SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 25, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — Two members of the Black 14 were honored by Brigham Young University and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Friday and Saturday.
The visit came 53 years after the men, former football players for the University of Wyoming, were kicked off the team by their coach in 1969 for asking permission to wear black armbands in protest during a game against BYU.
The athletes asked to wear the armbands after BYU players allegedly yelled racial slurs at them at a game UW won the previous season, according to a Denver Post article. In addition, the men wanted to protest the LDS Church doctrine that forbade all Black men from holding the Priesthood.
UW coach coach Lloyd Eaton, upon hearing the request, kicked the men off the team for the rest of the year, and only three were allowed to play in subsequent years.
The Church’s policy banning Black men from holding the priesthood was changed in 1978.
Black 14 members
The Black 14 members who visited Utah this weekend are John Griffin and Mel Hamilton.
“These athletes at UW paid a high price for their request,” says the LDS Church news release. “Griffin said eight of the 14 (himself included) were likely headed for the National Football League. Only two made it — and Griffin said those two lost out on money because of the stigma attached to the group.”
Griffin, Hamilton and nine other surviving members of the Black 14 have focused since 2019 on Black 14 Philanthropy, a charity formed to “educate, feed, and serve underserved communities,” its mission statement says. “We provide scholarships to black students, food to needy families, and education to student-athletes.”
The LDS Church statement says that since November 2020, “The Church of Jesus Christ has donated some 1 million pounds of food to the Black 14 Philanthropy. Food has gone to Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wyoming. “Another shipment of 80,000 pounds of food will be delivered to these locations this November.”
Griffin and Hamilton visited Church headquarters on Friday.
“It makes me happy that we didn’t let that incident define us for the rest of our lives,” Griffin said, according to the Church statement.
“It’s not about the tragedy. It’s about the philanthropy. It’s what we do now that’s so important. And I think about this every day. What more can I do?”
In addition to their visit to Church Headquarters (which included a tour of the 13-acre Bishops’ Central Storehouse and a lunch in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building), Griffin and Hamilton spent Friday and Saturday at BYU.
Friday night they took part in a Q&A after the premiere of a student-produced documentary called “The Black 14: Healing Hearts and Feeding Souls,” the LDS Church statement says.
Game night
And Saturday night, prior to the BYU vs. UW football game, Griffin and Hamilton were honored for their philanthropic work before ceremonially lighting the large Y on the mountain above the football stadium in Provo.
“This (moment) is an extraordinary snapshot in time for entities that were miles apart and now there’s nothing between us but good,” the news release quotes Griffin as saying. “That’s what is important to me. … We have more time behind us than we have left in front of us. We’re trying to do the best we can for the time we have remaining, whatever that is. And that’s why we’re in this relationship together.”
