BREITBARD HALL OF FAME : ART POWELL : Wide Receiver Paid Price for His Strong Convictions

Bobby Beathard, the one-time diminutive defensive back, tells a fairy tale about the night he stopped Art Powell, the big-play wide receiver who would go on to become a perennial American Football League All-Star.

“Shut him out,” Beathard boasted. “I was playing for Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo) and he was leading the nation in receiving for San Jose and I was assigned to cover Art Powell. Let me tell you, he ended up the night without catching a pass. Not one, and we beat ‘em 10-8.”

Details. Details. OK, so Powell missed a pregame meeting, was suspended that day and never played against Cal Poly.

“Oh, man, I was so happy,” Beathard said. “I mean, I was shaking in my boots thinking I was going to have to cover Art Powell and I kept thinking he’s going to come into the game any minute now. I figured they were just setting me up--here he comes, I know it. But he didn’t. If he plays, they win 60-10.”

That’s right. Look it up--the only one who could stop Powell in those days was Powell.

After growing up on the “40 acres” of open space and playgrounds near Logan Elementary in San Diego, Powell went on to become an athletic giant for San Diego High, San Diego Junior College, San Jose State, the New York Titans and the Oakland Raiders.

But what should have been Powell’s rise to glory, culminating in an invitation to join the Pro Football Hall of Fame, became an ignominious journey filled with misperceptions and misunderstandings. Powell, once again, stopping Powell.

“What people fail to realize is I tried to live the American dream,” Powell said. “I reached for the sky; I refused to have somebody tell me I couldn’t go where I didn’t belong.

“Most of my career was during the ‘60s and this country was going through a social change. A lot of things that happened when I was playing didn’t have anything to do with me; I just happened to be a part of the times. There were things that I did that other people didn’t like, though those people weren’t sitting in my shoes.”

Time has passed, however, and the dust on the record books has failed to obscure his athletic accomplishments. Powell, now owner of the Indo-American Oil Company in Orange County, will be inducted into the Breitbard Hall of Fame at the 46th annual Salute to the Champions dinner Tuesday in the Town and Country Convention Center.

“I don’t think anyone who talks about the American Football League at its beginning would not mention that Art Powell was a dominating factor,” said Al Davis, Raiders managing general partner. “He was one of our greatest performers. His lack of longevity will always be a negative, but we’ll never forget him because he made a great contribution to the growth of the Raiders.”

Powell was a dominating factor wherever he went:

--He earned all-Southern California honors in 1954 in football, while also being named City Prep League basketball player of the year.

--He caught 50 passes for the San Diego Junior College football team and averaged 30 points a game in basketball.

--He led the nation with 40 receptions for San Jose State in 1956 and averaged 18 points a game in basketball.

--At age 20, he caught 33 passes for the Toronto Argonauts and Montreal Alouettes in the Canadian Football League.

--He became the Philadelphia Eagles rookie of the year in 1959.

--He signed with the New York Titans in 1960 in the newly formed AFL and led the league with 14 touchdown receptions.

--He signed with the Raiders, who went 1-13 in 1962, and in his first season helped the Raiders improve to 10-4 by leading the league with 16 touchdown catches.

“He was one of the outstanding receivers of his time,” Davis said. “He played a very vital part in the beginning of the Raiders. He was a brilliant player.”

But after his first season in the National Football League with the Eagles, he was looking for work.

“Growing up in San Diego, the schools I went to had always been integrated,” Powell said. “Sharing those types of events was nothing new to me.

“But after my rookie season with the Eagles, they booked an exhibition game in 1959 in Norfolk, Va. I noticed in training camp a few days before we were to leave a tension there. I couldn’t figure out why. Guys were coming up and telling you, ‘You know you’re always welcome in my place,’ and blah, blah, blah.

“I was still trying to fill in the gaps as to exactly what all this meant when we were told the black athletes could not sleep in the hotel beds in Norfolk. After living as we had in San Diego I had never experienced anything like this. My question was, ‘Where do we stay?’ I was told we would have to sit in the lobby. I refused.”

Powell was just a young man in 1959, and his wife, Betty, had just delivered their first child. The pressure to play football and abide by the times mounted; black teammates, who had also refused to make the trip, reconsidered.

“Immediately you’re bucking certain people in the establishment and they don’t like it,” he said. “From that stories build. You become something you’re not.

“I was suspended. I was blackballed in the NFL.”

By good fortune, the birth of the American Football League coincided with Powell’s banishment from the NFL.

The New York Titans became rich in talent overnight with the addition of Powell. He caught 69 passes, averaged 16.9 yards a reception and topped the league with 14 touchdown catches.

“I get to New York and I’m just there to play football and mind my own business,” he said. “But while I’m there they schedule a game in Greenville, S.C. We get to the airport, and it’s my first experience with white and colored water fountains.

“The general manager comes up to me and says I’m in charge of the black athletes and that we’ll be going somewhere else. The white players took a bus to the hotel and they send us off to the boonies. If they were making a movie, this would have been the place--hanging moss trees, dirt roads and flies bigger than your fist. You wouldn’t send your worst enemy to stay in a place like that.

“So I didn’t play. I told the general manager and coach I wouldn’t play. I said I didn’t think that was team spirit. I said you can’t tell me I’m a part of the team, then put me somewhere and not make me a part of the team until I get back to New York.”

Powell became a headline once again. Reporters found anonymous sources willing to take potshots at the football player who had chosen to buck the system. Opinions were formed.

“People who didn’t know me,” Powell said, “thought they knew everything about me. I ran into a reporter from San Diego a few years ago and he said, ‘As an athlete, you were as good as they come; as a person, I didn’t like you.’ And I said, ‘As an athlete that’s the only thing you’re supposed to judge about me. As a person, you don’t know me.’ ”

After playing out his option in New York, Powell met Davis, another maverick. They agreed to unite forces in Oakland with the understanding that Davis would grant Powell his wish to leave whenever Powell so requested it.

The Raiders were a miserable team at that time, but Davis turned them around and Powell became one of the league’s top offensive threats. By 1965, he had been selected to play in his third consecutive AFL All-Star game.

“We get to New Orleans for the All-Star game and we can’t get a cab from the airport,” he said. “We’re told we have to call for a colored cab. I see Jack Kemp, and he had rented a limo, and we all climbed in and went to our hotel.

“Now I’m upset, but on purpose I went up to my room and I had dinner. Later I run into some of the guys and they are all complaining about the way they’re being treated. I kept out of it, but about 1:30 in the morning I get a call in my room and guys are telling me they were down on Bourbon Street and people wouldn’t let them in, and they had guns pulled on them.

“I said we might as well all get together and talk about this. There were 22 black athletes all together on the two all-star teams, and before I know it they are all at our hotel and it must be three or four in the morning. And we have a meeting.”

The players adjourned from that meeting and agreed as a group to leave New Orleans and not play in the All-Star game.

“I did not want to take a leadership position, and after my experiences in Philadelphia I didn’t trust the other players on what they would say later,” Powell said. “So to protect myself I wrote up a paper that said everyone in this room is here voluntarily and nobody has been coerced and I made them all sign it.

“I said I would never get stuck being the bad guy again, but as it turned out I still got blamed. I got blamed for being one of the leaders, but I wasn’t. I was just one of the guys. I was just taking care of myself, and I had made up my mind that I wasn’t going to play in the game.”

The headline writers went back to work, and after the black players began leaving New Orleans, the league announced that the All-Star game was moving to Houston.

“Art was considered someone who was hard to handle in his time,” Davis said. “I didn’t think he was hard to handle, but in those days, those kids they were fighting another battle besides just playing football.”

Powell also balked at playing in an exhibition game in Alabama while with the Raiders, and the game was canceled. His reputation as being a clubhouse lawyer and troublemaker grew.

“That’s the biggest joke of all,” Powell said. “I never sat around talking to people and trying to convince them what to do; I did what I thought was right.

“There was a whole social movement going on at the time and it’s way bigger than you. But there’s pro and there’s con to what’s happening and somebody is made to be a bad guy. Art Powell didn’t create those situations, and if he had never existed, those situations were still going to happen.”

So Powell developed a reputation that had nothing to do with his ball playing.

“I know I put my career on the line and I know what happened in those years had an impact on how people looked upon me,” he said. “So be it; it was my choice.”

On Powell’s request because of business interests in Toronto, he was traded to Buffalo in 1967 along with quarterback Tom Flores for quarterback Daryle Lamonica. He injured his knee later in the season, and after a brief stint with Minnesota, his career came to a premature end.

“The only regret I have of that move was sitting in the stands watching the Raiders play Green Bay (Super Bowl II),” Powell said. “I know damn well if I was on that field, we would have beaten Green Bay.”

Powell ended his career as the AFL’s third all-time leading receiver with 478 receptions, and the league’s sixth all-time scorer with 81 touchdowns.

“I felt I belonged in the San Diego Hall of Fame,” Powell said. “I always figured what was happening to me was that people were inundated with rumors and not fact. It’s just like the Canton hall of fame. You’ve got a group of people who decide your fate and most of those people don’t know you.”

Augie Escamilla, however, has known Powell for more than 40 years, and he has only known a kind-hearted friend.

“Art leaves an impression until you get to know him that he’s very stoic, aloof, and even a little arrogant,” Escamilla said. “I had the incorrect impression of him as a kid until I got to know him.

“But he’s just a fine family man, a father, a husband, a son, a brother. We inducted Art into the Boys and Girls Club of San Diego Hall of Fame last year, not on the basis of his athletic ability, but on the basis of his contributions to the community and working with youth. He has been a good role model.”

Escamilla was working at the William J. Oakes Boys’ Club on Marcy Avenue when Powell was growing up, and Powell said his wonderful journey in athletics began with Escamilla.

“The Boys Club was a true melting pot; look at the pictures on the wall and every race was there,” Powell said. “The blessing we all had was a man named Augie Escamilla. I’m quite sure he loved all the kids, but as an individual he made you feel that he loved you more.

“There are so many good people, who did so many nice things for me that I would like to thank for them those early years.”

As the youngest in a group of talented athletes, which included brother, Charlie, who went to the San Francisco 49ers straight out of San Diego High, young Art played hard.

“The old guys would always put me in a position they didn’t want to play,” he said, “so I started my career playing center.”

It wasn’t long, however, before the older boys were being pushed around by little Powell, who would go on to become a 6-2, 212-pound skillful athlete.

“I never thought of having him carry the ball,” said Duane Maley, who coached Powell at San Diego High. “But when he went to San Diego City College they put him in the backfield, and I found that hard to believe.

“Their first game was up north somewhere and I went up to see it and this kid breaks about three long runs. I didn’t know he had speed like that, and I came home and told my wife, ‘You’re not going to believe this: Art Powell can run.’ There were so many things he could do.”

In addition to catching footballs, however, he chose to be a man of conviction in the most difficult of times.

“I know that it cost me,” he said. “I know I had a reputation, but what was I doing? I played football and football only. Now if the reputation is that I didn’t buy the crap, then fine, I can deal with that.

“Because I wouldn’t go to certain places that didn’t treat people properly, it was like that was my life. That was the furthest thing from my life. My life was living with the woman I’ve been married to for 34 years, and raising our kids.”

With the exception of missing Super Bowl II, he has no regrets. Friends and former teammates have told him he belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. They have told him that he was ahead of the times when he took a stand for what he knew to be right.

“I always felt in life,” Powell said, “that I was born to land on my feet.”