At 19, LeVias was taken aside by the civil rights icon and given advice that would resonate for decades.
to deliver a landmark speech. He began by saying the question he was asked most often:It is, King said, “a poignant and desperate question on the lips of thousands and millions of people all over this nation.”King requested a private audience with Jerry LeVias, a 19-year-old freshman who would soon emerge as a barometer of how much progress was being made, on the Park Cities campus of SMU, in the city of Dallas and in America.
Much of what King said is now a blur to the 76-year-old LeVias. But as the country observes King’s birthday — a few snippets remain clear. "I had grown up in a religious family, and here I was talking to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King." LeVias said. "I wouldn’t call him smart — I would call him incredibly smart and God-like.”
SMU coach Hayden Fry, right, believed LeVias, left, could elevate small, private SMU to an equal status with conference juggernauts Texas and Arkansas, which each ascended to a national championship in the 1960s. R. Gerald Turner, the president of SMU, lists a multitude of reasons why LeVias is among SMU’s Distinguished Alumni, an honor he received in 2006.
Once he arrived at SMU, Woodfin learned that the problems of race relations extended beyond SMU to Dallas as a whole. As a freshman, he was assigned to cover some of Dallas’ first integrated high school games for a downtown newspaper. “It was not a pleasant place for a Black player,” he says. Woodfin routinely heard racist slurs “not only from the fans but even from people sitting in the press box.
Campus hero? No. The racist ugliness had actually begun the year before, perpetrated not by an opponent but by a teammate.Freshmen had their own squad, which then-36-year-old Fry did not coach, meaning he wasn’t around to protect his recruit. For all four years at SMU, LeVias lived alone. Those years, he says, marked the beginning of an almost-crushing feeling of loneliness and alienation that lingered well into adulthood. In a way, King had left him with a double burden — to not only endure the racist abuse but to remain stoic no matter how much it shook him.
The lowest points, he says, were getting hurt, having no one to room with and watching racism creep into the classroom. “On the first day of class, students would sit on the floor, just to avoid sitting by me.”Three times, in driving back to SMU from South Dallas, he was stopped by police for one reason — he was Black. Had it not been for the kindness of professors, and a Jewish family that offered the shelter of a loving second home, “There is no way on Earth I ever would have made it.
LeVias told HBO, “The threat was that I was going to be shot. And there’s going to be a sniper in the stands.” He returned to the field, fueled by an emotion that he had until then suppressed: Hate. With the score tied, 14-14, LeVias fielded a punt, and zigzagging acrobatically from sideline to sideline, scampered more than 80 yards to the end zone. SMU won, 21-14.
“Janice saved me,” LeVias says of his wife, “by letting me be myself. I had so much built up, and I couldn’t talk about it to anybody. She believed in me not as an athlete but as a person.”
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