Thread by @PeteOlusoga

So who want's to hear about the Syracuse 8?

All of you?

Fantastic. Let's begin.

Now the very best thing about the story of the Syracuse 8 is that there were 9 of them.
#BlackHistoryMonth #AthleteProtest

In 1970, a group of 9 American Football players at Syracuse University boycotted practice and eventually sat out the entire 1970 season.

Gregory Allen, Richard Bulls, Dana Harrell, John Godbolt, John Lobon, Clarence 'Bucky' McGill, A. Alif Muhammad, Duane Walker, and Ron Womack.

Two years previously in 1968, the same year that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, and the Civil Rights Act was passed, Black players at Syracuse had raised concerns about racial discrimination and unfair treatment in the football programme.

According to Clarence McGill, one of the Syracuse 8 (or 9), the team Doctor (a fucking gynaecologist!) said that he “hated touching Black people.”

Now, I'm not sure about you, but that wouldn’t exactly fill me with confidence that I’m getting treated equally.

Black players didn’t have the same access to academic advisers, faced an unfair quota system which allowed only a certain number of Black players on the field at one time and determined the positions they could(n't) play, and had no Black assistant coaches on the team.

So these players made a list of demands:
🏈better medical care for EVERYONE,
🏈equal access to academic resources,
🏈playing time and position based on merit, not quotas,
🏈 and that the team hired a Black assistant coach.

All seems pretty reasonable.

When the players’ demands weren’t met (because obviously their demands weren't met) they boycotted spring practice in 1970, which led to them being suspended from the team.

They would have been allowed back if they’d signed a document to say the suspensions were fair.

But because they were total badasses, they refused.

Incidentally, if you're wondering why the very first tweet in this thread has a rogue apostrophe, I have no excuse, but it's too late to start again now.

Anyway, the Syracuse 8 (9) were actually reinstated just before the first game of the season, because... you know... winning.

But they stuck to their guns and continued to sit out, eventually missing the entire 1970 season.

In December of 1970, an independent report called the suspension of the Syracuse 8 “an act of institutional racism unworthy of a great university.”

The report also confirmed that the racism at Syracuse was “real, chronic, largely unintentional, and sustained and complicated unwittingly by many modes of behaviour common in American athletics and long-standing at Syracuse University.”

I mean, this would have been nice several months earlier, but in any case, head coach, Ben Schwartzwalder gave literally zero fucks about the findings of the report, and by all accounts helped to make sure that none of the Syracuse 8 played professionally after they graduated.

Head coach, Ben Schwartzwalder sounds like he was a massive douchebag, but this isn't his story so I won't dwell on him any further... other than to call him a massive douchebag again.

Anyway, in 2006, the Syracuse 8 (all 9 of them), returned to their university campus and were honoured with the Chancellor’s Medal.

Gregory Allen, one of the 8 (9), talked about the event...

“There were nothing but smiles and old men welling up in tears… It was a cleansing, a lifting of this baggage that I had been carrying around for years to have someone finally acknowledge that we didn't do this...

"...you know, to spite the university or to hurt the university. We were trying to make the university and this world just a better place.”

The Syracuse 8 (9).

Giants.

Read more about them here...
#BlackHistoryMonth

theplayerstribune.com/articles/syrac…