J C
Well-Known Member
Excellent article on hopefully a by-gone era
Treadwell showed way with his play at '66 state
Sunday, March 12, 2006
By JOHN PRUETT
Times Sports Editor johnp@htimes.com
Danny Treadwell's heart was pounding and his hands were shaking. His legs felt like he was stuck in quicksand. He had a hard time catching his breath. He thought he might throw up.
In layup drills before the game, his feet seemed anchored to the hardwood floor. He had been in tight spots before in the first 18 years of his life, but nothing like this.
His teammates noticed. As tipoff neared, they tried to put him at ease. "Just be yourself and play your game,'' said Butler's All-State forward, Randy Hollingsworth. Treadwell nodded.
The date was March 10, 1966.
Forty years ago.
Butler High School of Huntsville was preparing to play Tuscaloosa in the opening game of the Class 4A state tournament at Foster Auditorium on the University of Alabama campus. Danny Treadwell, No. 34 in Butler's green and gold uniforms, was about to make history.
Never before had a black student played in the Alabama High School Athletic Association's state tournament.
Until that day.
Across Alabama and throughout much of the Deep South, racial tensions were running high in 1966. Although sweeping social changes were clearly on the way, only three years had gone by since Gov. George Wallace promised "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever'' on the steps of the state capital in Montgomery, where Jefferson Davis once took the oath as president of the Confederacy.
Just 33 months had passed since Wallace "stood in the schoolhouse door'' - at the entrance of the Foster Auditorium, ironically - in a fruitless attempt to prevent two black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama.
Only the year before, a civil rights worker had been shot and killed during Martin Luther King's Selma-to-Montgomery march.
The Ku Klux Klan was still active throughout the state, preaching resistance to integration at all costs. The Klan's Imperial Wizard lived in Northport, just across the Black Warrior River from Tuscaloosa.
This was the backdrop of trouble and unrest that existed throughout Alabama when Danny Treadwell and the Butler High basketball team arrived at Foster Auditorium to play the Tuscaloosa Black Bears that March morning 40 years ago in the first integrated state tournament.
A capacity crowd of nearly 5,000 jammed into the old brick gym just a block off the Quad. Many of the fans had shown up primarily to taunt coach T.E. "Cotton'' Rogers' Butler team and its pioneering 6-foot-5 center, Danny Treadwell. In the context of the era, the game itself was almost secondary.
The Rebels were greeted with a cascade of boos and ugly racial slurs when they came onto the floor for pregame warmups. Several spectators waved crude hand-written signs.
"I was very nervous,'' recalled Treadwell, who has lived and worked in Chicago for nearly 35 years. "We got to that first game and I remember walking in and overhearing some state trooper say, 'I hope we don't run into trouble because of this damn n****r.' "
An intense situation
Rest of article: http://www.al.com/sports/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/sports/1142158973270070.xml&coll=1
Treadwell showed way with his play at '66 state
Sunday, March 12, 2006
By JOHN PRUETT
Times Sports Editor johnp@htimes.com
Danny Treadwell's heart was pounding and his hands were shaking. His legs felt like he was stuck in quicksand. He had a hard time catching his breath. He thought he might throw up.
In layup drills before the game, his feet seemed anchored to the hardwood floor. He had been in tight spots before in the first 18 years of his life, but nothing like this.
His teammates noticed. As tipoff neared, they tried to put him at ease. "Just be yourself and play your game,'' said Butler's All-State forward, Randy Hollingsworth. Treadwell nodded.
The date was March 10, 1966.
Forty years ago.
Butler High School of Huntsville was preparing to play Tuscaloosa in the opening game of the Class 4A state tournament at Foster Auditorium on the University of Alabama campus. Danny Treadwell, No. 34 in Butler's green and gold uniforms, was about to make history.
Never before had a black student played in the Alabama High School Athletic Association's state tournament.
Until that day.
Across Alabama and throughout much of the Deep South, racial tensions were running high in 1966. Although sweeping social changes were clearly on the way, only three years had gone by since Gov. George Wallace promised "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever'' on the steps of the state capital in Montgomery, where Jefferson Davis once took the oath as president of the Confederacy.
Just 33 months had passed since Wallace "stood in the schoolhouse door'' - at the entrance of the Foster Auditorium, ironically - in a fruitless attempt to prevent two black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama.
Only the year before, a civil rights worker had been shot and killed during Martin Luther King's Selma-to-Montgomery march.
The Ku Klux Klan was still active throughout the state, preaching resistance to integration at all costs. The Klan's Imperial Wizard lived in Northport, just across the Black Warrior River from Tuscaloosa.
This was the backdrop of trouble and unrest that existed throughout Alabama when Danny Treadwell and the Butler High basketball team arrived at Foster Auditorium to play the Tuscaloosa Black Bears that March morning 40 years ago in the first integrated state tournament.
A capacity crowd of nearly 5,000 jammed into the old brick gym just a block off the Quad. Many of the fans had shown up primarily to taunt coach T.E. "Cotton'' Rogers' Butler team and its pioneering 6-foot-5 center, Danny Treadwell. In the context of the era, the game itself was almost secondary.
The Rebels were greeted with a cascade of boos and ugly racial slurs when they came onto the floor for pregame warmups. Several spectators waved crude hand-written signs.
"I was very nervous,'' recalled Treadwell, who has lived and worked in Chicago for nearly 35 years. "We got to that first game and I remember walking in and overhearing some state trooper say, 'I hope we don't run into trouble because of this damn n****r.' "
An intense situation
Rest of article: http://www.al.com/sports/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/base/sports/1142158973270070.xml&coll=1