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102 “Athletics were a real nemesis to me,” recalled William Carlson, former president of the University of Wyoming. The accomplished D.V.M. and radiology professor took office on 1 January 1968—the same day the school’s football team went to the Sugar Bowl, and excitement surrounding the achievement surged throughout the state. According to his memoir, Carlson recognized the importance of athletics to the institution he now governed, yet he realized that the athletics department struggled to recruit successful athletes to the quiet university nestled 7,200 feet high in the cozy town of Laramie. Athletic officials “were often dealing with inner city kids who hoped to play professional football to get out of the environment in which they were trapped,” Carlson wrote. And by 1968 many of the school’s top potential athletes were African American. Carlson sympathized with coaches who labored to woo black athletes to Wyoming, often with 5 “Beat the Devil Out of BYU” Football and Black Power in the Mountain West, 1968–1970 Where the western lights long shadows Over boundless prairie fling. And the mountain winds are vocal! With thy dear name, Wyoming, There it is the Brown and Yellow Floats in loving loyalty, And the college throws its portals Open wide to all men free. —Alma Mater, University of Wyoming He is a dictator! He pushes the buttons and we just act, according to his rules! —Joe Williams, UW football player, Black Student Alliance meeting, October 1969 “BEAT THE DEVIL OUT OF BYU” 103 elaborate tactics, such as taking recruits on snowmobiling trips outside town. Carlson recalled how numerous footballers came through his office, shook his hand, and talked of their desire to play for Head Coach Lloyd Eaton, most of whom he never saw again.1 African Americans comprised only 1 percent of UW’s entire student body, yet the athletics department did manage to convince dozens of black athletes to stay in Laramie. Several talented black football players from around the country led the 1967–1968 Sugar Bowl team, and only one was a native of the state. In his memoir, President Carlson fondly recalled star tailback Joe Williams, a senior from Lufkin, Texas, who seemed to thrive at UW even though he was one of few African Americans in the community. In October 1969, Carlson sat with Williams in the back of a university vehicle en route to a meeting of the Cheyenne Quarterback Club. The ride took them through fifty miles of breathtaking high plains—isolated, rural, and seemingly endless. Before presenting themselves to the boosters in Cheyenne, Carlson and the twenty-two-year-old Williams visited on the drive. “He told me with great sincerity, I believe, that his goal was to be an elementary school teacher,” the president wrote thirty years later. Williams talked about his family back in Texas and how he was sending money home from his summer jobs in Wyoming to help his sister through college. Carlson was impressed with the young man’s character—he was “soft spoken” and “sincere.”2 Two weeks later, President Carlson was embroiled in a firestorm of controversy : the largest scandal he faced in his eleven years as head of Wyoming’s only university. National headlines spoke of countless crises that galvanized radical youth, including the Chicago Seven trial, My Lai, and a Vietnam Moratorium that threatened to shut down college campuses. Of all the problems he anticipated , President Carlson never imagined that football Coach Lloyd Eaton would throw his fourteen African American players off the team or that the subsequent fallout would flood Laramie with national attention and trigger the state’s largest racial confrontation in decades. He was under the impression that the players had asked to engage in a small protest by wearing black armbands during their upcoming game against Brigham Young University—and Coach Eaton immediately responded by dismissing them. Carlson’s biggest surprise was when the students brought their demands directly to him. He was shocked to find that Joe Williams served as the group’s spokesman. “This was no revolutionary person,” he lamented, “but an honest American with solid goals using the means available to be a success for his family .” Football was the means, and success meant either landing a professional contract or perhaps returning to Texas to teach elementary school just as the two had talked about on the drive to Cheyenne. Either way, Carlson wondered why Williams would throw it all away by initiating...

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