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Written in the stars: UNR football for racial justice
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the Wednesday 10-23-2019 Sparks Tribune / Updated 10-25 and 10-29-2019 / Expansions in blue

By the time you read this, the Reno-Sparks NAACP will have requested that UNR President Marc Johnson and Head Football Coach Jay Norvell make this Saturday's game in Wyoming mean something more than football.

It's written in the stars.

Last week, two days before perhaps the final NAACP annual dinner at the Grand Sierra (see below), came the Oct. 17 50th anniversary of The Black 14.

Then came the 74th Annual NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner on Oct. 19. My first remarks to the assembled multitudes noted that we gathered on the anniversary of slavery abolitionist John Brown's infamous 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). WV even had a memorial 25-cent piece struck memorializing the ill-fated adventure that Brown mistakenly thought could spark a national uprising against slavery. It was arguably the first battle of the Civil War which began less than two years later.

This Saturday, UNR football plays the Wyoming Cowboys and an erstwhile gruesome record of racism which has yet to be righted.

On Oct. 17, 1969, Wyoming's 14 black football players asked for a meeting with their coach before a home game against Brigham Young University. They were concerned about the Mormon Church's no-blacks priesthood policy and racial slurs hurled at them while playing BYU in Utah the previous year. Coaches and officials had ignored everything.

Before they uttered a word, the coach announced that he was pulling their scholarships and expelling all of them. (See the summer edition of The Crisis, the official NAACP magazine linked to the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/)

They would have played the game but never got a chance to say a word. The coach made it his business to smear their names in perpetuity, painting himself as a hero against black brutes. The expulsion on their records followed them for the rest of their lives.

UofW held events before their game against Idaho last month and invited the players back.

"They want to give us 70 year-old men a plaque, a leather jacket and a kick in the butt," said Tony McGee who went on to a 15-year NFL career from Bishop College in Dallas, ultimately starting in two Super Bowls. "What's happened to us over 50 years is worth more than a plaque," he told The Crisis.

He originally wanted a letter of apology and honorary degrees but got neither. He was touted as a first-round NFL draft pick but went lower just because of the bogus racist expulsion.

Mel Hamilton was one of the few who stayed in Wyoming and became the state's first black school principal. "It was not only 1969 for me but 50 years of 1969," he said.

UNR faced such a crossroads in 1946 and chose not to play at Mississippi State which told the Wolf Pack to leave its black players home. (Barbwire Nov. 6, 2011)

Our players, coaches and administrators should tout that story this Saturday — how the team from Mississippi West stood fast against Mississippi South.

TWOFER. Those attending last Saturday's NAACP fundraiser got a head start on this week's news. The Teamsters Union is organizing a boycott of the Grand Sierra for trying to snuff a union organizing drive by the hotel's valet parkers. It's one of the few departments not currently unionized.

If you want your employees to unionize, there's no better way than imposing a huge pay cut. The annual Hot August Nights nostalgiafest has long rented the GSR valet area for $40,000 a season. GSR once split it between all the valet workers who run further and sweat more because of it. GSR now scams $36,000 and only splits $4k. I hope they still provide sunscreen.

The union has filed federal charges against the hotel which also has major racial discrimination litigation pending. 

The Teamsters plan to expand organizing to other hotels. Meanwhile, building trades unions are in the second year of an ongoing conflict with the Carano family hotels (Silver Legacy, Eldorado and Circus Circus) for hiring out-of-state workers, sometimes via illegally operating contractors. The late Don's spawn are also trying to bust out the Culinary Union from Circus. All this activity can mean only one thing: Labor organizations may finally reach a new critical mass allowing organizing to proliferate.

I'm personally looking to once again use the greatest headline of my checkered career. Back in 1996, GSR predecessor Reno Hilton fired all of its security guards who eventually won their union contract after court action.

May the fabled Hot August Strike at Hot August Nights enjoy instant replay unless this hassle is settled soon. Otherwise, the NAACP, César Chávez Celebration XVIII and a whole lotta other business will find new homes.

I don't understand billionaire Alex Meruelo's intransigence, spending untold cash on $1,000-an-hour union busters to screw over a few dozen workers.

JUSTICE DONE. The undisclosed keynote speaker at last Saturday's soirée was 19 year-old Emily Hernandez Medina, the brilliant (5.3 gpa) North Valleys High School student who refused to back down when principal Jeanna Curtis ordered her to water down her Valedictory speech. She wanted to speak truth to power about the racism, bullying, humiliation and intimidation she had both endured and conquered. She never spoke on graduation day.

She is now a freshman at UNR majoring in electrical engineering with an emphasis on renewable energy. The full text of her remarks will be linked to this column at NevadaLabor.com/ School board member Angie Taylor and Interim Superintendent Kristen McNeill heard it in person from the front row on Saturday night. Full report on the evening at NevadaLabor.com/