"Dick Harp has to be vindicated"

I wrote about former KU great Nolen Ellison and ex-KU head coach Dick Harp in my April 25, 2019 blog regarding my Where Are They Now? Interview with Ellison in 2003 and then my three-hour interview with him in 2007, where he elaborated on Harp and how committed he was to racial justice and equality. I also wrote of Harp's coaching career at Mount Oread.

Here is more sccop from my interviews with Nolen, who thought so highly of Dick Harp. After graduating from KU in the early 1960s as one of the best and one of the most underrated players in KU history (1,000+ point scorer), Nolen continued his success by becoming president of two community colleges and was once named one of the top black educators in America. Nolen and Dick Harp are two of my heroes, and I think back to both of my interviews with Nolen with great fondness. I also think fondly of his late brother Butch, who joined Nolen and I for part of our great interview in 2007.

…

“Dick Harp has to be vindicated in Lawrence, KS, I believe, because he before it was popular and he did it because it was the right thing to do, he recruited what he considered the best basketball players,” Ellison said. “He got let down because those players he recruited, particulary from the East Coast, were used to a different lifestyle. When he brought them to Lawrence, some of them wanted to date white girls. And boy that was clearly a no-no.  

“So he put a set of personal values on these kids that didn’t fit the norm he was living in, nor the pressures he felt he was having to accept. I believe it was in that context that Dick ended up a fairly bitter man in the end--about  basketball and about society.”

Ellison continued:

“After Wilt Chamberlain left (in 1958), something happened, either Dick saw something in Wilt Chamberlain and the guys out of Philadephia (who played at KU). ... I fit in because I was in Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Young Life, Campus Crusade, and all of the stuff was who I was in high school. I thought I communicated with Dick quite well and maybe he didn’t see me as the quite the challenge that he might have seen Maurice King.”

Ellison said he and Harp had an “exceptional relationship,” built in large part on their strong belief in racial equality and justice.

“Dick Harp was a wonderful human being,” Ellison said. “He was a good coach and a terribly tolerant coach who helped carry KU basketball into the 21st tradition, both with the recruitment of Wilt Chamberlain and opening for KU the real era of integrated basketball. He was a good shaper, molder of men, and he had a representative record there at the university.”

Both Nolen Ellison and Dick Harp left a lasting legacy at KU that can never be forgotten.