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16 The Conway Crisis Three years after the Citadel controversy, we encountered probably the toughest racial conflict of all my years at SHAC. It involved a white high school football coach and a black quarterback at football-happy Conway High School. The dispute was absolutely incendiary. It began in April 1989 with the decision by Coach Chuck Jordan during spring drills that his starting quarterback from the previous season, a black rising senior named Carlos Hunt, would be replaced as quarterback by Mickey Wilson, the son of a white assistant coach who had played sparingly the year before. Hunt would be moved to defensive back at least partially, as it was explained, because college scouts were more likely to offer him a scholarship at that position. The decision was fraught with enormous racial implications that went far beyond the football field, and for months the entire Conway community was rocked with protests , demonstrations, and boycotts. On September 1, 1989, more than four months after the dispute had arisen, Governor Carroll A. Campbell asked SHAC to investigate the matter. He had become sufficiently concerned about the potential danger not only to those directly involved in the controversy but to the state as a whole. While decisions about football players and the positions they were assigned on the team did not normally fall under the purview of SHAC, we were charged by law with “fostering mutual understanding” among the people of the state. That meant wading into the middle of a racial dispute in which there wasn’t much “mutual understanding” existing at the time. By the time we arrived in Conway, all but five of the team’s thirty-six black players had gone “on strike.” The Reverend H. H. Singleton, the Conway NAACP president , who coordinated the strike, had been fired from his teaching job at Conway Middle School, and prospects for elevated tension as the school year got under way were palpable. The uproar was getting national attention. In an article published in the November 27, 1989, issue of Sports Illustrated, Reverend Singleton was quoted as calling the decision to move Carlos Hunt from quarterback “callous and racial intolerance that seems to border on racial bigotry.” Coach Jordan—who had started a black quarterback in three of his six years as head coach and had compiled a record of 51-18 along the way—was quoted as saying, “I have the right and obligation to make personnel decisions.” The Conway Crisis 143 I assigned two staff members to the controversy, and they spent four days in Conway conducting a wide-ranging investigation, which included interviews and examining statements, conversations, and relevant records. After reviewing their report on their findings, I issued a statement. It came as no surprise to me that it did not please a lot of people. I said: “My staff informed me that they did not find sufficient facts upon which this agency could legally make a determination that race was a motivating factor in Coach Jordan’s decision toward Carlos Hunt.” I was quoted in the Sports Illustrated article as saying that the incident “was as far from racism as anything I’ve been involved in.” I did not dispute that quote. Almost immediately a member of my own commission attacked my decision vigorously . Dr. William F. Gibson, a Greenville dentist with whom I had had some previous disagreements, said, “Mr. Clyburn may live in a society different from the one I live in. He may live in a race-neutral society . . . but I personally believe this incident was racially motivated.” Dr. Gibson, who was state chairman of the NAACP and chairman of the national board of the NAACP, went on to attack the agency, saying “It’s regrettable that a state agency that is steadily losing its credibility among a large segment of the people it is supposed to protect, would present such a biased finding.” I was taking a lot of heat, in many ways tougher than any I had felt as SHAC’s commissioner. I commented, “People have said you ain’t thinking like a black person, and I tell them they’re exactly right. I’m thinking and acting like an administrator. I expect doctors to think and act like doctors, lawyers to think and act like lawyers, and reporters to think and act like reporters. I don’t think black or white; I make administrative decisions based on facts, not race.” I went on to say, “I’m sorry Dr...

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