Guillory recalls college football integration period

[KFDM COOP]

Guillory recalls college football integration period

By RYAN S. CLARK

December, 15, 2008

Quite a few things have happened since Anthony Guillory became Lamar University's first black football player more than 40 years ago.

During that time, thousands of black players have gone on to play college football, Lamar University eliminated its football program only to bring it back and on Wednesday, former West Orange-Stark quarterback Andre Bevil, also black, will become the revived program's first official signee.

Guillory said Monday another barrier needs to be broken when it comes to colleges hiring more black coaches.

Currently, there are four black coaches at the 119 schools that play at Football Bowl Subdivision level, the lowest since 1993. Those coaches are Houston's Kevin Sumlin, Miami's Randy Shannon, newly-hired New Mexico coach Mike Locksley and Buffalo's Turner Gill, who recently lost out on the Auburn University job to Iowa State head coach Gene Chizik.

"He could have gotten the Auburn job," Guillory said. "That guy (Chizik) they hired, he's a loser. His record says so."

Gill led Buffalo to 13 victories and a conference title in two seasons while Chizik won five games over two seasons.

"It's so amazing," Guillory added. "You've got guys like Turner Gill that fight for a job and when they take you in at one place, you don't get the same chance at other places."

A chance at Lamar is what put Guillory into the local history books. Prior to coming to Lamar in 1961, Guillory was at the University of Nebraska.

"Nebraska maybe had 30 blacks on campus at the time," Guillory said. "I stayed up there my freshman year, and one day my parents called me and said (former Lamar head coach) J.B. Higgins and Dr. F.L. McDonald started talking to them.

"They wanted to get into the process of recruiting black players."

Guillory said after coming home for Christmas, he thought about playing at Lamar and enrolled in January 1961.

The former Hebert High product's homecoming created a sense of area-wide hysteria as people asked if he was going to play football with Lamar.

When April arrived, he took part in spring football and on his first day, he entered locker room showers only to have the majority of his white teammates leave.

"That was kind of hurtful," Guillory said. "I never did have problems with the players during practice."

He said it was the only racially-motivated incident that occurred with his teammates.

There were also some mixed emotions on campus, he said.

Guillory said the city's black community was excited while there some dissension among whites existed.

"I had to go to the board to get permission, but once I got the OK, things went smoothly," Higgins said, according to The Enterprise archives.

"We had good individuals to break the color barrier and we never had any problems."

Not everyone had the same feelings as Higgins, Guillory said. When Lamar went on the road to play Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, he and a teammate, Gene Washington, were not allowed to stay in the team hotel.

They roomed with a black family in the area before meeting up with the rest of the team at the hotel.

"The only thing that bothered me was when we got back to the hotel," he said. "They would not let us stay there, but (the hotel) let us eat with the team for the pre-game meal."

After he attended Lamar, Guillory played five National Football League seasons Los Angeles Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles. He returned to Beaumont and worked for Mobil Oil, from which he retired in 1995.

[hjhawks]

I had the pleasure of working with Tony a few years back when he volunteered at Kelly....  What a great guy....  he had stories of those days in the NFl and at Lamar that were classic!