I wrote about the Border War brawl in 1961 in my blog on May 1, 2019, when KU and MU almost ended the historic and bitter rivalry. Now, I revisit that piece with some new information.
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The final game of the 1960-61 season against Missouri on March 11, 1961 proved the great “animosity” between KU and MU and served as a huge black eye for both schools and college basketball as one of the biggest and ugliest brawls in hoops history broke out in Columbia at Brewer Fieldhouse on national television.
Kansas had always faced hostility playing in Columbia, as did the Tigers when playing in Lawrence. The schools had a deeply rooted and violent rivalry which traced back before the Civil War to “Bleeding Kansas” with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. “Bleeding Kansas,” which historians like Williams Tuttle called the “nation’s battleground over slavery,” pitted pro-slavery forces from Missouri against anti-slavery forces from Kansas. Abolitionists like John Brown “made raids into Missouri and brought back men, women, children.”
Kansas eventually joined the Union as a free state in 1861 and Missouri a slave state.
In “True Sons: A Century of Missouri Tigers Basketball,” Michael Atchison stated that “Missouri’s Constitution of 1875 mandated ‘separate but equal education’ that was anything but. White students were welcome at Mizzou while blacks were restricted to Lincoln University in Jefferson City. Black students who wished to take courses offered only in Columbia were not admitted to the university; rather, they were shipped out of state to integrated schools, with the state of Missouri paying their tuition.”
MU was not integrated until after the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson “separate but equal” doctrine in 1886. Al Abrams, a 6-5 forward, became the school’s first black scholarship athlete in 1956, four years after LaVannes Squires first suited up for Kansas.
“Dixie” had served as Missouri’s fight song until “Fight Tiger” started in 1946, while “for a time” MU’s “official policy prohibited competition against teams that included nonwhite members.”
While Missouri was still a backwards state, the Tigers were more progressive than Southern teams like Mississippi State, which did not integrate and have a black scholarship athlete until 1972.
With KU featuring six blacks on the roster (Ralph Heyward was academically ineligible the second semester) — a virtually unheard of number when the national average per integrated squad in 1960 was just 2.2 — the Jayhawks realized quite early before the game that Missouri fans were in no mood to celebrate diversity this afternoon.
The Jayhawks were target of racial slurs from the outset from the unruly fans, coaches, and players. MU’s band even played “Dixie” when the “Negro-laden KU squad was on the floor,” reported the Lawrence Journal-World’s Bill Mayer.
Butch Ellison, a KU African-American player on that team, said in an exclusive 2007 interview near his home in Kansas City that “nobody really knows” what happened that day.
“They were calling us niggers, spitting on us with (assistant coach) Norm Stewart right on the bench,” Ellison said. “Norm Stewart was sitting on the side (with head coach) Sparky Stalcup yelling nigger and spitting on us.”
Stewart’s actions pained Ellison, who considered him an idol while growing up in Kansas City when Stewart played for Missouri.
“That was the most disappointing thing to me because we didn’t have black role models,” Ellison said. “If a kid was a good ballplayer, that was your model.”
As the hostility mounted during the Border War (the tensions leading up to this always heated game escalated after KU’s 23-7 victory over No. 1 Missouri in Columbia the previous November was later forfeited, as well as its Big Eight championship to MU, after it was ruled that Kansas' standout halfback Bert Coan was ineligible due to a recruiting violation. KU supporters believed MU athletic director Gene Faurot turned the Jayhawks in.) and after MU’s Joe Scott was called for a flagrant foul against Nolen Ellison just before halftime, KU's Bill Bridges had a premonition something bad might happen in the second half.
As KU assistant coach Ted Owens wrote in his book, “At the Hang-up,” “At halftime, Bill Bridges said to coach (Dick) Harp, ‘I have been called the n-word all of my life and I can handle that, but if their players keep spitting on me, something is going to happen.'"
Bridges turned out to be a prophet. Five minutes into the second half, KU’s Wayne Hightower threw a punch at MU’s Charlie Henke following his second-straight hard foul at the Jayhawk star just by the KU bench and MU’s goal.
Henke retaliated with a swing at Hightower. Then it was mayhem.
Both benches cleared and fans — including about 15 MU football players — stormed the court.
“When it (brawl) it broke out, I had one person in mind, that knuckle right there (Butch Ellison pointed to his fist); I was going right for Norm Stewart,” Ellison said.
The heavyweight fight lasted nearly five minutes and the game (MU won, 79-76) was stopped for 10 minutes.
“Fortunately, Bill Bridges cleared half of the court himself, for no one wanted any part of him, and order was finally restored,” Owens wrote.
Afterwards, Mayer wrote about his thoughts over the melee in Columbia:
“The MU folks stress they think Saturday’s brawl was KU’s fault and that the calling of names and spitting on KU players by MU players was OK. Yet no matter how how MU tries to don a ‘holy’ mantle, the fact remains the Tigers basketball teams have a league-wide reputation as hatchet-men, have been in a number of jams involving physical violence in recent years; generally are among the nation’s fouling leaders, have a home court which because of the crowd is considered by many the loop’s top snake pit. It’s hard to believe that just happens. And if it does, why isn’t there some obvious effort to change it.
“More and more, MU appears to be to the Big Eight what bellicose Russia is to the U.N. If MU doesn’t give evidence of good faith in an effort to clean its own house, maybe severance of the series would be a good idea. Good conduct like this has to be a two-way street.”
The idealist Harp had deep regrets over what happened.
“This is a tragedy,” Harp told the Journal-World after the game. “Competition as such is not the factor here. It is a matter of attitude. Let me emphasize. I’m not singling out Missouri. This condition has been prevalent on all levels, including high school, junior college and college. As yet I do not know the answer, but something must be done.”
Like perhaps canceling the series as Mayer wrote might have to happen?
KU athletic director Dutch Lonborg took on that issue with this statement to the Journal-World following the game:
“I feel that if this extreme bitterness continues between the two schools, we will have to discontinue playing each other, at least for a while.”
Owens certainly got a first-hand lesson over the bitterness between KU and MU that day.
“I left Columbia with a clearer understanding of the deep hatred that exists between the two states,” Owens wrote.
After order was restored in the Border War battle and MU won, this ended KU’s 10-straight wins versus the Tigers and costing the Jayhawks a chance to tie K-State for the conference championship. The MU win was also the first time Harp had ever lost to the Tigers.
That particular game left lasting wounds for some former Jayhawks, including Butch Ellison. He said he ran into Stewart one time years later when Ellison was an administrator at Washington High School in Kansas City and Stewart visited as MU head coach to recruit one of the black athletes.
“I said, ‘Norm, what are you doing here?’” Ellison recalled. “’Before any of our black kids ever go to Missouri, I will shoot him first. He will not come to Missouri.’ That was the last time I saw him (Stewart). He just turned and walked out. Turned red.”
For Ellison, seeing Stewart indeed brought back painful memories of that dark day at Brewer Fieldhouse in 1961.
“We were almost killed down there,” Ellison said. “I hadn’t been to Columbia since. When I’m on I-70, I don’t even look that way.”
Tom Hedrick, the voice of the Jayhawks, was also scared of his life during the brawl.
“I didn’t think the fight would end before somebody got really hurt,” he told the Kansas City Star book, “Rivals: MU vs. KU.”
Steward also commented about the brawl and how MU was treated when it played in Allen Fieldhouse earlier in the year.
“When we played at KU, the booing was so loud that they could not play the national anthem,” Stewart said. “They were booing everything about Mizzou, because they blamed us (for turning in the Jayhawks and costing them to forfeit the football game).
“When they came to Columbia, the refs tried to prevent things from getting out of hand. They did for a while, but then the fight happened. There were 300 people on the court and they weren’t exchanging pleasantries. Everybody got it. It’s like bullets. They don’t put names on them.”
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