More about why Dick Harp quit as KU head coach in 1964

Dick Harp made a huge statement and gave blacks an equal opportunity to succeed by starting four black players in the 1960-61 season (Nolen Ellison, Bill Bridges, Wayne Hightower and Al Correll), three years before the Civil Rights Act and five years before Texas Western made history by starting an all-black lineup in beating all-white Kentucky in the 1966 national championship game.

Harp’s starting of four blacks didn’t set well with many KU boosters and fans. Harp actually had seven black players on his 1960-61 team (Butch Ellison, Ralph Heyward and Jim Dumas were the others), an unheard of number at that time. In 1962, the national average of blacks on integrated teams was just 2.2 and blacks represented only 10 percent of players throughout the country.

Sports Illustrated reported in 1968 that “sometimes an alumnus would come to Harp and refer to the team’s black athletes as n----s, ‘and I’d get so mad I wanted to kill him.'"

Harp also became conscious of what he heard from fans during KU home games.

SI writer Jack Olsen stated that Harp “heard certain sounds from the cheering section whenever they started a few Negroes.”

“They’d play Sweet Georgia Brown, the Harlem Globetrotters theme song, when our boys came on the court, or they’d take the Kansas yell --’Rock Chalk, Jayhawk, KU,’ and change it to ‘Rock Chalk, Blackhawk, KU,’” Harp said.

This troubled Harp deeply.

Olsen stated that “Harp first began to think of quitting his job as Kansas coach on the day he found himself wondering whether it would offend the Kansas spectators if he started four Negroes.”

“All four of them deserved to start, but the mere fact I had to think about whether I should start that many brought me up short,” Harp said.

Olsen wrote that “Harp played the four and kept on playing them, but the insults of the fans and digs from alumni wore him down. ...He could feel the pressure for a quota system and he did not want to be a part of it.”

Three years after the 1960-61 season, Harp quit as KU head coach. There were other reasons he stepped down besides the "pressure for a quota system."

Max Falkenstien wrote in his 1996 book, “Max and the Jayhawks,” “that there was a decaying undercurrent in college basketball that troubled Harp, a coach whose honesty and integrity were deep-rooted. The pressures of recruiting and competing for the top players made the job of coaching an unhappy venture for him. There couldn’t be a more moral, idealistic, straight-shooter in the world than Dick Harp. He didn’t like what he saw in the profession.

“Unfortunately, he didn’t have any control over the trend of cheating that was rampant all over the country. He didn’t believe in it and didn’t participate in it.”

Harp’s former players understood why he resigned.

“That state of college basketball in the early 60s, the various pressures, the recruiting pressures, the way things were being done, were at odds with Dick’s sense of values. I think that was a struggle with him,” Harry Gibson told "Kansas Basketball: 'Legacy of Coaches.'"

“He was a very religious man and the times and things that were changing in athletics were kind of bothering him,” former All-American Walt Wesley added.

While Harp kept to himself when he resigned, his emotions exploded during his retirement dinner when he pointed and lashed out at specific alums for his decision to quit. To make matters worse, Phog Allen spoke at the dinner and had some unkind words about his former assistant.

Monte Johnson served as master of ceremonies that night.

“I introduced Doc that night, and he went to the microphone and he had not said hello before he mentioned that Dick Harp was not his choice to be basketball coach at Kansas following him,” Johnson told “Max and the Jayhawks.”

“He said it was Ralph Miller and in case they didn’t hear him, he repeated it. I reached up, and as best I could, pointed back to his notes, hoping he would return to talk. You could have cut the air in that room with a knife. Up until then, I didn’t realize the feelings Doc had. Dick kind of had a smile on his face during Doc’s remarks.

“There was no one more loyal to the University of Kansas than Dick Harp. I don’t think to this day I’ve heard anything come out of Dick’s mouth about what happened at that dinner.”

Johnson talked more about that dinner in an interview with the Kansas City Star’s Blair Kerkhoff in 2007.

"You could have heard a pin drop," Johnson said after Allen’s remarks. "I was sitting next to Dick, and you could see the hurt on his face. He had been so loyal to Doc as an assistant coach, and this was his thanks."

While Allen’s remarks obviously pained him, Harp took the high road.

“Dick turned the other cheek on that one and accepted it,” Waugh told me in 2015. “He took that from Doc, and yet he cared so much about Doc. Doc was an old man and he had an ego. Dick would have done anything for Doc Allen. Doc was as close as a father as Dick was concerned. Dick was so supportive of Doc, cared so much about him. ... That was a hard one”

Harp was a man who just didn’t get his respect, even at his own retirement dinner and even from the man who hired him as his assistant, the one who launched KU to the national championship in 1952 with his innovative defensive strategy that revolutionized college basketball.

Dick, you will never be forgotten and will always have my greatest respect and admiration. You left a lasting legacy on KU basketball and college hoops history. The world needs many more people like Dick Harp, a man who believed so strongly in racial equality. Dick made society a much better place.