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Forty Years Ago Today

3/15/03
by John C. Thomas

Friday, March 15, 1963 vs. Mississippi State at East Lansing, MI

In the days leading up to a meeting between #3 Loyola and #6 Mississippi State on March 15, 1963, there was a flurry of activity. On March 2, 1963, minutes before the final regular season game between Mississippi State and Ole Miss, MSU announced to the crowd that for the first time, they would accept the bid to represent the SEC in the 1963 NCAA Tournament, potentially to play against an integrated team. Many thought the question of MSU's participation was settled then and there.

But even before it was certain that Mississippi State would face Loyola and their four black starters racist elements in the Mississippi media got into the act. On Thursday, March 7, 1963-four days before Loyola's game against all-white Tennessee Tech that would decide who played Mississippi State-the Jackson Daily News printed a five-column wide picture of Loyola's starters to show that four of them were African Americans. As a caption to the picture, Daily News editor Jimmy Ward wrote that "readers may desire to clip the photo of the Loyola team and mail it today to the board of trustees of the institution of higher learning" to prevent the game from taking place. The Jackson paper editorial included an apology to readers for misleading them in a previous editorial that all five of Loyola's starters were African-American. The editorial said that "maybe a lucky white boy graduated to the first team."

Other Mississippi newspapers also fueled the controversy. James Skews, editor of the Meridian Star, was quoted in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger as saying, "Especially in these times we should make no compromise regarding our Southern way of life-we cannot afford to give a single inch." With the media driving the bandwagon to ban the game, politicians joined in, spurred by the potential for headlines and votes.

The editorials were in response to the decision by Mississippi State President Dean Colvard's March 2, 1963 to accept their automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament as SEC Champions-a bid that they had refused three times before when faced with the prospect of playing integrated teams. Just the year before, on March 16, 1962, after the Mississippi State Maroons declined an invitation to the NCAA tournament as the champions of the Southeast Conference, the very same Jackson Daily News printed on their editorial page that "a change of heart by Mississippi's politicians" was the key to the Mississippi State team playing in the NCAA Tournament. As late as February 12, 1963, the Daily News lamented, "racial problems appear to doom the talented Maroons' chances of representing the league in the post-season tournament." With the prospect of facing Loyola, however, the newspaper itself lead a charge to sway politicians against MSU's participation in the 1963 NCAA Tournament.

The College Board of Mississippi met on March 9, 1963 and upheld Colvard's decision by an 8-3 vote. Further, after a motion by a dissenting voter to ask for Colvard's resignation-a motion that died without receiving a seconding vote-- the Board voted 9-2 on a measure to express confidence in Colvards' leadership. But on March 13, just a day before the team was scheduled to travel to East Lansing, state senator Billy Mitts and former state senator B.W. Lawson sought and obtained a temporary injunction against the team leaving the state. Hinds County Chancellor L.B. Porter, the same person who issued the injunction preventing James Meredith's enrollment at the University of Mississippi the previous fall, issued the injunction against Mississippi State participating in the tournament.

Several other all-white teams from the SEC, such as Kentucky, had never flinched at playing integrated teams. In 1949, an integrated Loyola team upset Adolph Rupp's all-white Kentucky team in the NIT, and Loyola beat eventual national champion Kentucky in 1958 with African-American rebounding whiz Art McZier. If Mississippi State turned down their bid to represent the SEC, Georgia Tech-- another all-white team-- was eager to accept. Up until that point in the 1962-63 season, Loyola had played all-white teams from Arkansas, Houston, Loyola New-Orleans, and Tennessee Tech. For a lot of colleges from the Deep South, it was no big deal to play an integrated basketball team.

But Mississippi was different. By the 1962-63 school year, Mississippi was one of only three states in the country that had yet to integrate their elementary and secondary schools according to the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. On September 30, 1962, African-American Air Force veteran James Meredith tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi, and a two-day riot erupted that killed two people and injured hundreds. The National Guard was forced to come in to break up the festival of violence that lasted three days. Between 1954 and 1960, the Mississippi state legislature drew up and passed 14 separate laws or acts that were designed to get around the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The most draconian of these measures was a poison pill provision that allowed the governor to abolish all the state's public schools, colleges, and universities rather than submit to integration.

The federal incursion in the Meredith incident was viewed by many in Mississippi as another intolerable infringement upon their rights, and southern anti-integrationists still felt the battle scars. It was bad enough that the University of Mississippi had one highly qualified black student forced upon them by the federal government. The prospect of Mississippi State playing Loyola-with four Negro starters-was a little too much for many segregationists to bear.

In the meantime, cards and letters addressed to Loyola players suggested that they "bring their shoe shine kits" to the game, or "come down here and pick some cotton." Some of the letters were signed, "KKK." (Chicago Daily News, March 15, 1963)

When Chicago Daily News columnist Bill Jauss asked Loyola forward Jerry Harkness about the controversy, he responded wearily, "I expected that. I'm getting a little immune to it. They called us names when we played in Houston, called Jack Egan names too." But there was something in Loyola's favor. And Harkness zeroed in on it. "The players are all right. I think that Mississippi State wants to play us. If they don't, they'll never know how good they are."

The Mississippi State players certainly wanted to find out how good they were by playing Loyola. And they went to desperate measures to make it to the game.

While Hinds County sheriffs were on their way to Starkville to serve the injunction, the team was participating in a pep rally the night before their departure, where effigies of racist state senators Mitts and Lawson were hung. The team's original plan was to leave Starkville at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday morning. But learning that the Hinds County sheriffs would be expected to arrive in town at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night, MSU put their sophisticated contingency plan into effect.

The university president and vice-president drove to Birmingham, Alabama and checked into a hotel under assumed names. Coach Babe McCarthy, the athletic director, and the assistant athletic director drove to Memphis, and then flew to Nashville. The team itself sent the freshman squad to the airport as scheduled-posing as the varsity team-- to serve as decoys. Meanwhile, the real varsity team hid in a dorm on campus. The next morning, they boarded a private plane at the airport and flew to Nashville to meet up with the coach and team officials. From Nashville, the whole group took a commercial flight to the game at East Lansing, Michigan.

There was some doubt as to the vigor with which local county officials hunted down those named in the injunction. According to Mississippi law, a local sheriff was required to be present at the service of an injunction emanating from another county. But the entire question became moot later that afternoon when a justice from the Mississippi Supreme Court invalidated the injunction.

There were no incidents at all in the game that could have been contrived as fomenting trouble down South. The Loyola players were gracious, perhaps more than they should have been, to the Mississippi State players and coaches that defied their courts and state legislature to play some college basketball. Considering everything on the line, it was a monumental game. But none of the members of either team appeared to consider it more important than any other contest during the year.

The mood in the arena, filled with 12,143 spectators, was electric. Flashbulbs clicked all over the Jenison Fieldhouse when the two team captains shook hands, and then again at tip-off, marking the historic event.

Mississippi State took early control by scoring the first seven points of the game, capped by leading scorer Leland Mitchell's driving basket. The Maroons were trying to slow the pace and keep the game's final scoring totals in the low fifties-unfortunately for them, Loyola's lowest scoring output on the year had been 62 points, and that was against another team trying to do the same thing.

The Ramblers didn't score for the first 5:49 of the first half, but kept plugging away. Ron Miller scored first for Loyola, and Jerry Harkness turned in two three-point plays to tie the game at 12-all. By the time the halftime buzzer rang out, Loyola held a 26-19 lead over the Maroons.

Mississippi State was an extremely disciplined and experienced team, entering the game with a 21-5 record. But they had no starters taller than 6'5". Loyola was by no means a tall team, averaging just 6'3" among their starters, but 6'6" Vic Rouse and 6'7" Les Hunter played much taller than their measurements. As they had in almost every game of the season to that point, the two tallest Ramblers ensured domination on the boards against the Maroons.

Behind great rebounding, the Ramblers carved a 39-29 lead less than seven minutes into the second half. The double-digit lead might have lulled the Ramblers to sleep, because the Maroons-behind their minute-and-a-half, look for the cutter to the basket offense-cut Loyola's advantage to 41-38 with nearly 11 minutes remaining.

It wasn't until Mississippi State's 6' 4" senior leader Leland Mitchell fouled out with 6:47 left that the Ramblers took control of the game. Mitchell scored 14 points and swept 11 rebounds in his limited time. His replacement from the bench-the only bench player in the game for Mississippi State-- was scoreless and without a rebound through the rest of the game, and Loyola advanced to the regional finals with a 61-51 win.

The brutally slow pace employed by Mississippi State was a test to the Ramblers' impulse to run and shoot and score. Others had tried it before, and they lost. The Maroons were clever. But the impulse to light up the scoreboard against Mississippi State was a psychological trap that the Ramblers successfully resisted.

Jerry Harkness led the Ramblers with 20 points, and Vic Rouse added 16 points to go with his game-high 19 rebounds. Les Hunter had a double-double of his own with 12 points and 10 rebounds. The Ramblers controlled the boards by a 48-35 margin. Significantly, the African American starters scored all but two of Loyola's points.

"I remember the [Mississippi State] guys being nice," Miller said. "I remember the guys wishing us luck [after the game], and wanting us to win [the championship]. And during the game it was polite. They played a very hard, very aggressive, very strong defensive game-- very clean, and they didn't back off. I always thought that they were a lot like we were when we went to New Orleans-- we just wanted to play basketball."