What Some Gave Up

My uncle and his teammates.

What would you be willing to give up in order to take a stand against injustice?  Would you sacrifice until it became inconvenient or would you give your whole heart even though the toll seemed heavy?  The last blog entry had me thinking of a courageous moral stand relatives on my father's side of the family told me about many years ago.

My dad was born in early 1929 and grew up in a poor neighborhood in Lynn, MA called the Brickyard.  To the outsider, the place was rough around the edges and for some reason, it seemed to have a bad reputation even though other neighborhoods in the city had higher levels of crime.   In reality, it was a very diverse community with blacks, whites, Jews, Greeks, Italians, Albanians and others living side by side and embracing a kind of tolerance unseen in most places in America at the time.  What explained this remarkable mindset?  Poverty was a big factor.

Since residents of the Brickyard were in the same boat economically, they realized that focusing on racial or cultural divisions would only make life more miserable so why bother creating tensions in the first place?  Even though people constantly went without, they found treasure in their strong moral values, which in turn helped to create a freedom from want.  Few residents locked their doors, neighbors looked out for each other and a respect for authority created positive relations with police, teachers and clergy.  Through a certain amount of suffering, a remarkable goodness was born.

During the 1940s, one of my uncles played high school football for the Lynn Classical Rams with none other than local sports legend, Harry Agganis.  In 1946, the team had won the national title at the Orange Bowl and they were considered favorites the following year.  Unfortunately, the country's history would soon catch up to them.

Since Lynn was so diverse a city, the Rams had two black players.  When it came time to compete against teams in the racially segregated state of Florida, they were told to leave their two black players at home.  “We don't play our boys against Negroes,” said Orange Bowl director Robert B. Mulloy.

It would have been easy for the coach of the Rams, Bill Joyce, to simply shrug his shoulders and explain to his team, “That's just the way things are.”  Such a decision would have hardly amounted to even a footnote in the civil rights struggle and the team might win another championship.  Instead, Coach Joyce refused to leave his two black players behind.  Southern officials were unmoved.

In the end, Bill Joyce decided if two of his team members had to stay home, then the Rams would refuse to play post-season football in Miami and Jacksonville.  The decision probably cost them another trophy.  The Lynn Exchange Club gave Coach Joyce the Award for Americanism and praised him for refusing to sanction racial bigotry.  Today this shining moment in Lynn's history seems to be largely forgotten but acts of moral courage often happen in small ways.

The REAL winners in the eyes of history.

Coach Joyce didn't sit-in at a lunch counter as some civil rights activists did but when presented with an injustice, he took the higher ground.  I'm sure the two black players were glad their teammates had their backs.  I for one take pride in knowing one of my relatives has a connection to this story even if it wasn't featured on Eyes on the Prize.

By the late 1950s, my dad's Brickyard community fell into a state of decline as demographics shifted and newcomers took less pride in their small corner of the world.  A young mayor felt bulldozing most of the neighborhood would usher in new growth and prosperity for the city but such lofty plans failed miserably.  Homes were torn down, families were displaced but the glamorous shopping malls and gleaming office parks never materialized.  Such short-sighted thinking wreaked havoc in many American cities and today there is little left of the Brickyard my dad knew despite a couple of signs tacked to a railroad bridge.  Yet we can all learn a great deal from this interesting place and the special people who once lived there.