Mark Bennett
The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE —
Significant moments don’t always make national headlines. Sometimes, the world doesn’t notice for months or years.
Or decades.
Most Americans never heard of Clarence Walker until this month. Most Americans didn’t realize John Wooden started his fabled college basketball coaching career at Indiana State. Most Americans knew nothing about the courage shown by a young Sycamore guard, Walker, and his coach, Wooden, during the winters of 1946-47 and 1947-48.
When Wooden died on June 4 at age 99, newspapers from around the country discovered the story more than 60 years later.
The delayed recognition from the outside world is understandable. Indiana State (now a university) has experienced only a couple of flashes on the national college hoops radar screen, particularly through Larry Bird and the ’78-79 Sycamores. Indiana State was still a teachers college in the 1940s and years away from university status. If Clarence Walker played at Kentucky or Kansas, his breakthrough would’ve become part of the game’s lore long ago.
But, better late than never.
Following Wooden’s death, former players, assistant coaches, rivals and fans shared remembrances of the devout, principled man who won 10 NCAA championships in 27 seasons at UCLA. People who knew Wooden from his first college coaching job — a two-season stint at Indiana State from 1946 to ’48 — recalled the stand he and Walker took to break that sport’s color barrier. That incident finally earned a spotlight, coast to coast.
That milestone deserves a place of permanent commemoration on the ISU campus. We all need a reminder of what happened — Terre Hauteans, students, faculty and visitors.
In 1946-47, Wooden’s first Indiana State team finished the regular season with a solid 17-8 record. The National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball invited the Sycamores to play in its 32-team postseason tournament in Kansas City, Mo. The NAIB was the most prestigious small-college tourney in America. It also excluded black players. Walker, a freshman reserve from East Chicago, was black.
Wooden refused the NAIB’s invitation.
“Even though [Walker] was one that probably wasn’t going to get to play hardly at all, he was still a member of our squad and I wanted him treated the same as everybody else,” Wooden told the Tribune-Star in 1999. “I stuck to my guns on that.”
His stand may have surprised the NAIB brass, but it didn’t surprise the Sycamore players. “No, oh, no,” said Duane Klueh, that team’s All-American forward. “[Wooden] was overly considerate of people at all times. Now, that doesn’t mean he was a patsy for anybody. He was a tough guy.”
That toughness wasn’t a one-time show at a national tourney. On several road trips during Wooden’s two seasons at Indiana State, he and the Sycamores walked out of restaurants that refused to serve Walker. “Wooden just wouldn’t accept that,” said Jim Powers, a 6-foot forward on those squads.
Remember — this was 1946 and early ’47. Jackie Robinson hadn’t yet broken baseball’s color barrier.
Walker appreciated his coach’s conviction. “I know that he was thankful for the opportunity Coach Wooden gave to him, respected him, [and] kind of revered him,” Keith Walker said of his dad, who died in 1989.
That opportunity Keith Walker mentioned occurred the following season, 1947-48. The Sycamores, armed with Wooden’s fastbreak offense, roared through their regular season with a 23-6 record. Again, the NAIB invited them to their tournament at Kansas City. But on March 5, 1948, before the invitations went out, the NAIB board voted to end its all-white policy. Wooden’s stand caused the change.
Still, the NAIB only opened its door partially. It stipulated that black players couldn’t stay in the team hotels, or appear in public in Kansas City with their white teammates. Because of that condition, Wooden intended to refuse the bid again. But the NAACP and Walker’s parents convinced Wooden to accept the berth, so that Walker could break college basketball’s color line.
The lifting of the ban on black players also meant the NAIB champion would be eligible for an automatic berth in the 1948 Olympic Trials.
Walker had to stay with a Kansas City minister’s family that week, but he played, coming off the Indiana State bench. He and the Sycamores almost earned that Olympic Trials berth. They won four straight games until losing 82-70 to Louisville in the championship. They finished 27-7, and only Bird’s ’79 team won more games at ISU. Walker became the first black to play in a postseason tournament, and scored eight points that week.
“I thought something was going to come in time,” Wooden said of racial equality in that 1999 interview, “but never to the extent that it has. But I’m pleased that what we did helped enhance it somewhat.”
Coach Wooden was being polite. That stand was historic. The higher-profile NIT and NCAA tournaments finally integrated two years later.
“Wooden deserves a great deal of credit for breaking that barrier,” said Powers, now 85.
The surviving members of that team, all in their mid 80s, remember Walker as just one of the guys. “He was a wonderful guy and had a wonderful attitude,” Powers said. Like many of Wooden’s players, Walker went into coaching and served as assistant superintendent of schools in East Chicago. The tennis courts at East Chicago High School are named for Clarence Walker.
When current university president Dan Bradley heard the Walker story, he hung framed photos of the 1946-47 and ’47-48 teams outside his office in Parsons Hall. That’s a fitting gesture. After all, Walker quietly endured things most of us can’t imagine. A journal Walker kept detailed the disturbing taunts, snubs and disrespect he absorbed. “I imagine it was pretty hard for him,” said teammate Max Woolsey, “but he didn’t show it or talk about it, that I know of, around me.”
Klueh, Powers and several of the others continued their friendship with Walker long after they graduated.
That college diploma meant a lot to Walker. “He always said, ‘You’re there to enrich yourself and enrich your mind,’” Keith Walker said of his dad.
Clarence Walker and John Wooden enriched Indiana State, and the rest of America for that matter, in those two winters. Following the coach’s death, some people in college basketball circles called that stand against discrimination the most significant moment of Wooden’s career.
Wow.
Maybe one of the tunnels leading to John and Nellie Wooden Court inside Hulman Center should be named for Clarence Walker. A few photos of Walker, his teammates and Coach Wooden along the tunnel’s wall might remind new generations of Sycamores of how their path was cleared.
Mark Bennett can be reached at (812) 231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.
