WYOMING IN MID-CENTURY: Prejudice, Protest and "The Black 14"

By Phil White Jr.

This book is composed of Wyoming stories about prejudice and protest, Vietnam and the Draft, nuclear missiles and the University of Wyoming between the 1940s and the 70s, with a focus on the Black 14 incident at the University of Wyoming in October, 1969 in which all 14 African American players on the undefeated and 12th-ranked team were dismissed by the coach. The incredible success of the Cowboys' football program, fostered in significant part by African American players, the crash of the program, the reaction in the state and the dismissal of the coach after the black players were dismissed are examined in detail. Among other issues examined are these: -- The 1943 mass draft resistance trial of 63 young American citizens of Japanese descent from the Heart Mountain Internment Camp near Cody, Wyoming -- The removal from a "baby contest" of a black toddler, son of a serviceman stationed in Casper during WWII -- The 1958 protest against the world's first ICBM missile site near Cheyenne in which Kenneth Calkins, a young graduate student from the Univ. of Chicago, suffered a pelvis injury when hit by a gravel truck while doing civil disobedience. After earning a Ph.D. and becoming a history professor at Kent State, Calkins urged the removal of National Guard troops from that campus in spring 1970 and then witnessed the killing of four students, only two of whom were actually participating in the Vietnam War protest. -- The refusal of barbers in a small community college town in Wyoming in 1964 to give haircuts to the black basketball players until after hours with the drapes closed -- Protests of the Vietnam War and draft resistance in Wyoming, along with stories of Wyoming soldiers who fought in Vietnam, including one who is still missing and another who was a prisoner of war for nearly five years and whose MIA bracelet was worn by the winning contestant at the 1972 Miss America pageant. -- The story of a draft resister convicted in a Wyoming trial whose stand and story influenced Daniel Ellsburg to release the Pentagon Papers. -- The expulsion of African American students at Cheyenne Central High School in 1972 after they refused to stand for the flag in protest to the Vietnam War and racial discrimination, leading to the dismissal of Sydney Spiegel, an innovative teacher who supported them. Wyoming courts ruled that the school board violated Spiegel's constitutional rights and ordered his reinstatement. -- Numerous examples of the "generation gap" and the war on counter-culture youth, such as a Wyoming sheriff jailing and shaving long-haired hitchhikers' heads. -- The story of two UW women students who participated as teachers in the 1964 "Freedom Summer" voting rights project in Mississippi. Two white and one black student were killed during that summer and the story of the discovery of their bodies and the prosecution of the perpetrators is depicted in the film "Mississippi Burning". See a short synopsis of the Freedom Summer program at https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-what-was-freedom-summer/ --UW's first black graduate, Bonnie Mae Fermon, daughter of a Rock Springs coal miner. -- Controversies over inter-racial dating, dress codes and curfews for women students at the University of Wyoming in the 60s. -- History of Wyoming's anti-miscegenation law, making it a felony to participate in an inter-racial marriage, from enactment and repeal in the 19th Century, to enactment and repeal again in the 20th Century. -- The effort to lower the voting age spurred by the hypocrisy of sending 18-20-year-olds off to face death in Vietnam when they couldn't vote. At one point a state representative from Evanston added an amendment to a 19-year-old vote bill which would have required young males to adhere to military haircut standards before they could vote.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1790133076
• ISBN13: 9781790133079
• Release Date: December 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.7" x 8.5"