by Earl Monroe
IN SEPTEMBER MY NEW WINSTON-SALEM TEAMMATES AND I started having informal games against each other because according to the rules we couldn’t hold formal practices until late October. Coach Gaines already had some good veteran players there, like Willie Curry, who was from Indiana and a real nice pull-up jump shooter. Then there was Mickey Smith, a real smooth player from Washington, DC. Richard Glover, one of our forwards, was from Newark, New Jersey, and stood about six four or six five. Richard couldn’t shoot a lick from the outside, but he was a good garbage man around the basket, always looking to get the rebound and put the ball back up and score, which he did very well. Then there was the real character of that team, Louis Parker, who was a six-foot-five-inch left-handed center from New York City. Louis was really thin—all arms and elbows—a good rebounder, and shot left-handed hooks and little jumpers.
Louis was a good ballplayer, but he played with a closed barbershop razor in his jockstrap. He used to say that if some stuff went down he’d pull out the razor and do whatever he had to do. He said he started carrying a razor in his jockstrap back when he was playing on the New York City playgrounds, where anything could happen. Louis was something else, but Coach Gaines never knew he had the razor. Luckily for us nothing happened the whole year, because I wouldn’t have wanted to see if Louis was bluffing or not.
We had interchangeable guards and forwards on that squad, like Mickey Smith and Willie Curry, both of whom could really play out on the floor and who shot really good jump shots. But they could play close to the basket, too, whenever it was necessary.
The top player on the team was Teddy Blunt, who was a six-foot-one-inch point guard. Teddy had a nice little jumper and handled the ball really well. He was also a very heady player and was the quarterback of the team. Teddy was also from Philadelphia, and I had played against him on the playgrounds (though we didn’t hang out together) and in my junior year at Bartram, when he played at Simon Gratz High School. (Leon Whitley was also responsible for recruiting Teddy and steering him down to Winston-Salem.) He was very good at Simon Gratz, and when I heard he was at Winston-Salem I really looked forward to playing with him.
The year before I came to Winston-Salem Teddy had led the team to the CIAA (Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association) championship and made the 1962–1963 All-CIAA team. In my first year we won 22 and lost 4 games, and we were 17 and 3 in CIAA conference play. But we were banned that year from postseason tournament play because of some rule infraction (which I never fully understood) that happened during the year before I came to Winston-Salem.
Teddy was a very good passer and a very good floor leader, but we used to tease him because he was light skinned. See, there was a joke going around amongst some of the players that Coach Gaines liked for all his point guards to be light skinned because he figured they were close to being white, and that would help them control the dark-skinned players.
Of course I didn’t think it was true, but a lot of people felt Coach Gaines thought that way because of some of his idiosyncrasies, like when Coach went and got a white kid named Bob from Ridley Township, near Philadelphia, to play on the football team because, as athletic director, he wanted to integrate the team and the school. Bob would ride with us in the car when we’d go back and forth between Winston-Salem and Pennsylvania for visits. I remember one time he proved very handy for us, because the driver was speeding and we got caught. Anyway, the cop pulled us over to the side of the road, came out with his flashlight shining on us, and said, “Where you boys going?”
“We’re just leaving school,” I said.
“Well, you know you going over the speed limit,” the cop said. “You know how you boys can be when you don’t pay attention to street signs.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Then the cop shined his flashlight into the back of the car and saw the white kid sitting there in the backseat. He seemed shocked to see him there.
“What you doing in here?” the cop said.
“Oh, I go to school with them,” Bob said, nodding his head to whoever was in the backseat with him. The cop really looked strange then, shook his head as if this whole scenario was confusing him now, kind of laughed under his breath, and said, “Well, all right, you boys go on now, but watch the speed limit. You hear me?!”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
When the cop left, someone in the car said, looking at the white kid, “Man, we sho’ glad we had you in here.”
Bob broke out in a grin big as daybreak, and all of us riding in the car just started laughing so sidesplitting loud and long it made our bellies hurt real bad and we ached in pain all the way back to Pennsylvania. That was something.
Coach Gaines was six five, 300 pounds (that’s why all his friends—but not his players—called him “Big House,” or just “House,” because he was so big!). And he was real big to us. We might have been slapped upside our heads if any one of us had ever stooped so low as to call him “Big House,” or just plain “House,” to his face. To us he was “Coach Gaines,” or “Mr. Gaines,” or just plain “Coach.”
Staying with the football team for those first few weeks taught us what to say and what not to say to Coach Gaines. That was one of the good things we got from staying with them. Plus, we got to know them—got tight with all of them—which later on saved our asses from the hazing that freshmen had to go through. When all the other male freshmen got to school and had to do all that stupid initiation stuff, me and Smitty were cool because a lot of the football players were the ones dealing out the punishments. We didn’t have to go through that stuff, like getting hit, as some of the other freshmen did. They would make a freshman sit in a chair and then someone would turn off the lights and they’d start smacking the freshman upside the head. Stupid stuff like that. But me and Smitty didn’t have to go through any of that.
After Smitty and I moved from the basement, got our dormitory rooms, enrolled in classes, and started practicing, we found some time to explore the town before the season really started. Winston-Salem was a small city compared to Philadelphia. About 70,000 people were living there at the time, while more than a million lived in Philly. We found out that Winston-Salem was where RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company was located, which was why we saw all those endless huge fields of tobacco when we were coming down on the train. RJ Reynolds made Salem, Winston, and Camel cigarettes. Man, a lot of people in Philly, including some—I think—in my own family, smoked Camel and Salem cigarettes. Now we knew where they were made. Hanes Mill, the company that made Hanes underwear, was also located in Winston-Salem.
The city itself—and our college, too—was named after Winston and Salem cigarettes, I believe, and a white high school in town was named RJ Reynolds High School. There were four high schools for blacks in Winston-Salem: Anderson, Paisley, Atkins, and Carver, the last of which was named after the famous black scientist, botanist, inventor, and educator George Washington Carver. Winston-Salem was located in the Piedmont section of North Carolina, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so it was a little hilly there, but mostly flat. Black people lived predominantly in the East Winston section of the city, which is where the college was (and is) located. But there was another area called Boston where black people lived, too. Both communities had upper-class, middle-class, and poor people living within their boundaries, and there was nowhere near the violence in either of the communities as there was in South Philly. That in itself was comforting to me and Smitty, because we had grown up around so much violence.
There were a couple of clubs located in East Winston where older black people used to go, like the Cosmopolitan and the Tree. Both clubs served food and had live music, and people would dance there. Winston-Salem segregated their movie houses, so there were two movie houses black people went to, the Lincoln on Church Street and the Lafayette on East Fourth Street. There were two bus companies in town, one for whites and the other for blacks. Safe Bus Company was owned by black people and picked up students from the college and bused t
hem to the downtown section of Winston-Salem. (Later, Safe Bus Company took over all the transportation for Winston-Salem and became the Winston-Salem Transit Authority in an effort to expand integrated bus service.) There were also two black-owned taxicab companies, Harris and Camel City Cab, that black people used if they had a few dollars.
Black people used to go to Knox’s Soda Shop and Grocery Store on Cherry Street to shop for their food; Knox’s also served lunch and dinner, and a few whites would eat there sometimes because their food was really good. But mostly the students ate in the school cafeteria and went to the canteen on campus to get hot dogs, baloney sandwiches, and hamburgers with soda pops. When we went off campus we frequented Miss Lou’s on Cleveland Avenue. That’s where we mostly hung out off campus. Miss Lou’s sold good hamburgers, hot dogs, and Nehi orange and grape sodas, RC Cola, Pepsi Cola, and Coca-Cola.
Across the street from Miss Lou’s there was a bar and restaurant called the College Grill owned by Bobby Pearson, where middle-class blacks—mostly professionals—used to hang out and eat and drink. A lot of times students would go in there and pick up a little spending change from those who were willing to give some money to a poor college student. Up the street from there, at the corner of Third Street and Cleveland Avenue, was a greasy spoon named Hucks’, where they made really delicious food. But the grease was so high in the air there and smelled so strong, I would yell out my order from the street. Then, when my order was ready, I would take a deep breath, hold it, run in there real fast with exact change, put it down on the counter, pick up my baloney sandwich, and then boogie back out quickly so I didn’t have to smell all that grease. But boy were those sandwiches good, and that made it all worth my while.
One of the most prominent blacks in Winston-Salem was the president of the college, Dr. Kenneth R. Williams. Dr. Williams, who was born in 1912 in Virginia, grew up in Winston-Salem, went to high school there, and then traveled to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College. After graduating from there, he got his PhD from Boston University. Then he came back to Winston-Salem, entered politics, and was elected a city alderman in 1947, having defeated a white opponent. That marked the first time that this had happened in the South in the 20th century. After growing tired of politics, Dr. Williams became pastor of the West End Baptist Church for a few years before leaving to teach at Winston-Salem Teachers College (which became Winston-Salem State College in 1963). In 1961 he was appointed president of the college and remained there until he retired in 1977. Dr. Williams was a distinguished-looking man and a great leader for the school, and he was very well respected throughout the entire Winston-Salem community, even though he acted a little stiff for me, you know what I mean? He was one of those really proper-acting Negroes who never seemed relaxed, even when he was smiling and laughing. But he and Coach Gaines were longtime friends, and I remember seeing him at many of our home games cheering for us. He would come up to me when he saw me on the campus and congratulate me and other members of our team when we won an important game.
I started out my first year at Winston-Salem sitting on the bench and stayed there the entire season. I learned later that Coach Gaines never started freshman ballplayers, hadn’t even started the great Cleo Hill when he was a freshman at Winston-Salem (the rule prohibiting freshmen from playing on the varsity didn’t apply to NAIA—National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics—schools), and Cleo was one of the greatest players to ever play the game of basketball, in my opinion. Hill, a six-foot-one guard, played for Coach Gaines from 1957 to 1961, scoring 2,530 points in his career and averaging about 28 points a game in his senior year. I later found out Hill had insisted on bringing his best friend, Arthur “Artie” Johnson, a five-foot-seven point guard, with him from Newark, New Jersey, where they both had grown up, and Coach Gaines accepted this arrangement because he wanted Cleo so bad. I guess when I insisted on bringing Smitty with me, Coach Gaines must have thought it was déjà vu.
Anyway, Cleo took Winston-Salem to the NAIA national championship game in March 1961, but they lost to the defending champions, Westminster College, an all-white team from Pennsylvania, 35 to 33 because Westminster just held the ball (this was in the days before the shot clock). Winston-Salem was accustomed to scoring a lot of points because of Cleo Hill. But Westminster just slowed the game down to a crawl and Winston-Salem lost by two points. After his college career Cleo Hill became a number-one draft pick in the 1961 pro draft, the first player from a small black college to ever be drafted that high. I didn’t know that much about Cleo Hill at the time because he wasn’t from Philadelphia, though I heard people speaking of him with awe when I got down to Winston-Salem. But even if I had known, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much to me that Coach Gaines hadn’t started Cleo Hill in his first year, either, because I just thought I should have started and been playing more and that was that. But when I later understood just how great Cleo Hill was, I did start looking at the situation a little differently, but not so much that it eased my anger.
Throughout my first year I would find myself sitting at the end of the bench with Smitty, waiting for my turn to go in and burning up with anger. When Coach Gaines did put me in I would light up the scoreboard, hitting shots and dazzling the crowd with my passes, dribbling, and ball handling. I quickly became a crowd-pleaser, a fan favorite who people loved to watch play. I had a great following down there from the first time they saw what I could do. But, you know, Coach Gaines wouldn’t play me much. So when he would motion for me to go in the game, a buzz would run through the crowd like a bolt of electricity and, being a bit of a ham at the time, I just loved it, loved hearing my name called out as I walked slowly from the end of the bench to the scorers’ table before going in to play.
“Earlllllllllllll!” they would be yelling every time he called my name, and I’d get up and unzip the top of my warm-up jacket. “Earllllllllllllll!” the crowd would explode. Then I would enter the game and shoot and score and get us back up when we were behind. Then Coach would sit me back down and the crowd would moan. After I saw he wasn’t going to play me that much, I started messing with the crowd now and then. So, I’d be standing around in the team huddle during time-outs and then I’d just fake like I was unzipping my warm-up jacket and the crowd would scream, “Earlllllllllllllllllllllllllll!” Then I’d sit back down with the rest of the subs after the time-out was over and the crowd would just let out a loud moan. I’d do that now and then for fun because I was upset that I wasn’t playing, so I had to do something to settle my nerves down. I think, however, these antics of mine got on Coach Gaines’s nerves, though he never said anything to me about it. But when he did put me into the game it made me very happy.
There was only one problem: Coach Gaines used to always call me “Chocolate” whenever he wanted me to go in the game, because of my dark complexion. I hated that name and finally I thought of a way to get around it: I decided I would just ignore him whenever Coach Gaines called me by that name.
One game, I was sitting in my regular spot at the end of the bench with Smitty when I heard Coach call out, “Hey, Chocolate, get into the game!”
I didn’t move. I just looked like I didn’t hear him. I looked up into the crowd, turned my head from side to side.
“You know he calling you, don’t you?” Smitty said.
So I whispered back to Smitty, “Yeah, I hear him, but I ain’t going to do shit. I’m going to stay right here until he doesn’t call me by that name.”
“Hey, Chocolate!” Coach Gaines yelled again, looking down my way.
So I told Smitty, “I’m going to get this motherfucker out of the habit of calling me by that name, calling me “Chocolate.” That ain’t my name. I’m going to get him out of that shit right now!”
I was still looking around like I didn’t hear him calling out my name when he said, “Earl. Get down here!”
So I got up with a big smile on my face and went into the game. Now, I must admit that I let it go a couple of times because Coach
was so big. He was also light skinned, with piercing brown eyes, and didn’t take shit from anyone. But he stopped calling me “Chocolate” before long. I was still angry at him for not playing me, though, and we didn’t really start to get along with each other until my sophomore year. My first year of basketball at Winston-Salem was filled with anger and disappointment, although I did learn a lot by watching the game from the bench. I just could never adjust to Coach Gaines’s philosophy of never playing freshmen because he didn’t think we were ready to play on the college level. He just felt our first year should be a learning experience and the best way to absorb the nuances of the game was to watch from the bench. But I didn’t care about that, you know, about his philosophy, because I was young and thought I was better than the guys starting over me. All I wanted to do was play.
In my freshman year of college, one of the things that really affected me besides playing basketball and studying happened on the day after my 19th birthday, in November. I remember I was walking across campus and noticed that almost everyone I saw looked sad, and some were even crying. As I continued to walk I began thinking about what could have possibly happened that would make so many people so sad. When I got to the campus canteen, everyone was gathered around a radio.
“What’s happening?” I asked someone.
Looking very sad, he said, “President Kennedy was shot and killed today.”
“What?! Where?” I asked.
“In Dallas, Texas.”
“Damn,” I said, shocked beyond belief.
It was a bright blue, sun-filled day outside, but hearing that all of a sudden turned it into a very dark day. It was stunning for me to hear President Kennedy had been killed, because I remembered how excited all the black people had been in my neighborhood in South Philly the day he was elected, and I had followed him and his family after that day. For me, President Kennedy’s death was like the passing of someone in my family, even though I had never met the man. But for some reason I felt close to him because of my perception then of what he meant to black people, how he cared about us and was willing to fight for our rights to become first-class citizens. November 22, 1963: That’s a day I will never forget.