More than
four years ago, I was asked to do a couple of stories for Forever Young http://foreveryoungnews.com related to the
100th Grey Cup. TSN had commissioned a series of eight documentaries
on the Grey Cup and to my delight I was asked to write on the 1972 Cup and specifically
one of the heroes of that game, Chuck Ealey.
I’ve reworked those stories in honour of Black History Month.
The 1972 Grey Cup held Dec. 3 at Hamilton’s Ivor
Wynne Stadium was decided by a last-second field goal. The Hamilton Tiger Cats
won an exciting match 13-10 over the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Rookie
quarterback Chuck Ealey was the star of that game and that whole season for the
Cats.
The game represented much more than the typical
east-west Cup contest and this is why: Ealey shouldn’t have been in a position
to earn the game’s MVP award, because in a just world he would have been
quarterbacking in the National Football League.
Bowl victories and an undefeated college record
(35-0) at the University of Toledo weren’t enough to get Ealey drafted by an
NFL team. Prior to the draft, his agent sent a “well-thought-out, professional, not harsh” letter to all NFL
teams, Ealey recalls.
The essence of the letter went like this:
“The only position I’m interested in playing is
quarterback. Thank you for your consideration.”
He wanted to play QB because clearly, that was the
position where he excelled. But an Afro-American had no chance to compete for a
quarterback position in the NFL of the seventies. There were no takers among
NFL general managers.
“There was an overall stigma in the NFL at that
time that African Americans were not to be playing quarterback,” recalled Ealey.
And so, Ealey, the quarterback, moved on.
This story isn’t unique, of course.
I talked with Charles Officer who directed the
movie Stone Thrower.*
Officer, had considered doing a “bigger picture” that
would have looked at other Afro-American quarterbacks who came up here to play.
Standouts like Warren Moon, Condredge Holloway, Damon Allen and Bernie Custis
all had to come north for their opportunity.
 |
| Charles Officer, Director |
In 1951,Custis, a star quarterback at Syracuse
University, was drafted sixth overall by the Cleveland Browns. But the Browns
had no intention of letting him play the pivot position so let him go to
Hamilton. Custis became the first Afro-American regular starting quarterback in
North America. Earning all-star recognition in ’51, he was moved to halfback
the next season.
“It’s the same story,” says Officer. “Bernie
Custis coming up here and then getting switched over. He had to come here for a
reason.”
Officer, an Afro-Canadian actor, writer, director
and former semi-pro hockey player, believed that by documenting Ealey’s journey
he could tell the bigger story of what was going on in American society in the
seventies.
Meanwhile, Jael Richardson, Chuck’s daughter, has
been on a journey of her own, recounted in her 2012 book, similarly called The Stone Thrower: A Daughter's Lessons, a
Father's Life.** Richardson was born after her father’s football career had
ended. As an adult, she would go to Ohio with her Dad.
“When we went back to Toledo, people would start
screaming ‘Oh there’s Chuck Ealey’ and ask for autographs,” Jael’s father recalls.
“She’d go, so who are you? What did you do?”
 |
| Jael and Chuck go to Portsmouth |
Ealey acknowledges that he “never shared a lot
of story of how I got here.”
It is hard today to fully appreciate the barriers
Chuck Ealey faced growing up poor in the racially divided city of Portsmouth,
Ohio, a typical American small town. Portsmouth was the kind of a place that
valued football players but didn’t let black children swim in their public
pools. Located on the Ohio River and bordering
Kentucky, the city was a significant pass-through point on the route of the
Underground Railroad and the opportunity for freedom in Canada for fugitive
slaves.
Ealey remembers the prejudices that held him and
others back and contrasts that with the freedom “to do things a lot
differently” that he found when he arrived in Hamilton.
“There were none of the issues that socially held
you back or that seemed to hold you back in the States,” he stated. And so, Ealey was able to continue with his winning ways
that memorable rookie season, 1972, in Hamilton, all the way to the Grey Cup
win.
Director Officer documents how Ealey, denied the opportunity to play quarterback in his native land, essentially followed that same path that slaves had taken to get to Canada.
As Officer told me of his movie:
“It is a significant African American story that
has everything to do about being Canadian.”
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*You
can find Officer’s movie these days on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmL1EvtQy3E
**The Stone Thrower - A Daughter's Lessons> A Father's Life. A Memoir
is
available at https://www.dundurn.com/books/stone-thrower
