Dick Harp takes over for Phog Allen as KU head coach

In Phog Allen’s last year as KU’s legendary head coach in 1955-56, the Jayhawks finished just 14-9 before Allen was forced to step down at 70 years old, the age of mandatory retirement. While he appealed all the way to the Board of Regents, it was to no avail.

Allen dearly wanted to have one season coaching his prized recruit Wilt Chamberlain, who would become eligible during the 1956-57 season.

“It would be the thrill of my life to end a long coaching career with a truly great team,” said Allen,  who called his just completed last season “very disappointing.”

The Lawrence Journal-World’s Bill Mayer summed up how close Allen came to his dream of coaching Chamberlain, only to see it never fulfilled.

“Phog was like Moses, who got to see the Promised Land but never was allowed to enter,” Mayer wrote. “The Kansas retirement rule said professors, coaches and other faculty-type people had to retire after the academic year in which they turned 70. Phog Allen hit 70 that night of the freshman-varsity clash in 1955 and gave way to assistant Harp for Wilt's sophomore year of 1956-57.”

Allen’s loyal assistant Dick Harp, though, told John Hendel in “Kansas Jayhawks: History-making basketball” that he actually believed Allen didn’t care to return for the 1956-57 season.

“A lot of people said he wanted to coach Wilt Chamberlain just one season,” Harp said. “But he never told me that. I think it was a case of some people wanted him to do it and he got caught up in it. He was flattered and so let it go on.”

Before Allen’s resignation became official, Harp spoke to the University Daily Kansan about the possible vacant head coaching position:

“As for applying, if the job were open, I presume (athletic director) Dutch Lonborg knows I hope to continue coaching here,” Harp said.

Still, even in the last moments, Harp was pulling for Allen to keep the job.

“If it is possible for Dr. Allen to remain as coach if that is what he wants and thinks is best, I will be happy for him,” Harp said. “No one has had more joy or reaped greater benefits than I have in eight years coaching under Dr. Allen.”

Harp continued talking to the paper about Allen and himself.

“There has been no change in the type of fundamentals we teach here, not in Dr. Allen’s insistence that fundamentals get perfected," Harp said. "Dr. Allen says fundamentals never change. Dr. Allen was years ahead of other coaches in his techniques of teaching and realized before others that without perfection of fundamentals, you can’t play the game well. He’s still a great stickler for doing things correctly.” 

While Harp admitted he had other coaching offers in the past, he has always been happy to remain at Kansas.

“Maybe I’m a sentimental guy--this is our school and I wouldn’t have taken a coaching job anywhere but here,” Harp said. “Sure I’ve been approached by other schools but the most attention I have ever give to another offer was to once an overnight looking at it. I enjoy coaching--particularly the association with the kids. That will keep me in coaching. I could be happy doing a lot of things, but probably not as happy anywhere as in coaching.” 

The student paper wrote that “Harp believes the Allen-built tradition of championship team has stood Kansas in good stead often...and will continue to bring the school victories.”

The paper called Harp an “avid student of the game” whose “studies have included everything I can get my hands on in the way of reading and lectures.”

Off the court, the University Daily Kansan wrote that Harp’s “music desires can be satisfied with a pop concert. It is a sore spot with his wife that he’ll not go dancing, not even at the annual Christmas faculty party.” 

“We’re always playing basketball then,” he grins. 

And KU basketball has always been a central part of Harp’s life, a dream to play for the Jayhawks since he was just 9 years old. Finally, on March 30, 1956, the Kansas Board of Regents named Harp as KU’s new head coach, effective July 1. The Regents also made a statement concerning denying Allen’s written request appeal.

“This board has nothing but the highest respect for Dr. Allen and his desire to serve. This unhappy dilemma always occurs when the retirement rule is applied to a man or woman of vigor, ability and national stature. However, the benefits resulting from the retirement rule far outweigh its disadvantages and the board unanimously feels that it must be applied to all.”

Allen concluded his legendary 46-year career with a 746-264 record, tops in the NCAA before his former pupil Adolph Rupp first broke it. Allen, who had won or shared 31 conference championships, coached at KU for 39 years with a 590-219 record and 24 league titles.

But his coaching career was now over. 

The torch had been passed from the game’s inventor James Naismith, to W.O. Hamilton, to the Father of Basketball Coaching Doc Allen, to now Dick Harp, just the fourth head basketball coach in the Jayhawks’ illustrious history.

It was the job he dreamed of in high school growing up in Rosedale, where his life revolved around KU basketball 365 days per year.

Now, it was his. Dick Harp was the new man in charge of Kansas basketball.

When Harp was announced as the new head coach, it was the beginning of a third chapter in his life and another dream fulfilled. First, he realized his dream of playing for KU. Next, he got the opportunity to become Dr. Allen’s assistant. And now, he was running the program as head coach at his beloved alma mater. He was looking forward to beginning his duties and continuing the rich tradition at Kansas.

“I am greatly honored by my appointment as basketball coach at the University of Kansas,” Harp said in a statement. “However, I cannot help being somewhat saddened by the realization that my intimate relationship with Dr. Allen will no longer continue. I shall certainly look to him for guidance and counsel during my tenure as basketball coach.

“There is not greater basketball heritage in the United States than at our university, and it will be my constant effort to maintain this tradition which has been foster so long and well by Dr. Allen.”

While he was succeeding a legend, Harp didn’t feel any extra pressure to perform. At least he didn’t admit so publicly.

“I never put it in terms of following Doc because that’s not possible,” Harp told Hendel. “It was not possible for anyone to follow Doc Allen. If you knew (Allen) at all, you know that would not be possible. I never gave that a thought.”

In a June 7, 1956 letter to friends, Allen wrote that KU and Harp would seemingly coast with Chamberlain on the team.

“Wilton could make a successful coach out of anyone.” 

Chancellor Franklin Murphy was happy to have Harp on board. He made a statement thanking Allen for his service while also lauding the hiring of Harp.

“The long and distinguished career of Dr. Forrest C. Allen speaks for itself. The records made by his basketball teams, and what is even more important the records made subsequently by members of his teams in their business and professional lives, are eloquent testimony to his unique abilities in not only building championship teams but also building first-class citizens. 

“It is entirely appropriate that his great contributions to the University of Kansas will be forever memorialized in the great field house which bears his name. I believe that the university is fortunate indeed to have obtained, as Dr. Allen’s successor, Mr. Richard Harp, generally recognized as one of the brilliant young basketball coaches in the country today. It is entirely appropriate he is an Allen-trained man. It is our conviction that he is especially equipped to continue the great tradition established by Dr. Allen and indeed to enlarge and further develop it.”

Harp expressed his sentiments to Hendel on what Allen meant to KU basketball.

“The experiences of competition and the the people you meet and the opportunities you have from that should be instrumental in your life as an athlete and not just the winning and losing of the game, he taught that in many different ways.

“In the game itself that is when his competitiveness surfaced. As long as you’re in the game, you may as well do your very best to win that. But he thought there was more to athletics other than the outcome of the game.”

Harp, who like Allen believed in a higher purpose for basketball, had the good fortune of further developing the great KU basketball tradition his first season with the arrival of Chamberlain to Mount Oread.

“I think Kansas will have a good 1956-57 basketball team,” Harp said in a glaring understatement.

It would turn out to be a magical run to the national championship game.

A great part of Kansas basketball died with Dick Harp’s death in 2000

When Dick Harp died on March 18, 2000 at age 81 at Lawrence Presbyterian Manor, a great part of Kansas basketball died with him.

Nobody loved KU basketball and the University of Kansas more than Harp. He was a captain on KU’s 1940 NCAA runner-up national championship team, a KU assistant coach under Phog Allen for eight years (1948-56) and Kansas head coach for eight years (1956-64). He dreamed of playing basketball for KU as a boy growing up in Rosedale, Kan., while also dreaming of coaching at Kansas.

Dick got to realize both dreams. Not many people can say they lived out their dreams -- not once but twice.

As then-KU coach Roy Williams said about Dick after he died: "Kansas lost -- to me -- probably the closest guy to being Mr. Kansas Basketball."

Here is another heartfelt tribute to Dick Harp, the man and coach who did so much for his alma mater and college basketball.

...

Dick Harp, who had been in poor health in his latter years, died on March 18, 2000 at age 81. He passed the morning after KU edged DePaul in overtime in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.

"Somehow that seems fitting ... he loved KU so much," said Bill Lienhard, who played for the 1952 NCAA title team when Harp was an assistant coach under Phog Allen and had so much love and admiration for his former coach.

Harp's death shook the Jayhawk Nation hard, especially his family, friends, and those that worked with him.

More than 150 people mourned him at Harp’s Memorial Service four days later at Lawrence’s First Baptist Church. The Journal-World reported that Harp was remembered as “upstanding Christian who had a powerful sweet tooth.’

“Religion, family, and work. Dad took each of them, with their prosaic details, and made a poem out of them that is his life,” son Richard L. Harp said. 

“He loved me, he loved my mother. He loved his parents and he loved his grandchildren.”

Rev. Marcus W. McFaul eloquently discussed Harp’s life during a 20-minute eulogy.

“He grew up wanting to play and coach basketball at the University of Kansas, and that’s just what he did. He was a strong man with a gentleness about him that was very empowering.”

Waugh also delivered a eulogy to his dear friend. He “became choked up” at the end.

“I really miss him,” Waugh said. “He was my coach.”

The Associated Press reported that Waugh told the mourners of a conversation Harp once had with his wife, Martha Sue, “when he said that, once he got to heaven, he still wanted to coach.”

“But there are no winners or losers in heaven,” Martha Sue told Dick. “Everybody ties.”

“I can handle ties,” said Dick, before adding, “Well, maybe Kansas State and Missouri will be different.”

Then-KU coach Roy Williams also mourned the loss of a dear and influential friend.

"I don't think I'd be at Kansas if not for Dick Harp," Williams told the Topeka Capital-Journal. "I worked with him for two years. I heard so, so many Phog Allen stories and stories about the University of Kansas, his love for Kansas.

"At that time, you're talking about a guy who grew up dreaming of playing at North Carolina and didn't think there was anyplace else in the world where people had those feelings about their school," Williams added. 

"Because of coach Harp, I realized there was some other place out there. Kansas lost -- to me -- probably the closest guy to being Mr. Kansas Basketball."

The service wasn’t all tears. There were laughs celebrating his life and Harp’s affinity for ice cream.

“Neapolitan ice cream was his favorite, and he could easily eat a half gallon by himself,” Richard Harp said.

Waugh agreed.

“Dick was on a perpetual sugar diet,” Waugh said. “And it only lasted until he went to an ice cream store or a confectionary.”

Waugh also talked how Harp handled the negativity in the media.

“Dick seemed to handle criticism by the press and the newspapers very well. It infuriated Martha Sue, what was being written in the paper. Dick was good about not paying attention to the barking dogs.”

“He was a special person. I don’t think anybody had the feelings and love for Kansas basketball that Dick Harp had,” Williams added. “From the time he’d tell me about when he was a little boy ... the games and the players and what he knew about them and Doc Allen.

“Kansas basketball really lost a true giant. If there ever was any person you could say bled a crimson and blue combination, it’s have been Dick Harp.”

The paper wrote “all of the attendees praised Harp’s devotion to God, family and KU — especially his players.”

“Our sole purpose in life is to be here and do good,” Waugh said. “With apologies to any English teachers, Dick, you done good.”

Dick Harp sought a higher calling and purpose in coaching

Former KU coach Dick Harp dearly wanted to win, but he sought a higher calling and purpose in coaching. He believed strongly in sportsmanship, racial equality, and playing the game the right way. 

On Feb. 17, 1958 during a Border War game against Missouri in Allen Fieldhouse, Harp made a stand on principle that was actually a detriment to his team. It happened with 5:35 remaining in the game and Kansas leading 77-66. 

This was an important game for KU, which entered the game tied with Colorado in second place in the Big Seven at 7-4.

When MU guard Jerry Kirksey went to the foul line for his one-and-one, the crowd madly protested the call. The Lawrence Journal-World reported the “crowd started the feet stomping, shouting routine. ... The most obvious noise was the stamping of feet on the metal floor of the balcony, primarily on the west side of the arena.”

Upset and unable to concentrate with the noise, Kirksey handed the ball back to the referee. The noise persisted. After a third try and after assistant coach Jerry Waugh stood and tried to silence the crowd “to no avail,” Harp asked the referee to give KU a technical foul.

Afterwards, the noise “was quelled sufficiently” and Kirksey made the three free throws. “Later whenever MU boys were at the charity line, there were volleys of ‘shushes’ from the irate audience.”

KU went on to win the game, 84-69. Afterwards, MU coach Wilbur Stalcup commended Harp for asking for the technical. Stalcup told the Journal-World that Harp showed courage and that he admired him. It was “a great act of sportsmanship by a great sportsman.”

Harp, who won three Big Eight Holiday Tournaments and two conference championships while leading KU to the 1957 NCAA title game during his eight-year tenure, explained his actions.

“These people were our guests,” Harp told the Journal-World. “We sometimes find ourselves complaining about crowds on the road and yet how can we point the finger of guilt when we’re as bad as they are - maybe even worse? I kept waiting for the noise to die down so the Missouri boy could get his shots, but it didn’t. I finally decided that the only thing that would do it was a technical, so I asked for it.”

Even after losing the national championship game in 1957 to UNC — a defeat that would pain him the rest of his life, Harp — called the “fiercest competitor of all” by the Journal-World’s Bill Mayer — was a class act who put the game into perspective.

"We started out this year with two main goals," Harp told his players, as reported by the Journal-World. "We wanted to learn how to play basketball well and we wanted to learn how to be better people. You've done a wonderful job of both, regardless of tonight's outcome. Everyone in Kansas is proud of your behavior, and I'm the proudest of all. I think we've all learned what is right and wrong and that's more important than basketball. If you work hard, do your best and try to be gentlemen, you'll generally win and succeed. That didn't quite work out tonight, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep right on trying for those goals. Because it's been proved they're the best ones in the long run."

Like any good coach with honor and integrity, Harp took full responsibility for the loss.

"If anyone is at fault for losing, it is I, for I'm the one who told you what to do and when to do it,” Harp told his team. “The plays were my choices. You did all anyone could do to carry out the assignments and I'm the proudest man in the world. You musn’t waste time blaming yourselves. I know all of you feel that you might have lost it. That's foolish. No single play won or lost this game. If you feel you made an error, think of the times you've done good things this year and tonight, things that got us this far and kept us in it right up to the finish. Each of the 16 boys on our squad has contributed greatly to our success this year. Losing is painful, but you did the best you could. You're the greatest kids I've ever known and No. 1 in the world to me!"

Despite his remarks, Harp spent the rest of his life wondering what might have been.

“It was a disappointment to, of all people, Dick Harp,” Harp’s former assistant Jerry Waugh told the Kansas City Star in March 2010 about losing to North Carolina. “He really suffered with letting Kansas basketball down. It really hurt him. In his eyes, he had failed to keep the torch burning.”

But to Waugh and many of his players, Harp was a giant in his profession.

"Dick was one of the most underrated coaches the college game has ever seen," said Bill Lienhard (he was a member of the 1952 NCAA title team when Harp was an assistant under Phog Allen) after Harp died in 2000 at age 81.

"He developed the defensive scheme which led us to the national championship and which Dean Smith took and refined so productively at North Carolina after learning it as a KU player under Dick and Doc (Allen). John Wooden at UCLA used the same principles in his long run of championships.

"Dick never got enough credit for all the things he developed and he was a top-notch citizen and Christian gentleman along with all of it. You can't imagine the long list of players and students who believe Dick added countless positive things to their lives."

Waugh also speaks with reverence towards Harp. Waugh was also a player at KU when Harp was assistant coach.

"Dick was first my coach, then my head coach but most of all my friend,” Waugh said. “There is no way to describe how my life was enriched by my association with him. I was saddened by the way his health deteriorated (in his latter years) but I can bypass that by remembering the many great times we had. I never got up to go to work with Dick that I didn't feel excited and blessed. There were laughs, heartaches, successes and failures but he made my life so much better than it would have been without him. His sense of humor was inestimable.

"In my opinion, Dick was a basketball genius who never got enough credit as a strategist and innovator. He was ahead of his time in many, many respects and made a far greater impact on coaching than most realize. He was a key figure in the middle years of Kansas basketball. Dean Smith carried away a lot of good things from Dick, and passed them on to Roy Williams, so in a sense, we have seen a full circle from Dick to Dean to Roy. There is no way to express how my life was enriched by Dick Harp.”

“Dick had a great coaching mind,” Waugh added in “What it Means to be a Jayhawk.”

“As a technician, there were no superiors. ... But Dick didn’t have total control of recruiting at KU, and that troubled him. Dick wanted to exclude the involvement of alumni in the recruiting of athletes. He went to the administration at the time and asked for their support. He was turned down. They were people of great influence, not only in athletics, and keeping them away would be a hot potato the administration didn’t want to touch.

“In his own eyes, I think Dick saw himself as a failure. I don’t think he walked away from all of this feeling fulfilled.”

But to Waugh and the people that knew Harp well, he was a great coach and human being who made a huge impact on people’s lives. Floyd Temple, a former KU athlete, KU assistant football coach, and longtime KU baseball coach, said Harp was a superior person.

"Dick was one of the great people I've ever known,” Temple once stated. “There's something special about KU that turns out folks like that, and I've been blessed to know a lot of them like Dick. He was one of the most impressive, God-fearing guys I ever met and I often used him as a role model. So did a lot of others around the campus, athletes and otherwise.

"Dick seemed to have a good word for just about everyone even if they weren't too favorable to him. I only regret that he had some difficult times near the end. It had to be tough, but he surely left a great legacy for KU and KU athletics."

Mayer stated he left a great legacy to not only KU, but to society.

“He long has had one of the keenest basketball minds extant and is recognized for that. But like most of the great ones, Harp's best contribution to society is as a strong moral and ethical citizen,” Mayer wrote in 1994.

Al Correll, who played for Harp in the late 1950s and early 60s, said his former coach cared passionately about KU basketball.

“To Dick Harp, wearing the Kansas uniform has a special significance,” Correll told “Max and the Jayhawks.”

“One night we had finished practicing, and we were not doing very good. It was my senior year and I was the last one out of the locker room. As I was leaving, I looked out on the floor. The whole court was dark and there was one light on above the big scoreboard and it shined down on the big K on the floor. 

“Coach Harp was sitting there in a chair by himself on the big K with the light over his head. It was kind of an eerie thing, and I walked out to check on him. I looked at him  and asked, ‘Coach, are you all right?’ He said he was fine, but he just couldn’t understand why a player wouldn’t give his all and realize how important this game is and what it means to wear a Kansas uniform. He was real serious. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as strange as I did at that moment. It really hurt him.”

Harp had countless admirers, in addition to Waugh, Lienhard, Temple, Mayer and Correll.

Just listen to Bob Kenney, who who played on the 1952 national championship team. He said Harp taught the players about basketball and life.

“If Harp had a fault, he was too nice a guy. The only thing I can tell you is he was as close to a father as I’ve ever had,” Kenney told “Kansas Basketball: Legacy of Coaches.”

Just ask Bill Hougland, who also played on the 1952 title team.

“He was happy to do what he was doing (as an assistant) and let Doc take all the credit,” Hougland told “100 Things KU Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.” 

“Dick scouted (opposing teams). He’d go to games, come back, and have it all written up. Dick was really good at that. Doc was the motivator. Dick was the one who really got us playing the way we had to play to win.”

Just listen to Everett Dye, another member of the 1952 championship team.

“He knew what he wanted, he knew how to communicate it and he did in such manner as you wanted to listen. I have all kind of affection for that man, always have, always will,” Dye said.

And just ask Dean Smith, the legendary Hall of Fame coach and still another player on the ‘52 title team.

“Dick had the brightest basketball mind of anyone I’ve ever known,” Art Chansky quoted Smith as once saying about Harp in his book, “Dean’s Domain.”

Maurice King was the “soul” of Kansas basketball

I’ve always admired Maurice King, KU’s second African-American player, first black starter and first African-American star who was a pivotal member of KU’s 1957 NCAA runner-up national championship team. King carried himself constantly with grace and dignity, battling through adversity amidst rampant racism during his college career.

After leaving KU, he played two seasons with the Boston Celtics and Chicago Zephyrs, winning the NBA championship in 1960 with Celtics Hall of Famer Bill Russell. He then enjoyed a very successful and distinguished career at Hallmark, and continued to mentor people throughout his life.

Maurice, who died in 2007, was truly an exceptional human being.

“He drew himself close to others by making himself available," said Ronald Lindsay to the University Daily Kansan, pastor at King’s Concord Fortress of Hope Church in Kansas City. "He had a great way of making himself available to the people he loved and the people he was concerned about.”

“Out of all my travels," Lindsay added, "I would go as far as to say he was one of the best and finest role models the country had to offer. He just had an amazing way of making sense out of madness.”

I lived in the same dorm (JRP Hall) at KU as King’s son, Maurice III. Maurice was a very kind and outgoing person and we had some great conversations. I regret, though, that I never asked him about his father. Maurice knew I was a KU basketball junkie and said I should try to get involved with Kansas hoops in some way. I appreciate him reaching out to me like that, just like his loving dad did to others throughout his life.

Here is my tribute to Maurice King.

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Nolen Ellison, who played at KU in the early 1960s, disagrees with former KU coach Dick Harp about singling out Maurice King for becoming “completely integrated,” although he states that King did mix well with his white teammates. Ellison argued that King, who graduated from all-black R.T. Coles Vocational School in the inner city of K.C., hung around the white teammates after the Big 8 Christmas Tournament because, in part, “he didn’t have anywhere to go in Kansas City, not even home.”

But Ellison and his older brother Butch had great respect for King, who was prepared to attend an all-black college like Lincoln or Tennessee State until Harp saw him play in high school and KU offered him a scholarship.

For King, that was something to celebrate and a chance to make a better life for himself out of the inner city.

“King came (with the) attitude they (KU) did something big for him by getting him there,” Nolen  told me in 2007 during a three-hour interview. “(It was a) feeling he owed them something because they had rescued him out of his vocational school. That was not a high school that would produce kids to go to KU. He was much more accommodating, more integrated. He seemed to pal around with white guys more.”

Nolen called King “a Jackie Robinson” type figure.

“He turned the other cheek,” Ellison said. “Maurice was a wonderful guy. I wasn’t like that. When (Joe) Doughty (MU player) punched me, (I hit him back). I wouldn’t be looked at as a good guy integrationist because I fight back.”

Longtime KU trainer Dean Nesmith told Mike Fisher in his book, “Deaner” that King “was immediately accepted by our fans and players." However, King still endured rampant prejudice during his career, but always resisted fighting back. Once, though, during on instance at Missouri, circumstances became too tough for King to ignore.

In Mark Stallard’s book, “Tales from the Jayhawk Hardwood,” teammate John Parker describes what transpired in Brewer Fieldhouse at Missouri on Jan. 9, 1956.

“The only time that Maurice King ever got in a confrontation or fight with anybody was at Missouri, and that was because of Norm Stewart,” Parker said. “Norm was on the team then, and he was a great player. But he kept calling Maurice all kinds of names. You can imagine what, like ‘nigger,’ and so on and so forth. Maurice finally had all he could take and got in a fight. It didn’t last very long, and when I say a fight, I mean he pushed him or something.

“Of course, the crowd went crazy, and they’d play those Southern songs like ‘Dixie’ and all that crap.”

Butch had great fondness for King, who died in 2007.

“I admired Maurice,” Butch said.

King was indeed a player did not fight back against prejudice and racism. He was strong-willed, though, and focused on making his own name on the court and blending in with his teammates away from the hardwood.

"I was busy just trying to survive," King told the University Daily Kansan in 2006. "If I came to this university and failed, that was going to be a setback for other minority athletes. When I came here, I was scared to death of failure.”

King, a 6-2 guard, became the first black starter in KU history during his sophomore season, where he averaged 3.6 points and shot 41.2 percent at the free throw line. He dramatically improved his production as a junior, averaging 14.0 points and 5.6 rebounds, while shooting 39.3 percent from the field and 69.0 percent at the charity stripe. With Wilt Chamberlain joining the team in 1956-57, King’s scoring average dropped to 9.7 points while adding 4.5 rebounds per game. He shot 36.3 percent from the field and 69.3 percent at the free throw line.

While Chamberlain was the star, King’s teammates on that team say he shouldn’t be overlooked.

"His leadership is what took us to the Final Four," Ron Loneski told the University Daily Kansan. "He was just a team guy."

King was a “team guy” who helped others throughout his life. His death in 2007 shook those who knew him hard. Ronald Lindsay, the pastor at King’s Concord Fortress of Hope Church in Kansas City, said King helped pave the way for many other African Americans at KU and served as a great role model.

"A young man who had just spoken with Maurice once told me 'Wilt may have been the face of KU basketball, but Maurice was the soul,' " Lindsay told the UDK. "In terms of facing the struggles of being an African-American in that time, he really carried it.”

King was a dignified man who carried himself with grace, despite the great racism and prejudice he encountered.

"It was sort of an evolution for everybody that followed," Loneski said. "Maurice made it that much easier."

King was often turned away at restaurants and movie theaters, feeling invisible in this new white world he encountered at KU.

"He endured a lot of tough times," legendary KU radio announcer Max Falkenstien once said. "But he was always very quiet and dignified - a humble person.

"He didn't know what to expect when he came because he'd never played with whites," Falkenstien added. “He was apprehensive about the whole thing."

But King mixed well with his white teammates and was a popular player.  He’d hang out at their fraternities during Christmas break and go to movies with them. When Chamberlain arrived at KU, King’s situation changed for the better. Lawrence and its surrounding areas began to integrate in regards to restaurants, movie theaters, and hotels.

"When Wilt Chamberlain came to that campus, a lot of that foolishness stopped," King said.

King, who later played two season with the Boston Celtics and was part of the 1960 NBA championship with Hall of Famer Bill Russell, once told Bill Mayer of the Journal-World about the great adjustment he made at Kansas and the influence of Chamberlain.

“I grew up in a pretty parochial atmosphere in Kansas City, and I really got my eyes opened,” King said. “We (African-Americans) had our own movies, pool, nice parks ... through high school I found anything I wanted in our own community. I came to KU and ran into things I wasn’t accustomed to. I didn’t like some of them, but I knew I couldn’t change much by myself; until Wilt opened my eyes, I did what I had to do to get through it.

“He was a wonder with a big-city background and lots of savvy. All sorts of things began to change with the aid of people like Phog Allen, chancellor Franklin Murphy, Dolph Simons Sr., Roy Edwards ... Wilt not only changed basketball but a lot of other things. After two years pretty much on my own, I saw a lot of changes, a lot pretty unfamiliar to me. With Wilt and with powerful people supporting us, we could go to restaurants, non-segregated movies, get barber work. Phog’s son Mitt was an attorney who told us to keep him informed, but nobody confronted us with much of anything. Students were especially supportive.”

King indeed benefited greatly from Chamberlain’s presence.

“Wilt was a godsend,” King said. “Along with being the finest player I ever saw, he had that strength of personality and a surprising amount of innocence that anticipated the best. It helped break barriers, and he led a lot of changes for the better. He opened a lot of doors to help me grow and succeed. Nowadays there might be a lot of abrasive news coverage; Wilt did things quietly but effectively.”

While King said he “found anything I wanted in our own (African-American) community,” he did face adversity growing up in Kansas City. His parents, Maurice King and Lillian Walker, divorced when he was 5 and his dad ended up moving to New York. Lillian raised the family as a single parent, working hard as a waitress and finding other jobs to help make ends meet. The family also relied on welfare checks to get by.

King’s plans never really included attending college; Mayer said he “figured he would end up working at a blue-collar job after graduation high school, if he graduated at all. Not only did he graduate, King ended up being the first in his family to earn a college degree.”

"I didn't know what I was going to do,” King said. "In my family, we didn't talk about stuff like that. We talked about what we would eat that night.”

King starred in high school on the basketball court and planned to attend a black college like Lincoln University or Tennessee State until Harp saw him play his junior year. Harp reached out to his amicable and genuine teenager.

“Harp made him feel wanted, and his high school coach pushed King to attend KU, so that's where he ended up,” the UDK reported.

King would finish his collegiate and professional career before accepting a job at Hallmark in 1966. He also stayed busy raising two kids, Kimberly and Maurice III, with his wife, Jelena. In addition, King worked as a substitute teacher “and wore suits to class,” as Kimberly told the UDK, “to show young kids how they should respect themselves.”

"In his situation growing up," Kimberly said, "he didn't always make the right choices. He wanted to share his story of where he had come from to going to college to getting a degree to getting a good job. He let them know you can make good choices and bad choices, but you can't let the bad ones stop you."

After working 25 years for Hallmark, King retired in 1991. Still seeking purpose in his life, he worked with youth at the Spofford Home, helping kids with emotional problems. He also volunteered more at Fortress of the Hope Church, singing in the men’s choir and serving as a trustee.

Throughout his life, King served as a mentor. The UDK wrote “he often brought seniors and teenagers together to discuss life.”

"He drew himself close to others by making himself available," Lindsay said. "He had a great way of making himself available to the people he loved and the people he was concerned about."

Lindsay called King just an exceptional human being.

Out of all my travels," Lindsay said, "I would go as far as to say he was one of the best and finest role models the country had to offer. He just had an amazing way of making sense out of madness.”

Border War brawl in 1961 almost ended bitter rivalry between KU and MU

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.”

KU’s promising 1960-61 season ends with disappointment and probation

While KU coach Dick Harp wanted his white players to “walk the extra mile” for their black teammates, he also hoped the black players like Maurice King would integrate with the whites and appreciate who they were as human beings. 

That happened one night when African-American player Butch Ellison “got on my knees to pray” as his roommate and white teammate Jerry Gardner looked on curiously.

“Jerry goes, ‘What are you doing?' Ellison recalled in 2007. “I said, 'I’m praying.’ He said, ‘We pray lying down in the bed.’ Since that time, I’ve been lying down in the bed praying. You do pick some little things up.”

Nolen Ellison, Butch’s younger brother, said that was one case where Harp would have rejoiced.

“Dick wanted these players to appreciate each other and to appreciate each other’s culture and to truly become brothers,” Nolen said.

Harp’s dilemma was even more difficult when the team was referred to in such ways as “four blacks and a brave (Dee Ketchum was a Native American).”

Nolen laughs at that reference now and said he didn’t hear that mentioned back when he played in the early 1960s. But the white players who belonged to fraternities such as Sigma Nu, whose chapter was known, Nolen said, as having the “most white right-wing conservatives in the country (and) notorious for racial attitudes, (they) “would hear that stuff.”

“(The white players were) getting mixed messages,” Butch added. “That never showed up on the floor, but they go back (to their frats) and hear that stuff.”

While Harp was doing his best to integrate his team off the court, he was also focused on making the 1960-61 squad one to remember. After starting just 3-3, KU won 12 of its next 14 games, including six-straight victories. The fifth-straight win was a convincing 88-73 victory over MU in Lawrence, where Wayne Hightower dominated with 36 points and 21 boards.

KU was now 7-1 in the league and tied with KSU for first place. The Jayhawks then took a one-game lead in the standings as Colorado beat K-State before KU blew out the Buffaloes, 90-62, in Boulder. K-State, though, crept back in a tie with KU after beating the Jayhawks, 81-63, in Manhattan.

With four regular-season games remaining, Kansas needed a strong push for its second-straight conference championship and third overall in the Harp era.

It didn’t happen. KU lost two of its last four, stumbling to a 10-4 record in the Big Eight (17-8 overall) and tie for second place as the Wildcats won the league.

The Jayhawks lost all life when they learned late in the season that they were put on probation and a one-year postseason ban after recruiting violations surrounding Wilt Chamberlain.

Assistant coach Ted Owens remembers the team’s sadness when they learned the news.

“The problem is we had a great team,” Owens told John Hendel in “Kansas Jayhawks: History-making basketball.” “We had Bill Bridges and Wayne Hightower and Jerry Gardner, who was an excellent guard. And Nolen Ellison and Dee Ketchum and Al Correll. We had dynamite talent.

“And I’ll never forget the day that Dick walked on the court and told them. It was a morale and spirit killer because that was a team that could done very well in the NCAA playoffs.”

Nolen Ellison, a sophomore, was quite angry with Chamberlain.

“(There were) strong feelings that Wilt had betrayed us,” Ellison said. “You take the car and you know that’s going to put the team in trouble. He couldn’t afford a ‘57 oldsmobile, flaming red. (He was a) poor kid. Where are you going to get money (for that car)? That started my career with being under a cloud. Dick called us all together and said we’ve been placed on probation. It was confusing and difficult to accept. (We didn’t have a) chance to stand on our own.”

Owens elaborated on the affects of the probation in his book, “At the Hang-up.”

“Although we finished second in the league, the 1960-61 basketball season was a bit of a disappointment because the expectations were so high after reaching the NCAA regional finals the previous year,” Owens wrote. “Knowing that the team was barred from the NCAA tournament, the players’ spirits had evaporated.”

The Jayhawker Yearbook noted the inconsistency of the team which plagued KU that season.

“When Kansas was ‘on,’ nobody could stop them; when cold the Hawks were a pushover. Consequently, the Jays bowed to two considerably weaker teams, thereby killing any hopes for a conference championship.

“The lack of a team drive at times, as well as the brawl at Missouri, could be in part attributed to the ... NCAA ban clamped on the KU basketball team. The ban hurt the attitudes of those holdovers from last year’s conference champs, who had dreamed of another NCAA tournament berth. Moreover, Missouri Athletic Director Don Faurot has been accused by many of instigating the NCAA probe — an accusation which has only heightened animosity between the two schools.”

Dick Harp and his divine mission to bring his white and black players closer together through basketball

While the 1960-61 KU team was having success on the court with its seven African-American players and four black starters, it was head coach Dick Harp’s unwavering mission to promote racial equality off the court. This was in many ways his divine purpose for coaching, to use basketball as a vehicle for racial integration and harmony.

There has long been a dividing bridge between the white and black worlds, and this case was no different than with the KU basketball team in the early 1960s. While they were united on the same team with the sole purpose of winning basketball games, the white and black players were extremely isolated off the court.

“Dick wanted us to somehow integrate and feel like we were part of this family,” Nolen Ellison, an African-American player on the ‘61 team, told me in 2007. “(But) the only time we saw a white teammate was at practice.”

While the idealistic Harp would invite his players to his home for dinner a few times a year in his fervent efforts to unite the two races, they would always leave separately. The white players would go back to their fraternities, while the black players would, too, return to their fraternities or apartments.

Even on the road, the white and black players would go their separate ways. When the team traveled to New York, Harp gave the team tickets to a broadway musical. The white players would take the tickets and see the musical or opera, Ellison said, while the blacks would go visit the watering holes in Fillmore.

“(We did) not (have) much socially in common,” Ellison said. “We lived in two different worlds, and today we live in two different worlds.”

While Plessy and Ferguson’s separate but equal doctrine in 1886 was finally overturned in 1954 with the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka case, no legal action could change the ways black and white Americans — and most specifically KU’s black and white players — viewed each other. The white and black athletes came from different backgrounds and most did not feel comfortable in each other’s worlds at that time.

This troubled Harp deeply.

“Of all my Negro players, only one, Maurice King, ever became completely integrated,” Harp told Jack Olsen of Sports Illustrated in 1968. “When we would go to Kansas City to play in the Big 8 Christmas Tournament, King would hang around with white players all the time. There must have been something exceptional about him, because he got along so well with the others. Once the team was in Houston, and somebody told King that he couldn’t eat with the white players in the airport restaurant. He was near tears, so we all wound up eating with him in the area partitioned off for Negroes. 

“But this was only a gesture. The rest of our Negro players spent their time off-court with other Negroes. I tried everything I could to bring our white and Negro players closer. I remember how discouraged I used to feel when my wife and I would have all the players over for dinner. Invariably, when it came time for the boys to go home, the white players would go off together in one direction and the Negroes in another.

“Sure, we broke down some of the physical segregation. We mixed white players and Negro players in rooms on the road. We did all the formal things, but the times called for more than that. What I wanted to do was reach the minds and hearts of my white players so that they would become determined not to permit the Negro to be anything less than a human being. What I had hoped was to use basketball to turn out a bunch of white college graduates who would be willing to walk that extra mile for some Negro because of the experiences they had as members of an integrated basketball team. I don’t think I produced even one such white man.”

Olsen praised Harp for his strong convictions.

“Few coaches are willing to examine themselves and their records with the brutal honesty of a Dick Harp,” Olsen wrote in 1968. “Most go about in a dream world of race, imagining that they are assisting in the slow evolutionary process of integration (to be achieved in some century of the future, perhaps the 25th), telling the Kiwanis Club and the Rotary how much sports is doing for the Negro and failing to come to grips with the situation. Ironically, they are often good men ... And most of them have not the slightest idea what they are doing--or not doing.”

Ellison commends Harp for his idealism, but said he was in a lost battle with his social dilemma.

“Dick (was) trying so hard to make us homogenous as part of appreciation of each other’s culture,” Ellison said. “These guys live in different places, different churches, different houses. How do you turn around guys through basketball?

“Dick Harp, and his proclivity to want to reshape the lives of these kids, that’s probably more of a greater experiment than just having that many black kids (on a team). He tried his very best to force conformity.”

Unfortunately, because of the times, it was without much success.

But Dick Harp should be courageously commended for trying to unite his white and black players. I've never heard a coach at any level talk about using sports as a vehicle for bringing the two races closer together. Dick was a progressive person way ahead of the times and a wonderful and amazing human being!

KU’s 1960-61 team that changed the color of college basketball

I've always been fascinated with KU's 1960-61 team, which featured seven, yes, seven African-American players. I first learned about this team while doing research on my 82-page honors thesis at KU about racial participation and integration in Kansas basketball: 1952-75. I have this team picture on my wall at home next to my computer, a daily reminder of how strongly committed head coach Dick Harp was to social justice and racial equality. Harp should be greatly commended for his brave and courageous efforts in recruiting so many black players in an era where segregation ruled and many African Americans, especially in the South, were not allowed to be recruited to play college basketball. 

This 1960-61 team should never be forgotten by historians, basketball fans, and all humanity.

Dick Harp is my forever hero!

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Three years before the 1964 Civil Rights Act was instituted, five years before Texas Western— with five black starters beat all-white Kentucky for the NCAA championship — and nine years before racial and political unrest reached a crescendo in Lawrence, the young and idealist KU coach Dick Harp and the 1960-61 men’s basketball team were opening eyes and making a bold statement about racial justice and equal opportunity while changing the color of college basketball.

 

Led by Harp and first-year assistant coach Ted Owens (he replaced Jerry Waugh, who resigned to enter private business), the 1960-61 team and its seven black players (plus one Native American in Dee Ketchum) was virtually unheard of throughout college basketball at the time, an age in which many qualified black athletes were being shunned by college teams. Bill Mayer of the Lawrence Journal-World wrote that Al Correll (a black player on that team) once mentioned to him that Kansas may have been the only team in the country which had seven blacks represented out of its top 10 players.

In 1960, only 45 percent of college basketball programs had blacks on their rosters and the average number of blacks on integrated squads across America was just two.

Bob Frederick, a white player on that team and future KU athletics director who had a severe knee injury, just played one minute that season. He had no complaints with the black athletes getting the majority of minutes.

“All those fellows were better and deserved to play ahead of me,” he once told Mayer. “I felt privileged to be on the same squad and to get to know them as friends. No resentment about my lack of playing time.”

Butch Ellison, an African-American on that 1960-61 team, was aware of the changing color among his Kansas basketball team and decided to go public with a letter to the editor in Sports Illustrated in the April 4, 1960 issue. Ellison was commenting on a story SI wrote about the Negro (the word associated with blacks in that era) in baseball.

“I enjoyed it, first, because I am a Negro and, secondly, because I am an athlete,” Ellison wrote. “Your article touched on many of the problems of the American Negro in athletics today. On our basketball team here at the University of Kansas this past season, we had four Negro boys on the traveling squad, and next year there will be six and possibly seven. I am sure that everyone who read your article could not fail to be enlightened on the color problem. The one thing which seems most important to me is the quota of Negro athletes in sports, generally speaking. If (somebody) is good, it shouldn’t make any difference what color he is, and if the best nine players happen to be Negro, Chinese, Russian, or Mexican, I think that they they should the ones to play.”

Ellison said the letter got him on “bad personal footing” with Harp, who was proud about the amount of minority athletes on his team but worried about the reactionary and bigoted alumni.

“Dick called me in, he was getting repercussions from alums,” Ellison told me in 2007. “Everyone read that, all the KU alums. (I) never talked to Dick about that. As a 19-year-old kid, I didn’t know that was going to create hat kind of (uproar). ... Dick could not share with us what he was going through. It was risky.”

“It was risky” starting three or four blacks as well, but Harp opened the season with three black players in the starting lineup, including Correll, Wayne Hightower and Bill Bridges up front with Ketchum and Jerry Gardner in the backcourt. 

Expectations were high for the Jayhawks with Hightower and Bridges leading the way. Hightower, who was on some preseason All-American teams, was described by the Journal-World as the “do-everything willow wand.” 

And big things were also expected of Gardner, who could shoot, dribble, and pass with the best, although he needed to control his game to best suit his teammates. He was “touted as potentially the (best) all-around backcourt man in school history.”

“The Gardner, Ellison, Ketchum, (Grover) Marshall crew could be the best backcourt crew in the league, and one of the best in the nation,” the Journal-World added.

And then there was (Ralph) Heyward (another African American player) who got contact lenses in the preseason and was expected to have a “prominent role” on team. Earl Morey of the Journal-World called Heyward the “fastest,” Bridges the “toughest," Hightower the “most outstanding," and Correll “fanciest in around the basket.”

It would be up to Harp, who entered the season with a career 72-31 mark, to mold these men into winners and ideally fulfill his mission by bringing the two races closer together that season. Owens felt he was up for the task on the court.

“Practices under coach Harp were well-planned, which was a good lesson for me,” Owens wrote in his book, “At the Hang-Up.”

“At OU, coach Bruce Drake was a creative offensive coach, and now I could learn from coach Harp, a master of teaching half-court pressure defense. The varsity practices were intense, and we felt that we were positioned to make a run at the conference championship and an NCAA bid.”

After opening the season with an easy 86-56 home victory over Northwestern, KU traveled to Lubbock, Texas, to face Texas Tech. It was the Jayhawks’ first trip to Texas since the 1957 heated Midwest Regional, and Harp and his players were treated to a “vociferous crowd.” Ellison came off the bench to score a career-high 14 points in the second half as KU won 97-75.

He said the team was called “jungle bunnies.”

“We had never heard that before,” he said. “We ran them off the floor. Up and and down the floor, we jut out ran them.”

Mayer wrote that “KU displayed loads of passion de combat. ... But again, the important aspect of the game was the KU desire. If this is maintained, it could be a great season ---NCAA ban or not.”

Kansas didn’t seemed fazed by the “typical hostile Texas crowd of of 8,000.”

“All things considered, we were well treated at Lubbock,” Harp told the Journal-World. “That 1957 Dallas crowd was still the worst I’ve ever seen and though the one Monday was noisy and naturally for Tech, it wasn’t as bad as it might have sounded on the radio. The problem was that (KU announcer) Tom Hedrick’s radio booth was situated in the middle of a group of Tech rooters and everything was amplified out of proportion. I supposed some things that shouldn’t have, screeched through. They asked me afterward what I thought about the crowd and I told them that basically it wasn’t any better or any worse than the average crowd in our own Big 8. I’m sure there were ... unpleasant things. I did notice that several Texas Tech lettermen were in the group that seemed to cause the most furor, and I know the school wasn’t in favor of that, because it has some fine officials. But back to my original premise, we were well treated and accommodated at Lubbock. The boys didn’t mind the crowd, since we won.”

At 2-0 with a date at St. John's in Madison Square Garden in New York four days later,  observers already thought this team could be pretty special.

“Fact is,” Morey wrote, “many already suspect that with proper improvement, this year’s oufit could turn into one of the year’s finest teams ever for the school.”

A critical newcomer was learning the college game and would be in an instrumental player for KU this season with his play and also change the color of Kansas and college basketball. His name was Nolen Ellison (Butch's brother) and KU had high hopes for him despite his struggles in the first two games.

“Ellison hasn’t found the scoring range yet, but his coaches think he will,” the Journal-World wrote.

After coming off the bench the first five games, Ellison was inserted into the starting lineup after Ketchum sprained his ankle. Ellison never lost his starting spot the rest of the season and career, becoming a 1,000-plus point scorer and one of the most underrated and toughest players in KU history.

Reflecting back toward his career, Ellison told me in 2007 that Ketchum, whom he called an “interesting fella,” “made a mistake” by not trying to earn his starting assignment back.

(“I) thought I was a better player, but he was a senior and he accepted it in the same way, I was grateful as I look back that Jackie Robinson would have accepted Branch Richey (if he) would have said, ‘You’re not playing today.' ... He  might have hit three home runs yesterday.

“He (Ketchum) didn’t have the fight in the Native American today, they turned the other cheek. If you do that enough, a man will hit you hard. I felt bad about that, but he didn’t seem to mind.”

With Nolen Ellison starting now, that marked four blacks in the starting five. It was certainly unconventional in college basketball at the time as Harp experienced growing pressure about playing too many blacks.

George Ireland, the head coach at Loyola of Chicago, which beat Cincinnati two years later in the 1963 NCAA title by starting four blacks, said he was a pioneer in the race movement.

“I built the bridges many of those guys crossed,” Ireland told Street and Smith Magazine in 1978. “People don’t understand that now. The black (high school) kid can go on and play now and it is the accepted thing. In those days, it was not the accepted thing.”

Ireland said “there used to be a joke. You play one at home, two on the road, and if you’re behind play three.”

Ireland, who most historians give credit for bringing in a new era of integrated basketball, played four blacks on the court at the same time during the 1961-62 season while breaking the longstanding gentlemen’s agreement about not playing more than three blacks at any given time. He also was credited with fielding the first all-black lineup in a game against Wyoming in December 1962.

But historians have to look long, hard and clear at what Harp was doing in 1961 before Ireland in playing and starting the best players, and they happened to be four blacks. Also, the two coaches had contrasting personalities. They were both recruiting blacks to win games, but Harp seemed to being do so also to give blacks their shot at the American dream and an equal opportunity to success. He loved his players, and was color blind.

Ireland, meanwhile, was also color blind but didn’t have a true affinity for his players. He certainly wasn’t making a stand on principle for recruiting and playing so many blacks.

The Chicago Reader wrote in April 2012 that “Ireland wasn’t a civil rights activist; he cared about the civil rights of players who could help his teams win." He also wasn't beloved by his players. "George didn't see color," Jack Egan, the team's lone white starter, said at Ireland's funeral in 2001. "He hated all of us the same.”

Harp died a year earlier than Ireland in 2000, and hate was one word never used to describe the former KU head coach. Each of the mourners and his former players expressed extreme gratitude over the man who made such an indelible impact on their lives.

With Harp starting four blacks in 1961, this didn’t set well with alumni and boosters, who protested adamantly.

Harp sadly received threatening notes and criticisms for playing too many blacks.

“Sometimes an alumnus would come up to Harp and refer to the team’s black athletes as niggers, ‘and I’d get so mad I wanted to kill them,'” Harp told Sports Illustrated in 1968.

While Harp was confronted with racist boosters, he also became conscious of the racial slurs he heard in Allen Fieldhouse. During home games, Harp “heard certain sounds from the cheering sections whenever he 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.’”

For Harp, he knew he was doing the right thing by starting four blacks, but he also felt an internal struggle about offending the alumni.

Jack Olsen wrote in 1968 in SI 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 that 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 insult of the fans and digs from the alumni wore him down. ... He could feel the pressure of a quota system and he did not want to be a part of it.”

While Harp encountered difficulty at home with boosters, he and his black players faced even more prejudice and discrimination when his team ventured to such southern schools as Texas Tech.

“I never even calculated (what blacks) were on those other (Big Eight) teams, but I know when we got to Texas Tech, we were slipping in the back doors to restaurants because we couldn’t go in the front door,” Nolen Ellison said.

That was the plight of the black person in America in the early 1960s. He was still viewed as inferior to whites, particularly in the Jim Crow South. And even in 1960, historian William Tuttle said “Lawrence was still a segregated town.”

He wrote in “Beyond John Brown: The Story of Race Relations in Lawrence," that Joanne Hurst, who grew up in Lawrence during the 1940s and 50s, was sickened by the treatment of blacks. She “remembered ‘sitting in the balcony of the three theaters we were allowed to attend, balcony only; and I remember that the Granada Theatre was off limits completely, and when it was finally opened to us, white lines were painted on the back of the seats to identify our section. I would go without seeing a movie for the rest of my life before I would subject myself to the humiliation of  sitting in a seat with a white stripe on it.’”

And that wasn’t the worst for Hurst and many other blacks in Lawrence in 1960.

When Hurst was pregnant “about to deliver, she was placed in a bed in the hallway of Lawrence Memorial Hospital. It wasn’t that rooms were unavailable. But she was told that ‘the black rooms on the obstetric floor were all filled up and so it’s the hall for you, young lady.’”

A transformation in race relations eventually came to Lawrence to lift the city and university out of dark and troubled times.

“Much change, including progress in race relations, would come in the 1960s both to Lawrence and the University of Kansas. And in the decades since, the people of the community have tried to build on these victories to ensure that racial equality, once achieved, would endure,” Tuttle wrote. 

Former KU head coach Dick Harp’s enlightened change from Phog Allen in recruiting the black athlete

When Dick Harp became the KU head basketball coach in 1956, he brought a new, enlightened change to Kansas basketball as to the recruitment and treatment of black players than Phog Allen, an old-fashioned man with biases and prejudices.

“How adamant Dick was when he took over the black athlete would not be denied,” Harp’s assistant coach Jerry Waugh once told me. “Dick was just adamant that we will go after (blacks in recruiting).”

And if a hotel refused service to Harp’s black players, then the team would not stay there. That’s what happened in Dallas during the NCAA Midwest Regional in Dallas in 1957 as the hotel denied Maurice King and Wilt Chamberlain.

“At that time, one of my responsibilities was to make sure I handled travel arrangements,” Waugh said. “It was understood if a hotel couldn’t accommodate for us lodging or eating accommodations, (then we would stay somewhere else). When we won the NCAA regional in Dallas in Texas, we didn’t say at the hotel, the headquarters. We had to go in-between Dallas and Fort Worth (in Grand Prairie) because we would not, if they wouldn’t take our black athletes and feed us, we couldn’t stay there. We got on the bus to go to the game, and had to drive one car and we had three escorts.”

After Chamberlain left KU in 1958, thanks to Harp, black players followed in droves. Players like Bill Bridges from Hobbs, N.M., Al Correll, Ralph Heyward and Wayne Hightower from Philadelphia, Jim Dumas from Topeka, and brothers Butch and Nolen Ellison from Kansas City, all made their way to Kansas. Other blacks like Eddie Douglas (he scored 100 points in a high school game) from Philadelphia and Johnny Redwood from New York also came to KU, but left after becoming academically ineligible.

While it may have been unpopular with many KU boosters, Harp was making a statement about giving blacks equal opportunity to succeed. And he implored Waugh to help him with his cause.

“I went back to Nashville (to recruit),” Waugh said shortly after he was hired by Harp in 1956. “John McLendon was the coach at Tennessee A&I, and he had that national all-black tournament at A&I. All the schools in the south were segregated. There was another white coach in the tournament that was in attendance.

“There was a young man, Ronny Lawson, father was in the physics (department) at Fisk University and his mother worked at A&I. He later goes to UCLA. We were there to look at Ronny and also look at the players. Kansas at that time, was one of the forerunner in the recruitment of black athletes. Because of this, Dick’s stance on how we handle it as part of our team, great guy, felt very strongly (about this).”

Correll, who had known Chamberlain from childhood, attended West Philadelphia High School and was a 12-man letterman in four sports. Hightower, from Chamblerlain’s high school at Overbrook, led his team to three city championships.

Both idolized Wilt and wanted to follow in his footsteps at KU.

“The reason we went to Kansas was because of Dip,” Correll told Robert Cherry in his book, “Wilt: Larger than Life.” “He sent me a letter and said I ought to come out (with Wayne).”

Correll told Cherry about he and Hightower’s recruiting trip to KU.

“We visited Wilt’s room,” Correll said. “He had a thesaurus and said that every day he tried to learn a new word. He did that so people wouldn’t think of him as a dumb jock. We were there for four days and he took us everywhere. We’d go to the Blue Room or the Orchid Room in Kansas City. They used to say he spent more time on the Kansas Turnpike than anyone else.

“One night he took us to a club in Topeka, Kan. He was doing about 110 miles per hour in that Oldsmobile he had. We were scared as hell. He had the top down, and he was flying. It was me and Wayne Hightower. We didn’t make a sound. He was flying so fast it was very scary. But that’s the way he did things. Everything was to the extreme.”

With Harp’s first team featuring two black players in Chamberlain and King, his second team in 1957-58 (Chamberlain) and 58-59 (Bill Bridges) teams comprising just one African-American player, the 1959-60 team boasted four black players, including Wayne Hightower, Bridges, Al Correll and juco transfer Butch Ellison, the most African Americans of any Jayhawk squad in school history at the time. KU, which looked to bounce back after last season’s disappointing 11-14 campaign (Bridges was the team’s tallest starter at just 6-5), was boosted with the additions of Hightower and Correll, who became eligible second semester.

KU started the season at just 5-3, including a 66-59 loss at St. Louis. Harp wasn’t pleased with the play of rising star Hightower, who was taking too many ill-advised outside set shots.

“Dick got pissed off and put his butt on the bench in the second half,” said Butch Ellison, who roomed with Hightower at the time. “Wayne gets on the telephone in the hotel, calls an alum in Philadelphia and tells (him), ‘I didn’t come to god damn Kansas to sit on the god damn bench. Fucking coach sent me down. You call that son of bitch and tell him I’m going to play every minute from now on.'

“And he did.”

Harp was angered and frustrated by the influence of alumni, and felt like a victim. So he was pressured to continued to play Hightower “every minute”, and the Philadelphia native blossomed under his head coach’s tutelage. Hightower led the league in scoring at 21.8 points per game, while also grabbing 10.1 rebounds per game. His play drew rave reviews from opposing coaches around the league.

“Hightower is the best sophomore we’ve ever had in the Big Eight,” KSU coach Tex Winter said. “I said basketball player, not most effective basketball player. Wilt was a wonderful physical specimen. But he can’t do all the things Hightower can do. Hightower is a mature player as a sophomore. He’s got a lot of experience. He can do a lot of thing. Yes, he’s the best sophomore we’ve ever had in the league.”

Doyle Parrack of Oklahoma chimed in:

“He could do more than Wilt Chamberlain could at the same point. He isn’t as big physically, but he plays like a cat. Why, he could step into the professional ranks today and make the team as a guard, that’s how well he moves. He can do more to help a team than any sophomore I’ve ever watched.”

While Hightower was a great athlete and sinewy scoring machine, Bridges complemented at center as a rugged rebounding force and capable scorer. He became a two-time All-Conference center and rebound champion, averaging 13.8 rebounds and 11.4 points per game. Bridges’ 386 rebounds in two seasons ranked as a new school mark in league play, eclipsing Chamberlain’s 371. The 1960-61 media guide described him as a “tremendous jumper, despite 229-pound bulk....Great hustler under boards, often making second and third efforts....Often runs every steps to climb in rebound fight.”

With Bridges and Hightower leading the way in 1959-60, KU got hot and won its last eight of nine games in the regular season to capture a tie with KSU for the league crown. Kansas also got help over the stretch run from Correll after becoming eligible second semester. The 6-4 forward was a great role player who averaged 6.3 points and 3.5 rebounds during the final 11 games.

To earn an NCAA tournament berth, KU had to first get by K-State in a playoff game in Manhattan on March 9. Behind Hightower’s 28 points and 21 from sophomore guard Jerry Gardner, KU beat the Wildcats 84-82 in overtime.

After beating Texas two nights later, 90-81, this set up a huge match with Cincinnati and its do-it-all All-American Oscar Robertson for the right to go to the Final Four. But Cincy was too good and KU too tired. Robertson was dominant with 43 points, while Hightower and Bridges both scored 22. Cincy won, 82-71, rallying from a 57-51 deficit with 13:45 in the game as the Jayhawks only scored eight points in the final 8:10.

“With just six players going most of the way, Kansas just didn’t have the gas to go the entire route against classy Cincinnati and the great Oscar Robertson,” the Journal-World wrote.

Hightower, who told the Philadelphia alum he wanted to play "every minute" of every game, admitted he was extremely fatigued.  

“I couldn’t move toward the end,” he told the Journal-World. “I just wore out.”

Despite losing in the tournament, the Jayhawks gave inspired effort. The school’s yearbook, the 1960 Jayhawker, certainly took notice:

“Looking back at the 19-9 season record, the Big Eight co-championship and second place in the midwest NCAA regional, the 1960 basketball season can be remembered as one of the most inspiring in recent Jayhawk annals.”

It didn’t help the short-manned Jayhawks’ chances that 6-5 starting forward Al Donaghue was ruled academically ineligible the second semester. Donaghue, the team’s third-leading scorer at 10.9 points per game, would have helped tremendously. Starting guard Dee Ketchum was also academically ineligible the second semester.

“That was unfortunate,” Donaghue once told me. “But in those days, we didn’t have an academic program that they have now where you knew where you stood all the time. You just didn’t know. I think Dee missed being eligible like I did by just 2/10th of a percent or something like that. It was very sad.

“In fact, Dick Harp used to say if the unfortunate thing hadn’t happened to me, we might have won the the whole thing.”

Donaghue, a two-time Kansas player of year at Wyandotte High School, ended a fine career after initially choosing KU over K-State. He actually grew up cheering more for the Wildcats than the Jayhawks. This all changed, though, when KU made an in-home recruiting visit his senior year with former head coach Allen (he had just retired due to mandatory age requirement) and current head man Harp.

“He (Allen) impressed my mother and father dramatically,” Donaghue said, “to the point that when they left, my mom said, ‘You are going to Kansas, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ That’s where she wanted me to go, and that’s what I wanted to do after meeting Phog Allen and Dick Harp.”

While the retired Allen impressed Donaghue’s parents, it was Harp who transformed Donaghue as a person and player during his KU career. After averaging just 5.0 points his sophomore year, Donaghue boosted that average to 10.6 points per game as a junior in 1958-59 and then a career-high 10.9 ppg his senior year.

Donaghue credits Harp for everything he accomplished, and said it was a joy to play for him

‘”Dick was a fine man,” Donaghue said. “He probably was a better human being than he was a coach. When you say that, that’s not to diminish his coaching ability. He was an excellent coach, but he was just a very saltable, God-fearing, very moral gentleman. Great guy to play for. I enjoyed playing for him. He probably did a lot for me in terms of of helping me grow and develop, and was instrumental in my development. He added a lot to my development as a person.”

While the 1959-60 campaign was a great season, little did Harp and the Jayhawks know they would never return to the NCAA tournament during his tenure.