game, a move that secured the Yellow Jackets’s win. If this on-the-field experience was crushing for Grier, so too was his offthe-field exposure to the racial segregation so engrained in New Orleans culture at the time: he was not allowed to stay at the same hotel as his teammates and was barred from Pitt’s after-party. In 1956, over the vocal opposition of the Mid-Winter Sports Association, Governor Earl K. Long signed into law Act No. 579 prohibiting integrated sporting events. According to Washington Post sports columnist Shirley Povich, the law effectively downgraded the Sugar Bowl to “some kind of Dixie championship only.” It would be nearly a decade before another northern team participated in the Classic. Louisiana’s statute was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Bynum v. Schiro decision in 1964. Argued by New Orleans Civil Rights vanguards Ernest N. Morial and A. P. Tureaud, the case overturned Act No. 579, allowing the Sugar Bowl to regain its status as a national game. The 1970s witnessed a parade of college football stars and classic games. Mississippi native and Ole Miss star Archie Manning, remembered as one of the greatest quarterbacks in college football history, was at the peak of his game in 1970. His performance against the Arkansas Razorbacks in that year’s Classic was no exception. Completing 21 of 35 passes for 273 yards and one touchdown, Manning led the Rebels to a 27-22 victory. Manning clinched the Miller-Digby Sugar Bowl MVP trophy and was picked second in the 1971 NFL draft by the New Orleans Saints. The 1973 Alabama vs. Notre Dame game — a showdown Fall 2007/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 21 The Sugar Bowlwas namedforitsoriginallocation— Tulane University,built onthe former siteofthe Fouchersugarplantation,where EtienneBoré firstgranulatedsugar fromcanesyrup. University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant at the 1975 Classic, the first Sugar Bowl to be played at the Superdome. gift of the Sugar Bowl

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

Contents Friends & Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Big Charity: A History of New Orleans’ Public Hospital Historic New Orleans Collection Making Groceries: A History of New Orleans Markets New Orleans’ Faubourg Tremé: Rooted in Tradition Jazz Notes Louisiana Association of Museums Chinatown New Orleans Louisiana Foodways A Question of Secession Louisiana Architecture Louisiana State Museum The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish Terra Incognita Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2007

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