1951 The Johnny Bright Incident
The integration of African American players into professional and university sports was a long and painful struggle. One of the ugliest moments in this story took place on this date in 1951 in Stillwater, Oklahoma during a football game between the Bulldogs of Drake University and Oklahoma A&M College Aggies (now the Oklahoma State Cowboys).
Johnny Bright was a superb black athlete who had come to Drake on a track scholarship but who would eventually also star in basketball and football. During the 1951 season Bright, playing halfback and quarterback, was leading the nation in both rushing and passing, when they met the Aggies. It was no secret that the Oklahoma team meant to target Bright in some nasty way and within the first seven minutes of the game Bright had been knocked down by defensive lineman Wilbanks Smith, the last time with a clearly illegal blow to the face well behind the play and long after Bright had handed the ball off. Despite a broken jaw, Bright continued for a while, completing a touchdown pass before leaving the game.
The play was not penalized and nothing more may have been heard of the incident had not photographers from the Des Moines Register captured it on film. The Pulitzer Prize-winning shots caused a national scandal but neither Oklahoma A&M, the Mississippi Valley Conference or the NCAA took any action, causing Drake and Bradley University to withdraw from the league.
Bright was named to the All-America team in 1951 and went on to a stellar career in Canadian football, playing an important part in the Edmonton Eskimos dynasty of the mid-1950s. Bright became a Canadian citizen and was a repected teacher and coach in Alberta before dying in 1983. Twenty-two years later Oklahoma State officially apologized to Drake for the incident.