The Wyoming Black Fourteen - On October 17, 1969, fourteen Black student athletes at the University of Wyoming approached their football coach with a difficult subject. They wanted to meet and discuss the possibility of non-violent protest, like wearing black armbands, during an upcoming game against Brigham Young University. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’s ban on black men holding the priesthood in the church, and other racial restrictions. The priesthood ban applied exclusively to men of African descent.
Their coach, Lloyd Eaton, fired them on the spot. Coach Eaton ordered the players to the bleachers where he reprimanded them and then released them from the team, revoking their athletic scholarships. The university announced that the Board of Trustees supported Coach Eaton’s decision and said “the players will not play in today’s game or any [other] during the balance of the season.” Having dismissed all the black players, the Cowboys became an all-white team. They went on to beat BYU, 40-7; they won two more games but lost four of the remaining games in the season.
The fourteen players, Jerry Berry, Tony Gibson, John Griffin, Lionel Grimes, Mel Hamilton, Ron Hill, Willie Hysaw, Jim Isaac, Earl Lee, Don Meadows, Tony McGee, Ivie Moore, Joe Williams, and Ted Williams, were part of a successful Wyoming football team. Under Head Coach Lloyd Eaton, the Wyoming Cowboys had won three consecutive Western Athletic Conference (WAC) championships, and in 1969 it was considered the best football team to ever play for the university.

The dismissal of the fourteen players brought swift, unwanted local and national attention to the University. First, the UW Student Senate passed a resolution which said in part, “The actions of coach Eaton and the Board of Trustees were not only uncompromising, but unjust and totally wrong.” By the end of October, the UW College of Arts and Sciences, the largest college on campus, voted to support the student athletes. The major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC all covered the story, as did Sports Illustrated.

In response to the Black Fourteen being expelled from the team, a number of athletes of all races wore black armbands in support including the entire San Jose (California) State Team that lost to the Cowboys in their last season game. The protest of the Fourteen eventually sparked nationwide focus on LDS church practices and other protests by student athletes. Students at the campuses of almost every BYU opponent protested at the games, regardless of the sport, and called on their institutions to ban contests with BYU athletic teams. Stanford University president Kenneth Pitzer announced that his institution would no longer participate in athletic contests against Brigham Young University, and the University of Washington Faculty Senate voted to sever all ties with BYU athletics.

Did You Know?

Despite their dismissal, several of the fourteen players received college degrees from Wyoming and other institutions. Jerry Berry, one of the Fourteen, became a sports anchor for TV stations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Chicago, Illinois, and Detroit, Michigan. In 2002, a statue to the Fourteen was erected in the Student Union on the University of Wyoming campus. In 2009, the 40th anniversary of the Black Fourteen, the LDS Institute at the University of Wyoming made black arm bands in tribute to the events of 1969 and handed them out to all in attendance.