1. 1/5/2017 Denton High desegregation helped pave way for Texas, national gridiron stars
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Saturday
Posted Jun 25, 2016 at 1:48 PM
Updated Dec 30, 2016 at 8:44 AM
By Marcus S. Marion | mmarion@waxahachietx.com
DENTON, Texas - On June 19, 1865, a proclamation of freedom finally
reached Galveston, Texas and the Aston Villa - a year after U.S.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the national Emancipation
Proclamation edict.
While Texas was late to the table of black freedom, it was early on the
path of justice and desegregation.
One hundred and two years later, the city of Denton and its Broncos and
Dragons football teams, with a little help from a Waxahachie boy,
seamlessly bridged the gap between two races and created a brotherhood
that proved stronger than the hate which surrounded them.
"In ten years and some tough situations on the sideline, we never had a
cross word. That's unheard of," said Jerry Hutchins, an offensive
lineman for the 1961 Indians and the backfield coach for Denton High
School from 1970 to 1977. "I don't know how to explain it because you
don't see that every day. I learned from some of the best. You want to
talk about role models? I had Coach (C.H.) Collins, Bill Carrico and Billy
Ryan."
His hand shook slightly as he grasped for a worn picture preserved in
protective plastic cover, smiling slightly as if he, his friends and his boys
were all back on Bronco Field and it was 1972 all over again.
Denton High desegregation helped pave way
for Texas, national gridiron stars

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He and coaches C.H. Collins, Billy Ryan, Bill Carrico, Bill Peteet, Sam
James and Dwayne Bean weren't just game changers at a time when the
national perspective of whites viewed blacks as intellectually and
genetically inferior. Hutchins said the coaches were 'leaders of men' who
helped pave the way for Shawn Robinson, DeSoto High School's current
starting quarterback that earned an ESPN 300 No. 10 rating at Denton
Guyer High School, and Jett Duffey, a former Mansfield Lake Ridge
High School quarterback turned highly-prized-Texas-Tech-University
recruit.
Before the impact of the Broncos camaraderie, it was Denton ISD that
struck the first blow in the war of desegregation.
In 1963, a year before the ratification of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
three years before Fred Moore High School, the city's all-black school,
closed it's doors, Denton's school board voted to desegregate its
institutions. The city supported the school board's decision and a week
later, declared all of the city's public facilities open to all citizens,
regardless of color or race.
"There was a lot of integration going on at that time, but I didn't really
notice it," said David Washington, a former sophomore-of-the-year
wing back for the Broncos. "We all gelled together and became brothers.
We didn't look at black, white or Hispanic. We looked at teammates.
The coaches didn't treat us no different. I think that's why we were so
successful. We didn't see black or white. I'm 60 years old and I'm still
colorblind."
The mixed-race Broncos team Washington played for that year was so
successful that in the fall of 1972, they became the district's first team to
reach the state playoffs in 43 years, back to when an all-white team went
undefeated in 1929.
Fifty years ago, players like Robinson, Duffey, Waxahachie High
School's Jalen Reagor, Kenedy Snell and Caleb High and Midlothian
High School's Keion Sutton Jabrelan Esparza and Jarreth Sterns, would
have been segregated away from whites in places like Waxahachie's
Turner High School and Denton's Fred Moore High School. Blacks in

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Denton in the 1950s and 1960s lived on the southeast side of the city,
commonly known as the "poor side" and played for the Dragons instead
of the Broncos.
Blacks endured racial slurs and forced relocation from their home in the
Quakertown neighborhood to a deserted cow pasture downwind from
the city's sewer system. They were segregation in nearly every aspect of
their lives.
While the integration went smoothly on the football field, not every
heart had changed, said Malinda Potynski, who graduated from Denton
High School in 1973.
"My friend, her younger sister, their family and I were all sitting around
at the dinner table and her father out-of-the-blue said, 'Malinda, I hear
you're friends with a little - he used the N-word - girl," Potynski said. "I
was shocked and horrified. I was in the fourth grade. I'm a kid. An adult
said that to me. I didn't know how to respond, all I knew is that I had to
tell the truth because I was at somebody else's house."
Her friend's father told her that if she remained friends with the black
girl, she wouldn't be welcome in their house, she said.
Although cities around Denton were entrenched in the era of
segregation, many Broncos' coaches, players and fans, attributed the
smooth transition of football's desegregation to Collins, its lynchpin.
Collins was a legend in the all-black Prarieview League and the head
coach of a Fred Moore High School Dragons team that had reached the
state championship game three times during his tenure. He took the
position of defensive coordinator and assistant coach rather than retire
or move to another state or school who wanted his vast array of
experience and coaching ability.
"He was full of humility, but he was tough. There was a time when I
wore an afro and I was black and proud. My father sat me down and said
there's no black power or white power, there's only human power," said
Carolyn Collins-Gray, the daughter of C.H. Collins. "He always thought

4. 1/5/2017 Denton High desegregation helped pave way for Texas, national gridiron stars
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that way. He was going to follow his boys to DHS. Texas is a football
state and the Fred Moore Dragons were winning and the Denton High
Broncos weren't.
"I remember telling my mother, 'Daddy defined a real man. He's the
winning coach that has put Denton on the map along with North Texas
State University and Texas Woman's University, but they're going to
take away his title.' I never heard him complain because he cherished his
boys. It worked because Daddy took it in stride because that's how he
was and coach Ryan was a class act."
She said that the relationships of the coaching staff - especially between
Collins and Carrico - was so important to the players they nicknamed
the two "King Kong" and "Mighty Joe Young" for their fierceness on the
football battlefield.
"Let me tell you, those two black and white coaches, got the respect of
all," Collins-Gray said. "It didn't matter if they were white, black or
Hispanic, they respected those two the most."
Hutchins said one of the greatest lessons Collins taught him about
equality was a moment when the realization of the struggle of the high
school black athlete dropped on him like a proverbial ton of bricks.
"I got mad at this black kid one time and I was chewing him out pretty
good and coach says, 'Come ride with me after practice,'" Hutchins
added. "I asked where we were going and he said, 'Just come ride with
me.' We go over cross the tracks where the black community was and
he pointed at a house that was dang-near close to falling over. He said
that's where he lived and where there were dirt floors and they ate out
of hubcaps. He told me he was having a tough time and just didn't have
any energy.
"Here I am 26 or 27 years old and I didn't know that was occurring. I
realized that I was wrong, Coach didn't have to say a thing to me. All he
said was he only wanted to show me where he lived."

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For many of those players, the field house and the environment the
coaches created wasn't just a second home for the athletes, it was their
first, Hutchins said. Players would practice longer, many not wanting to
go home until afternoon had shifted into dusk into night.
The Herculean efforts of men like Abner Haynes, Don Woods, James
McDonald and Leslie Varner buoyed the histories of Texas, collegiate
and professional football rather than sunk them.
Without men like Collins or Haynes - a 1960 AFL rookie of the year and
arguably the undisputed godfather of black superstars in integrated
football - coaches like Houston's Romeo Crennel and running backs like
Ezekiel Elliott, Adrian Peterson and Emmit Smith may not have had the
opportunity to be NFL Hall of Famers.
Sans the sacrifices of McDonald, Varner and Woods - the Broncos three
black quarterbacks between 1967 and 1971 - Dak Prescott and Jameis
Winston's road to the NFL stage may have been considerably bumpier.
The film's director, David Barrow, was a 160-pound offensive lineman
for the Broncos. He said the team members were products of the time
they lived in and oddities in a culture where mixed teams were unusual,
much less one led by a black quarterback.
"The harder people were on us, the more it brought us together. Race
didn't divide us - it unified us," Barrow said. "It put a collective chip on
our shoulders. It was clear we had something to prove. One thing I hope
players carry away from our story is that you love your teammates, first
and foremost. It's more than just being good or being athletic. You play
and win for each other. Don't take for granted those who've gone before
you. Everybody stands on somebody else's shoulders. You treasure them
and, if you're lucky, you'll get to run with them for the rest of your life
like we have."
Marcus S. Marion can be reached at (469) 517-1456. Follow him on
Twitter .

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