Photos Taught a Lesson

Without the pictures, Johnny Bright’s broken jaw probably would have been considered just another football injury.

With fewer than eight minutes gone in the first quarter, and with the nation’s leading ground gainer out of the Oct. 20, 1951 game, A&M--later; to become Oklahoma State--erased an early deficit and rolled to victory over previously unbeaten Drake University.

It was not until the next day that Bright’s injury took on a more sinister cast.

The Des Moines Register had devoted an entire page of the Sunday paper to a sequence of photos from the game. The pictures, which would earn a Pulitzer Prize for photographers Don Ultang and John Robinson, showed A&M; defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith pummeling Bright on two separate plays.

Bright was nowhere near the action on either play.

He was simply standing in the backfield, watching the ballcarrier, when Smith delivered a forearm--or perhaps a fist--to his unprotected jaw (helmets did not yet have face masks).

While the photos were shocking for their depiction of savage, unsportsmanlike play, they might have faded on the pages of the Register had it not been for one thing: Smith is white, and Bright was African American.

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When Bright went to Drake in 1948, he was one of only a few African Americans at the small private university in Des Moines.

“There was a distinct line between us and rest of the student body,” says Jim Ford, an African American who attended Drake in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s and shared an apartment with Bright. “We were not permitted to live on campus.”

If Bright was troubled by Drake’s housing policy, he kept it to himself.

“When you tried to talk to Johnny about segregation, he’d make a joke out of it,” says Ford. “He’d tell you, ‘Don’t bring this garbage to me....If you want to prove something to me, prove it out there on the football field.”’

Bright’s desire to view life through the prism of football was understandable.

Off the field, he might have been a second-class citizen.

On the field, he was the biggest star Drake had seen.

In 1949, he became the first sophomore to lead the nation in total offense, running and passing for nearly 2,000 yards as a halfback in the old single-wing formation. The next year, he gained a record-setting 2,400 yards in total offense and became the first player to both rush and pass for 1,000 yards in the same season.

“He epitomized what I thought was the ideal running back--the splatter type,” recalls Jim Trimble, who coached against Bright at Wichita State. “When he got rolling, he just splattered people.”

Bright could also take a hit.

“Against Abilene Christian, I saw him get hit so hard,” recalled Bill Coldiron, a Drake offensive lineman at the time. “He just bounced back and got in the huddle and said, ‘OK, guys, we’re all veterans now. Let’s go get ‘em.”’

Bright kept up a constant patter on and off the field.

“I can see him now, running his mouth continuously,” says Ford, laughing.

Still, Ford believes his friend’s playfulness masked a lonely, alienated side.

“Because of his athletic skills, he could run around in the white community,” Ford says. “But he realized he was not accepted.” Adds Arvil Stille, another former Drake teammate, “I can remember once on a train trip coming back, he sat on the edge of my bunk. He got real serious, and he told me, ‘You know, as a black man, I’ve got only two things. I’ve either got to make it in sports or entertainment.”’

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In his sophomore season, Bright, an Indiana native, got his first taste of the Jim Crow South when Drake played Missouri Valley Conference rival Oklahoma A&M; in Stillwater.

“Oklahoma was totally segregated,” says Hannah Atkins, the first African American woman to serve in the state’s legislature. “Transportation, water fountains, everything.”

Still, the 1949 game between Drake and the all-white A&M; squad went off without incident, thanks perhaps to a pregame admonition from A&M; Coach Jim Lookabaugh, who, according to the Des Moines Register, said “that Bright was the first Negro ever to play at A&M; ... [and] should be treated fairly.”

Despite Bright’s efforts--the Tulsa Daily World reported that “the flashy Negro scooter ... was the only bright light for the Bulldogs”--A&M; dispatched Drake, 28-0.

In 1951, Drake returned to Stillwater with high hopes.

Boasting a 5-0 record, the Drake players thought they had a good shot at knocking off A&M;, which had struggled to a 1-3 start.

Gene Aldridge, who played defensive back for A&M;, remembers that A&M; Coach J.B. Whitworth, who had replaced Lookabaugh, stressed that the key to beating Drake was stopping Bright, who was leading the nation in rushing and total offense.

According to Aldridge, Whitworth had noted a weakness in Bright’s game while studying films: When Bright was not carrying or throwing the ball, he stood in the backfield and rested. During practice, Whitworth emphasized that the defensive linemen should keep Bright “moving around.”

“That meant he didn’t want Bright resting,” says Aldridge. “So if you don’t want somebody resting, you’re going to go back there and put a hit on him.”

When Drake fullback Gene Macomber visited a Stillwater barbershop for a trim the day before the game, he remembers that the barber ‘told me words to the effect that the black guy would not finish the game.”

Life magazine wrote later that there were “even supposed to be betting pools on when the Aggies would get Bright.”

“I didn’t hear any rumors,” says Joe Sotelo, who played cornerback for Drake. “But the coaching staff told Johnny to protect himself.... The only time I can recall that being brought up was at the Oklahoma A&M; game.”

Nevertheless, on the first play from scrimmage, Bright ignored his coaches’ warning.

After handing the ball to Macomber, he stood in the backfield watching the play develop. A&M;’s Smith leveled Bright with a shot to the face.

“There he was, out cold,” remembers Register photographer Ultang. “No one who was at the game saw what happened.... Everyone’s eyes were on the ballcarrier.”

After regaining consciousness, Bright threw a wobbly pass that went for 61 yards and a touchdown. But on Drake’s next offensive series, Smith again KO’d Bright as he stood watching a teammate carry the ball.

Once more, no whistles were blown.

When Smith knocked Bright cold a third time, the play again escaped the attention of the officials. But others had seen it.

“The third time, we saw clearly,” says Bob Spiegel, a reporter who was working as a spotter for photographers Ultang and Robinson. “We saw him cold-cock John. He just drew back his fist and smacked the guy.”

A few plays later, Bright was taken to the locker room where doctors discovered a broken jaw, and the Drake star’s game was over.

“After Johnny got his jaw broken and was taken out of the game, our safety, Chuck Lanphere from Arkansas--he was a rebel all the way--he just broke down crying. In fact, he cried in Johnny’s chest at halftime,” remembers Drake’s Sotelo.

For the rest of the game, Bright’s teammates did their best to get revenge for the injury to their star.

“It was a rough, dirty day,” Sotelo recalls. “Physically, we gave as much as we took.”

Drake sidelined three A&M; running backs and, adds Sotelo, “just murdered their quarterback--absolutely demolished him--in retaliation.”

Still, without Bright, Drake’s offense foundered, and A&M; won, 27-14.

After the game, doctors wired Bright’s jaw shut.

“He walked up to us, and he had these wire cutters around his neck--actual wire cutters,” recalls Coldiron. “They were there so if he got sick, he could cut the wires.”

As the Drake team waited in an Oklahoma station for its train back to Iowa, a station worker saw Bright sitting in a section reserved for whites.”This little guy came out from behind the cage where the ticket window was and said to John, ‘Sir, you can’t sit there,”’ remembers teammate John Jennett. “And John, of course, had his jaws wired. And he said, ‘Mister, if you think you’re man enough to move me, you just try it.’ The guy turned around and walked behind the gate.”

When Ultang and Robinson’s photos hit the newsstands, a furor ensued.

Time magazine called the episode “the year’s most glaring example of dirty football,” and Life, after running the photos, received nearly 300 letters condemning Smith and A&M.; The New York Times called it “one of the ugliest racial incidents in college sports history.”

When contacted for this story, Smith would say only: “Race had nothing to do with what happened that day.”

Smith’s former teammate Aldridge agrees: “I just don’t think anyone went after Bright because he was black.”

Targeting an opposing team’s star player--black or white--was common, he says. “That kind of stuff happened.” Of the three African Americans who played for Drake that day, only Bright was injured.

Although Whitworth eventually admitted that Smith had twice hit Bright in violation of the rules, the coach took no disciplinary action against the lineman. Drake withdrew from the Missouri Valley Conference in protest after the conference declined to act on its appeal.

With his jaw wired shut, wearing a helmet equipped with a protective face mask, and taking oxygen on the sidelines, Bright was able to play only a portion of one more game. Still, he finished fifth in Heisman Trophy balloting and much later was voted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

When the Philadelphia Eagles selected him with the seventh overall pick in the 1952 NFL draft, he became only the second African American ever chosen in the first round. But in 1951, NFL salaries were not what they are today.

“I think the Eagles had offered him maybe a $300 bonus,” remembers Ford. “Then here comes Canada, offering greenbacks.... His bonus was, I think, $2,000, which he’d never seen before. And friends like myself, who had never seen any money like that either, said, ‘Go. Take that. Go. In a hurry!”’

Bright became a superstar in the Canadian Football League, amassing five consecutive 1,000-yard seasons and four rushing titles.

He retired in 1964 as the league’s all-time leading rusher--two players have since surpassed him--and was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.

“John was a super player,” remembers NFL Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant, who played and coached against Bright in Canada. “Going into the line at 220 or something like that, he was a terror. He caught the ball exceptionally well, very durable--I don’t ever remember him missing a game.”

In 1983, Bright, then a junior high school principal in Edmonton, Canada, died of a heart attack. He was 53. A friend of Bright remembers that one of those who sent a floral arrangement to the funeral was Wilbanks Smith.

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Adam Buckley Cohen, a contributing editor for Oklahoma Today magazine, lives in Norman, Okla., and writes frequently about college sports and Oklahoma history.