History lesson: Black 14 members, students create museum exhibit

LARAMIE — More than 50 years after John Griffin, Lionel Grimes and Mel Hamilton took a stand for human rights, they returned to the University of Wyoming to help a new generation do the same.
The trio is part of the Black 14, a group of University of Wyoming football players who were suddenly booted from the team amidst controversy in 1969.
The players wanted to wear black armbands to show their solidarity with a student protest against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a policy that prohibited Black people from joining the priesthood. When the players were rejected by their coach before even being able to suggest the idea, their hopes to show solidarity during the school’s game against Brigham Young University died — along with many of their football careers.
Now the three players — along with teammates Tony McGee and Tony Gibson via Zoomed — have returned to the UW campus to speak with a group that wanted to hear their voices.
Staff at the university recruited six high school and six university students to spend a week meeting with the players, taking their oral histories and creating an exhibit that demonstrates the unfiltered history of what happened in 1969.
The group spent the week pouring over historic archives and touring important locations on the UW campus, where the Black 14 members shared their stories in the places where they first happened.
“I’m pleasantly surprised to see the mighty few students we got,” Hamilton said. “I’m proud of this.”
The event, dubbed the Black 14 Social Justice Summer Institute, was years in the making after multiple derailments because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For Hamilton and Grimes, finally seeing a young generation so willing to learn and share the story of past struggles is a hopeful sign for the future.
“This is for real,” Grimes said. “This is where they feel it is in their soul. (This) younger generation is willing to stand up for what is right.”
Some of the players had previously returned to campus in 2019, when the university issued an official apology for what happened. The players were given letter jackets and were formally recognized as Cowboys again.
But a belated acknowledgement a half-century removed from their dismissal weren’t enough to repair the lives damaged by the actions of the university at the time, Hamilton said. For many of the players, getting kicked off the team followed them throughout their lives, derailing potential athletic and academic careers and leading some to deal with mental health and drug issues.
“Justice has not been served until those people have gotten more than a jacket and a dinner,” he said.
Grimes echoed the sentiment, saying that the coach, Lloyd Eaton, hurt a lot of lives when he “took the brown out of brown and gold.”
Having students around to listen, the players this week could tell their stories in a way that elevates the deep issues behind what happened.
“I think I’ve learned much more than (I did from) walking by the stuff in the union about why these people are important to history,” said Braelin Anderson, an incoming UW freshman working on the project. “I think it’s important for young people to understand that they fought harder than we are now.”
 
 
This story was published on July 23, 2022.