A century later, Jack Trice's story lives on
But for decades, de facto segregation ruled Iowa State's conference
Oct. 8 is the centennial of the death of Jack Trice, Iowa State’s first Black athlete. Trice was an Ohio native who came to Iowa State College to learn animal husbandry. He also joined the track and football teams. What came next has received significant attention in recent decades, including a documentary at cyclones.tv, the books Football’s Fallen Hero: The Jack Trice Story and The Idealist, and a piece in the fall 2010 issue of The Annals of Iowa. They go into much greater detail about Trice’s story.
For the second game of the 1923 football season, at Minnesota, Trice was not allowed to eat with the team at the Curtis Hotel. The Midwest was no stranger to discrimination. At the time, multiple chapters of the Ku Klux Klan were active in Minneapolis.
‘Everyone is expecting me to do big things’
Trice, forced to be away from his teammates, was left alone with his thoughts on the night of Oct. 5, 1923. He took a piece of hotel stationery and wrote a short letter to himself. “The honor of my race, family and self are at stake. Everyone is expecting me to do big things. I will!”
In The Idealist, author Jonathan Gelber re-created the next day’s game as much as could be done a century later. Trice first was injured at his collarbone but continued to play. In the second half, as he executed a block, he ended up on his back in the middle of the scrum and was trampled by multiple Minnesota players. Research into trying to determine if the action was racially motivated has not reached a consensus.
Minnesota won, 20-17, and Trice joined the team on a bumpy train ride home.
News of Trice’s injury reached Ames during the game, but the severity was far underestimated. The Ames Daily Tribune and Times, in its recap Oct. 8, said Trice “was forced out of the game in the third period with internal injuries, and it will probably be four weeks before he will be in condition to scrimmage again.” The same afternoon that that sentence reached readers, Trice died of peritonitis.
Trice was one of five college football players and 19 overall to die from game-related injuries in 1923, according to a compilation by the Chicago Tribune summarized Dec. 5 in the Tribune and Times.
The years after
Trice was mourned by the community after his death, and was honored with a plaque at State Gym, but his story languished. His name did not appear in the Ames newspaper for nearly 50 years.
A lot in those intervening decades got glossed over — starting with the following week.
The next game on Iowa State’s 1923 schedule was at Missouri. The day Trice died, Missouri mailed Iowa State a letter saying it would not allow Trice to play in Columbia the following Saturday. The letter is difficult to read today because of its explicit tone and offensive language singling out Trice because of his race. It should be difficult to read. It should also be remembered.
A little over a decade earlier, Missouri had stopped the University of Iowa from having a Black athlete play in Columbia. After that, Iowa and Missouri would not play each other for a century, and then only in a bowl game. But then, Iowa and Missouri were not in the same conference.
Iowa State had another Black football player in 1926-27, Holloway Smith. He also was barred from playing at Missouri. It was just something the Cyclones dealt with. “Because of the color discrimination effected by Missouri, Holloway Smith, tackle, will not play in Friday’s game, Coach Noel Workman said last night,” the Tribune and Times said Nov. 8, 1927. Iowa State lost, 13-6. The paper noted later that Smith’s absence had been felt on the offensive line.
In 1928, the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association fractured, with Iowa State and five other public colleges becoming known as the Big Six. (Conference realignment: The more things change, the more they stay the same?)
Because Missouri and Oklahoma were part of the conference, for the next 20 years a “gentlemen’s agreement” prevented Black athletes from playing at those teams’ home stadiums, and they were not recruited. In 1946 the rule was codified — right before the color barrier began to break down. Three years later, Kansas State’s Harold Robinson became the first Black scholarship athlete in the Big Seven, and he played in a game in Columbia on Thanksgiving Day 1950. In 1952, sophomore Al Stevenson played for Iowa State. By 1960, the first year Oklahoma State was a full member of the Big Eight, the conference was fully integrated.
A legacy
A chance rediscovery of the plaque at State Gym in 1957 by ISU student Tom Emmerson influenced events later when he was faculty adviser for the Iowa State Daily. The Daily wrote about Trice in October 1973, bringing his story and his letter to new generations. The May 1974 reappearance of Trice’s name in the Tribune was at the beginning of a campaign to name the football stadium under construction after him. After a decades-long process/fight, in 1997, Cyclone Stadium-Jack Trice Field was renamed Jack Trice Stadium.
Today, there is a relief sculpture of Trice on the exterior of the stadium that bears his name. A statue of him reading his letter that had been at the stadium was moved to Central Campus at the end of 2019. Last year, an art installation at the stadium was established, a silhouette of a football player “Breaking Barriers.”
Iowa State will remember Trice on Saturday in the football game against TCU, and then hold a ceremony on Sunday, as part of a yearlong university plan to celebrate his life.
It took many decades after Trice’s death for Black athletes to play on the football fields of the Great Plains as equals. Now that his example is known nationwide, let it never be forgotten.
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This made me cry.