SE: K-State Led Charge in Breaking Racial Barriers in Conference

K-State Athletics celebrates Black History Month by honoring the trailblazing achievements of past African-American student-athletes as well as recognizing current events and activities that tie into the month's significance.

Sitting about four blocks from his childhood home on the south side of Manhattan, Dave Baker reminisced about the changes time has brought to the community he grew up in.

The railroad tracks he remembers are now Fort Riley Boulevard, the construction of which greatly affected Griffith Park — the former home of K-State baseball where he spent countless hours watching, chasing foul balls and eventually serving as the team’s bat boy.

The community he grew up in, consisting predominately of African-Americans, doesn’t exist in its previous form. There are very few constants in the area from Baker’s childhood, but he works in one of them.

Baker is the Director of Manhattan’s Douglass Community Center, a place largely unchanged since its construction in 1941 and a site he described as one of the “pillars” for the African-American community when he was younger. It is where his idols, men such as Harold Robinson, Gene Wilson and Earl Woods, spent a large amount of their free time.

They were not only his idols. Nearly every child from the neighborhood with any interest in sports held them in high regard, and for good reason. Robinson (football), Wilson (basketball) and Woods (baseball) became the first African-Americans to be placed on scholarship in their respective sport, not only at K-State but also in what was then the Big Seven Conference.

“Those were the people who inspired you to want to go and do something, just like kids today, and there weren’t that many of them that we could look at,” Baker said in his office at the Douglass Community Center last week. “For a young man today who wants to play football, basketball, there’s a lot of players to look at and want to emulate and want to be like, but back then we didn’t have many.

“Everybody wanted to be like those guys because those were the only guys that we saw who were great who were here. That’s what it did for me and for all of us who grew up around them.”

Robinson played football for K-State from 1949-50, becoming the first African-American student-athlete at K-State and in the Big Seven to be awarded an athletic scholarship for any sport.

Wilson, who played basketball at K-State from 1950-52 and 1954-56, and Woods, the late father to Tiger, soon followed Robinson’s barrier-breaking footsteps. Each faced inequalities in many forms because of the color of their skin, but they also had people at K-State willing to help them change the status quo.

Robinson, who died in 2006 at 76, was a Manhattan native and decided to try out for K-State’s football team in 1949, when there were no African-Americans on the team, let alone in the conference.

“Blacks hadn’t played at K-State — there weren’t even any blacks in the league,” Robinson told the Collegian in 2003. “When I walked on the practice field I was waiting for someone to say, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be here.’ But nobody ever said anything.

“I was just here to play ball – no politics or anything like that. All these guys who didn’t care for me, the next thing you know they were my buddies. The whole team, they all protected me. I enjoyed it all. At the time, I didn’t even realize how important it was. All I wanted to do was play ball.”

Ralph Graham, K-State’s head coach at the time, was one key figure for Robinson’s breakthrough.

“People have to give him credit for letting black players on the team. Jackie Robinson had Branch Rickey, who brought him into Major League Baseball,” Robinson told the Collegian. “If it wasn’t for Ralph Graham, I wouldn’t have been playing at K-State. Maybe (Veryl) Switzer wouldn’t have, either.”

Robinson certainly affected Switzer’s decision to come to K-State, where he would be named to the All-Big Seven team three years in a row while also earning All-America honors in 1951 and 1952.

“Robinson showed that if I came to K-State, I would never regret it,” Switzer told the Collegian. “We didn’t go into the race issue at all. At the time, I wasn’t aware Kansas State broke the color barrier with Harold Robinson. It didn’t seem like it was a big deal at the time.”

For Wilson, the first African-American basketball scholarship player at K-State in 1950, it took approval from several levels for him to play.

“The coaches had to approve first, then the athletic directors and finally the university presidents,” he told the Manhattan Mercury in a 2014 article. “Kansas State’s president Milton Eisenhower took the lead and I’m grateful to him to make it happen.

“If it wasn’t for Milton Eisenhower, the Big Seven would not have integrated for another few years. Eisenhower was determined it was going to happen and he suffered a little because of it. They called him a socialist, a communist and looking back now it was crazy back then because he came from Abilene and his brother was the president.”

Woods played for the 1952 K-State baseball team but was often forced to stay in all-black hotels, away from his teammates, on road trips.

“My dad certainly talked about his days at K-State quite often,” Tiger said in 2007 of his father. “It was a great time for him. Also, he talked about that it was very difficult as well.”

Like his childhood idols, and partly, he believes, because of them, Baker received a historic opportunity through K-State.

In 1978, Baker was offered the head coaching position for K-State’s baseball team. When he accepted, he became the first African-American head baseball coach in the Big Eight Conference. Nearly 40 years later, he remains the only the Big Eight/Big 12’s only African-American baseball coach.

“I never thought about being the first. My thing was about winning baseball games and that was my mindset,” Baker said. “I didn’t even think about it. If you’re coaching, you’re coaching. You didn’t think about being diverse to do this or do that, you just wanted to win.”

Still, Baker said he greatly appreciates the people who paved a possible path into coaching for him. This includes the K-State coaches and administration willing to fight for a new norm decades ago.

“(K-State) gave African-American men an opportunity,” Baker said. “I commend them for that because that was just not happening.”

While players like Robinson, Woods and Wilson were given these rare opportunities at the time, Baker said it required more than exceptional talent to handle them.

“There is that old thing about treating people right. I don’t care who you are, you have to treat people right. It doesn’t matter what color your skin is, it’s the type of person you are if you want to survive in athletics. They were the kind of people I’m talking about,” he said. “Even myself, I had to do all the right things because the magnifying glass is on you but it seems like it’s bigger. You can’t afford to make any mistakes; you can’t afford to be doing stupid stuff.”

Shortly after, Baker pulled a timeworn book off a shelf in his narrow office — nearly authentic from its original look when the building was constructed in 1941. On the cover of the book was Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), a prominent American abolitionist who the Manhattan center Baker now runs is named after. To Baker, it still serves as a reminder of what people before him sacrificed to allow him a better life.

As he looks back on his days at K-State, when he not only coached the team but also managed the baseball complex and, Baker said, when K-State’s current football stadium was nothing more than “a hole in the ground,” he gathers one hope. It’s a fitting wish as America celebrates such sacrifices and achievements with Black History Month every February.

“I’m hoping young people realize the privileges and the opportunities that they have and appreciate them, and why they have them,” he said. “I know for a fact that if some people had not done some things prior to me, I would’ve never had the opportunities that I had. No way.

“A lot of people have sacrificed to have what we have."

Kansas State University Athletics

SE: K-State Led Charge in Breaking Racial Barriers in Conference

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