A CBS Doc - Big House, The Pearl, and The Triumph of Winston Salem State

[Music] as i look back on that season i think it was a defining period of my life hi everybody this is the championship game of the ncaa college division basketball finals i had no idea that no other historically black institution had ever won a ncaa title of any kind i was just playing at guard number 10 earl monroe and got this a 6-4 senior from philadelphia averaging 42.2 a game i've won an nba championship but i didn't win an nba championship with guys that had lived with and going to school with and i think it's a difference in college you're feeling the passion of the game than it is in pro sports earl monroe oh long you can't stop him i'm just so happy that i've had the opportunity to have a coach like coach gaines and to be around those guys that i played with you know for those years because it's made me a better person get them in the air goes back up go wet and over the years generally the things that were good i kept and the things that were weren't good i discarded i kept these guys you know in my heart all this time the rams from winston-salem college win it 77-74 it begins here fields of green growing tobacco stretching from the piedmont through the coastal plains north carolina's tobacco roll runs 100 miles through the heart of the state from raleigh to winston-salem along this road lie four of the greatest college basketball programs in the country nc state unc duke and wake forest but in 1967 it was another school along this path that was making headlines a historically black college with a legendary coach and an exceptional player who when brought together by faith made history even today over a half century later the accomplishments of coach clarence gaines and his star player earl the pearl monroe are a source of pride to winston-salem state the first historically black college to win an ncaa national championship in any sport i can tell you being chancellor here at this university is hard for me to walk around the city without someone asking me about the 1967 men's basketball team it has become almost mythical in terms of how people remember it it really began to shine a light on historically black colleges and universities hbcus exists because we were not allowed to go to other universities we were not accepted at other universities and as a result of that those opportunities weren't in the forefront if black athletes were going to play ball you know at an hbcu in football it was the southwestern athletic conference in basketball it was the cia originally known as winston-salem teachers college the unlikely title journey of this tiny division ii school began back in 1945 with the hiring of clarence big house gains my father graduated from morgan state and then he pursued higher education in the state of new york at columbia teachers college and an interesting fact about that is that that was paid for by the state of north carolina because there was no state institutions with a master degree programs that would allow blacks to get that degree so the state found a way to pay for people like my dad to go there big house was an imposing presence at six feet three inches tall and weighing over 260 pounds the story goes he pulled up on the campus of morgan state and when he got out of the car one of the coaches said oh my god he is as big as a house and that name stuck with him some of his players might have spoken under his breakfast called him big nasty so he's a tough coach he's a taskmaster he told us one night we were gonna run until he got tired now how is he gonna get tired sitting on a pillow on the bench but he was serious about it it was a family in some ways but they they knew that big house was being tough on him because he wanted him to be a winner what made him a great coach was he could understand the thought processes of the individual ball players he could really delve into their thoughts and see whether or not they had the heart and the soul to participate in a real good conference he his personality was big on campus everybody loved him everybody wanted a little piece of big house they wanted to stop and talk to him he kind of floated around the campus by the mid-1950s big house had accrued a decade of winning seasons and his stature on campus matched his nickname the ram's success was built on gaines's vision of recruiting skilled black players from the northeast he knew the area was a talent hotbed from his time in new york and in 1957 games brought in the first of the trilogy of program changing players newark new jersey native and future nba top 10 pick cleo hill he would go out and watch playground basketball and i think that might be one of the ways that he first got cleo hill and became aware of his talent and many other players as well best ball was being played in the northeast you had to be able to travel to places like new jersey philadelphia new york in ways where you could go to the high schools and watch the ball players play philadelphia and ted blunt followed hill to winston-salem their success set the stage for the player who will put the program over the top earl monroe by the early 1960s clarence gaines and the rams had arrived the team had claimed four cia conference titles and gaines was a two-time conference coach of the year news that hadn't yet reached a feisty high school kid from south philly earl monroe i had never heard of big house gaines didn't know what he looked like never heard of winston-salem didn't know exactly where it was monroe was a late bloomer he didn't focus on basketball until turning 14 and as he would throughout his life he carried the persona of the city he grew up in it seems like i've always played with a kind of chip on my shoulder because when i first started playing everybody used to laugh at me and things like that my mother said listen write down all these people who are dogging you out and as you get better than them start crossing those names out i started doing that and i felt as though i was getting better and better as as i start crossing names out and that was my motivation in 1962 monroe led the city in scoring his senior year of high school yet he only received two scholarship offers and rejected them both instead he attended prep school and worked in a factory to make money all the while refining his game on the local ports that's where gaines recruiter spotted him and his buddy steve smith and offered them both an opportunity to play for big house down south the only thing that i really knew about the south was what we saw on tv you know the fire hose the dogs and things of that nature you know the out now you know craziness of what was going on yeah i had a lot of reservations about going but if i do if i could bring my man with me which was a guy named swinney when earl made his decision to attend winston-salem he said well i'll go if my man can come with me that's how i ended up down there earl and i had ridden a train from philadelphia to d.c then we had to change trains in d.c to winston-salem well when we got to dc we had to move to the colored part of the train i had been south several times my parents were from georgia and i knew that you had to quote unquote stay in your place my parents came down to visit me one time and we went out to a diner you know we sat down first and then they said came home and said you know we don't serve your kind i had never been confronted that way about being served or anything like that and i went off i mean my stepfather carried me out of there you know kicking and whatnot having grown up in the north there was but it wasn't over you know when you looked in the kitchen and the people who were cooking look like you and then someone comes up and tell you that they don't serve colors mind-blowing it was a realization that you know yeah i'm really here and and this is what's really happening you know the things that i saw on tv you know yeah they're real and now i have to deal with it on the court monroe ran into another obstacle the big house way freshman even those who flashed brilliance rode the pile he really did not get that kind of an opportunity unless it was a really close game and coach gaines knew that the only way he was going to win unless he put erlang and coach inserted earl next thing you know we're back on top and we eventually won the game uh and then earl didn't play for another long period of time i went to him after the season i said listen coach i only play you were down i come in i shoot and we get up and you take me out and i don't play and i think i'm going to transfer somewhere so coach said come back here about 10 minutes so i came back in 10 minutes and i said what's up he says well somebody's on the phone here i go to pick it up and i say hello say hello ma yeah yeah so he had called my mother my mother told me to stay in school coach gaines is a great man and don't think about moving and so that's why i stayed in school four years at the insistence of his mother earl monroe had reversed course and stayed at winston-salem state by his junior year he was averaging nearly 30 points per game his trademark swagger and dazzling style was now the talk of the town and beyond he started having success because one he wasn't a freshman anymore and he learned more about the game at his skill level and then he began to understand how to learn from big house you couldn't stop him in his mind he was better than you in his mind his confidence was out of the building we just gave up the ball and just watch him go ahead and do his thing and i know at one time girl tell mr son you're here to play ball you know i had to watch earl i guarded earl a lot in practice i thought i had to spin move down with him i said well he's getting ready to spin but when he spin one way he spin back the other way earl spin move was like listening to miles davis you never knew what he was going to do and on top of that he didn't know what he was going to do growing up in eastern north carolina in the 60s i think everyone at my high school in my junior high wanted to do that spin move so we we copied him well i always felt that people wanted to see what i was going to do in a particular night i mean we played in norfolk state and they had 5 000 people outside that couldn't get into place his anticipation allowed him to see something developing i guess before it happened you know there are certain players in basketball that are able to play the game without the ball the ball is in their possession but the ball is not important to them wherever they want to go and whatever they want to do they can do it as if the ball is invisible and earl had that skill gaines was asked about his philosophy he said look get a ball of earl and get the hell out of the way that's my offense there was something magical about earl i don't know i mean it wasn't a light over his head it could have been they called him black jesus for a while half the time everybody say that he might be walking on water so they call them black jesus then they call him the pearl earl the pearl one of basketball's most famous monikers was the brain child of a sports writer in tribute to monroe he called his column chronicling each game earl's pearls all of a sudden because of the number of points that he was scoring winston-salem started to get a lot of press and then all of a sudden everybody started to talk about earl the pearl monroe the pearl was no longer a hidden gem his skill and charisma was attracting widespread attention and his team grew with him big house built a team to compete for more than the conference title it was just fun playing with those guys we were brothers we were in the same fellowship we weren't just teammates we were family the rams finished monroe's junior season with a record of 21-5 and the c-i-a championship that was good but the players knew they were capable of more we didn't accomplish what we could have even our junior year we was close but not close enough so we talked about it before we left and we said we're going to come back and be in better shape and when we had our practices in the gym i mean we practiced hard our motto was kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill we would be in the huddle we put our hands in hollow we say our little prayer and after our prayer we were just hollered killed killed killed i'm not so sure if the fans even myself had envisioned possibly a national championship but now i tell you one who who knew all the time and believed that could do it that was gains he knew what he had and he knew he had the right kind of chemistry with these guys to do it in the 60s as was the pattern during the time was when they put highways into cities those highways usually took the direction of splitting the black community away from the white community we called it crossing 52. highway 52 was the separation of the west which was white from the east which was black you know dared to cross 52. on the other side of 52 from winston-salem state was the predominantly white campus of wake forest five miles in a world of different separated two schools however in the late 1950s the wake players would travel across 52 to secretly scrimmage against winston-salem state an act that was illegal under jim crow laws billy packer was a guard on those wake forest team billy packer nobody covers him he shoots and tags his dog from about a mid mid-1960s had become an assistant coach at wake he reached out to the rams to revive that tradition we had an outstanding player by the name of paul long and uh and they had it this time a guy named earl monroe so i thought it was a good idea for paul to play against earl you know back in those days it was kind of illegal for us to play against the white schools or whatnot so those games were starting maybe around 12 o'clock at night a lot of guys on our team had not played against white guys before so this gave them the experience of playing against those guys i mean i loved it i loved going over there and it was an experience to go over there and play against those guys nobody played like pearl nobody played like him don't get mad at me bro he couldn't outrun he could now jump you couldn't out muscle he could now quick you he could just outplay you fainting and faking shimmy and shaking spinning shot making skill wrapped in deception that was a pearl we played basically run and gun we learned how to slow the game up by playing against them and they learned how to speed the game up playing against us you know so both teams benefited from that summer workout the games would be tough they usually lost i don't recall them winning any of them it was a different mindset in terms of you know what they thought about the game and where they thought their game was and where we thought our game was it really was immeasurable while there was a tremendous respect between the players when wake forest returned the invitation and brought the rams across town the reaction was swift we went over there a lot and so we got to go we said hey why don't you guys come over to wake forest and play you know we had a gym that we use nice gym nice facility next thing i know we was invited to go to wake forest and play over there and all that big flow i said this got to be something else a professor came in the gymnasium and asked me what i thought i was doing and i said well we're just playing a game well these aren't wake forest students and i said no these are people from winston-salem state i want them out of here right now we're not going to have and i won't use the words they use we're not going to have those people on our campus and i told them to get the hell out of the gym and the next day i was called to the president's office at wake forest and wanted to know why i said what i did and i said because i thought he was out of line made me mad made me ashamed and embarrassed me they never came back to our campus it was the south and that's the way it had been and people had trouble changing so no i never i never gave anything like that a second thought winston-salem was a great city and yeah you know he had his you know problems you know around but at the same time you know coach gaines was such an uh integral figure in the community i saw him as a uniter person who saw what was bad and tried to do the work from within to make it better preferring to take a different approach in the face of injustice big house decided the best way to ease the sting of racism was from inside the room his philosophy was you can't make a difference unless you're in the room and you can also make a difference outside of the room but for him his skill set was being in the room and bartering and negotiating and demonstrating why his point of view had value i'm a child of the segregated south lived in an all black neighborhood went to an all-black church my dad coached and was a teacher at uh all black college and that's just the way things work but he never let his race quote unquote be a roadblock into him expanding his boundaries coach was smart he understood people very well when we would see him interacting with white people in town basically coach talked to them just like he talked to anyone else when it came time to go to the city council meeting to talk about reconciliation when it came time to go down to the corner to tell people to chill or when it came time to being able to to have a conversation with white leaders to say here are things that we can do to help get over this hurdle and so he uses influence behind the scenes and i think that is often not understood and not seen but it was happening and he never marched in any demonstration at the time he believed that doing things within the structure and that you could get a lot of accomplishment a lot of ways to get to a destination you know his way was to work within the system for nearly a decade tiny whitaker gym the home of division two winston-salem state was the backdrop of some of the best basketball plays in the hoop state of north carolina bursting with screaming fans at every game whitaker was the very definition of home court advantage they would squeeze in 2 000 people in a place that was meant to hold a foul the energy was there the enthusiasm was there the student body was always with us a hundred percent imagine a little band box wood at the gym filled to the raptors with a great team people standing around the baseline can't find the scene standing only and people celebrating eight nine deep you know screaming yelling fans you know it was they were seeing part of history too you know you winning somebody fall into the crowd yeah you you know you just kind of stick your leg out or or try to help them not help them back to the court because that was that's what you do when you're all right come on what's up with the girls you know you've been dating out of here and someone behind that all right you scored 15 points we can go out on a date tonight oh baby the demand to see monroe's senior season was so high it quickly became clear that tiny whitaker was too small to meet it but where else could the rams play the answer stood across highway 52 memorial coliseum its capacity was 10 times that of whittaker but would they welcome the black ball players and fans whitaker gym was packed night after night after night after night and it was hard for even the school people to get into the gym there were several of us that thought to include big house what if we played in the uh winston coliseum and so i went to the mayor and said what about can we work this out so that what sam state can play in the coliseum if you will give your attention to the resolution and i'll read it for the benefit of the news media fed light fortunately was a really good liberal and agreed that this would be a great showcase monroe's fame straddle route 52 as both black and white fans flock to the coliseum to witness his magic if you go back in time and understand the dynamics of the 60s that was extremely rare and powerful that you're bringing whites and blacks into a public facility to watch an all-black team i said well where are all the black people there because i was just seeing a lot of white people you know and i've said they're coming to see us play all the white folks came in and they were sitting in the best seats and coach had to go out and announce that they had to move because that's where the students sat i said coach you got a lot of damn hard you going out there and tell people they can't sit somewhere you say son that ain't about no heart that's about right he said these students our students them paid when they do their tuition that's in it that's their seats it was like an experiment you know nobody actually knew how things were going to turn out the ram season tipped off with the loss to high point but winston-salem state caught a break when a result was overturned due to an ineligible player on other teams that reversal and fortune would spark the rams and an unrelenting monroe to a record-breaking school win streak earl on that court he wanted to win really bad and i guess his spirit affected the rest of us because we knew how hard he was going to come out there in place he didn't have any choice at a certain point we didn't believe that we could lose and all of a sudden it was earl the pearl show monroe was averaging more than 40 points per game his senior year the man with the amazing spin move and equally memorable nickname put the rams on his back and led the team to an undefeated regular season uh good supporting cast man earl you made sure earl took the ball every time down court i mean i shot over 60 that year so you know that's why guys wanted me to continue shooting and all that kind of stuff if he took 200 shots we didn't care okay so all we wanted to do was win you know we had some other good players on the team you know besides myself i mean smiley averaged about 18 points a game we averaged about 15 and we had johnny watkins about 10. so you know we were really a formidable team i think the whole city was exciting you know you'd walk into a store or a place to eat or whatever like has anybody heard how they've done what's sam steve's doing you know i think everybody was really excited people wanted to see us i mean we were a show i think everyone in north carolina knew about winston-salem state university basketball certainly they knew about earl monroe and he was a larger-than-life figure i can remember as a youth you know thinking about him and there would be people coming from eastern north carolina to winston-salem just to see him play everybody wanted to go you got a car and you arrived to the colosseum black and white side by side watching some of the best basketball in the country was the ultimate validation of gaines's approach to race relations they packed the coliseum i mean absolutely packed it and proved to the world that that little round ball was the focus of everybody's attention nobody cared who sat beside them or who sat behind them or in front of them it was a beautiful relationship people come up talk to you and they said hey we'd love to see you guys play you guys or really play as a team people went to the coliseum to see basketball now i'm not saying outside the basketball game everybody all of a sudden changed and said oh boy life is perfect but at the basketball game that's how it was but in winston-salem it had a lot to do with people saying hey you know this is the guy's the same as me he's rooting like heck for his team so am i the way they play and the type of sportsmanship that they exemplified they created an environment of acceptance in the city in which we reside i do think that that particular team was kind of responsible for the race relations in our area at that time it laid the groundworks for things to come after you know everybody knew about winston-salem everybody wanted to go see winston-salem state play and it had to affect you know folks in a positive way coming off the school's first ever undefeated regular season the rams had one goal defend their conference tournament title and clinch a bid to the ncaa division ii tournament when we went to somebody's school it was like we would ah we got this our eagles were all out of the stratosphere we're now 24-0 we're the number one seed we got the player of the year we're going to the ciaa tournament to win it winston-salem defeated hampton in the first round up next were perennial rivals north carolina amt in their first two meetings of the season the rams had won both games third time around though the aggies were ready for them we would have to talk about north carolina and see uh we beat ant twice during the year and it's always hard to beat somebody the third time and i saw earl in his own or an attitude that i had never seen before emotionally he was like disconnected the hell earl couldn't do nothing right he could throw the ball in the middle like ocean coach gaines told me about you know earl might have been sick earl said he was a little sick under the weather um big house had some other choice expletives about that game where earl didn't wasn't really playing his best it was just like he was either hurt or the the he lost something in there but he wasn't himself i could see that his helmet this show is kind of human a man had a bad game and we was unable to uh uh put the pieces together without his big piece and uh you gotta say we was kind of lost without him that day the aggies held monroe to just 20 points as he made only seven of his 26 shots and crushed the rams 105 to 82. with an undefeated season gone the rams start their ncaa title mission was over as well they came to beat me up that game and they succeeded we just kind of felt as though we had just lost the season coach gaines came in and he said well listen you know we'll just wait and see where we're going to go from here usually it was the champion of the league that gets the ncaa bid but because they lost they thought they weren't going to make the tournament but they did make the tournament because their regular season record was so good um so when they made the tournament they had to get the team together to say okay hey we got we're going to play we're still playing we're still playing stung by the loss of their cia tournament title the rams refocused on their season goal the ncaa division ii championship in the first round they cruised by baldwin wallace 91-76 in the second round came a stern test akron and their star bob something smith monroe has scored 53 points against the zips in their 92-84 regular season victory but this time the game was on akron's court where the zips had won 52 straight we went to akron now i had never witnessed this in my life they had 5 000 people at our warm-up and they had a sign up there i've never forgotten earl monroe is just a myth he can't compare to something smith they had his fault he thought he was so good he was the blowing kisses our schoolmates and that really agitated us earl responded to the challenge with 49 points as the rams silenced the hostile acting crowd winning 88 to 80. i never knew something first name ain't nothing been in a nice big room bed we flying in the plane and we're not riding in those station wagons we're not interested in going back soon we wanted to stay here i said we got to go out here and fight and fight they did the rams reached the championship game in evansville indiana by soundly beating long island and kentucky wesleyan in the next two rounds awaiting them in the title showdown was southwest missouri at 23 and 4 the bears stood as a formidable obstacle to the rams making history now when we left to go out there we went with a purpose and we knew uh our chances were great we had one of the greatest ball players in the country and we started realizing that we had something special here going on coach clarence gaines was one game away from leading an hbcu to an ncaa national championship the telegrams plastered to his hotel room wall showed that his city believed in him and his team win or lose big house had become a symbol of hope you grew up black in america and you're on that stage you're doing those type of things you realize it means a lot he just doesn't have winston-salem state supporting him he's got the whole ciaa family support and i'm sure he's got the whole black community in the state of north carolina supporting him the gaines was a kind of a raw raw kind of guy pregame speech everybody was quiet he said opportunity does at each and every door knock but it has yet been known to pick a lock and walked out what the hell is he talking about but you know after a while we got to understand that you know that opportunity every door duck knock was never been known to pick a lot you got to be able to go yourself and be able to decipher and whatnot and how to get in that door hi everybody this is the championship game of the ncaa college division basketball finals from roberts stadium in evansville indiana we weren't supposed to win because that was the thing that the papers have written you know we just said well we ain't worrying about it cause we got the best guy in the world and with that knowledge the rams took the court for the biggest game of their lives at guard number 10 earl monroe got there for 6-4 senior from philadelphia averaging 42.2 a game more than 6 000 fans were on hand to witness history winston-salem controls the tip driving him to lay it in johnny watkins for the first two points of the ball game he was just in the moment the crowd nothing was just focused on playing and playing the game nice news look out monroe 31-26 they had heard about earl but they hadn't seen her monroe we're going to need another machine up here jody if the rams were nervous they didn't show it early on monroe led winston-salem state with 19 points to put his team up 37-34 at the half i've seen some of the game on film and you know you know the commentators on the film and i saw one of them the commentators had to leave and said during the game well jody with 16 16 remaining in the game i have to make my exit to head for indianapolis you know i remember that on on film english with a rebound i don't want to leave jordan as monroe sets it up i'll say goodbye and uh it's all yours jody see if you can bring the bears home a winner the bears though were not going away from midway through the second half they took the lead he had called time out that they wanted their son you're tired well this ain't the time to be tired he said you work hard for it this is it this is it if you want this is yours if you want it some of the guys were getting a little nervous a little unsure of themselves and coach needed to uh inject some of the fatherly coaching that he did in his own special way and once that was done it brought our level of aggression back monroe wasn't driving he has it and he's fouled on the play with just under three minutes left the rams proved they really wanted it they grabbed the lead and refused to let it go i'll tell you monroe was 36 71 to 70. monroe i've never seen anything like this he is something else three-point lead watch him witnessing earl the pearl hammer that ball says i don't want to score any ball he said i just want to dribble this out the rams from winston-salem college win it i remember sam jones doing that against the 76ers you throw the ball up in the air so by the time it comes down the game's over there you see the final scoreboard 77-74 earl to pearl finished with 40 points and when the buzzer sounded winston-salem state had become the first hbcu to win an ncaa national title at any level in any sport in our lives we hadn't reached any kind of pinnacle of that nature and it was like man what in the world has just happened we had no idea that we were the first hbcu to win a national championship we have no idea about that all we knew is that we had won and we were enthusiastic about that earl monroe untying the nets from the goal i never really got too up for down in terms of wins and losses and whatnot but this was obviously an accomplishment you know i looked at coach gaines and i felt a special connection so to speak with him right at that moment he put in the effort time and the work to build that program to build a team to get those players to get that connection and they finally got it right the triumph of winston-salem state resonated on both sides of highway 52 as the city gathered to welcome the team home we got back and god was coming off that plane and see the number of people out there black and white they were just cheering us on [Music] by now winston-salem state was part of winston-salem so it wasn't the black community welcomes winston-salem state back the whole community welcomed back it meant the world to winston-salem just because for four years they knew what earl the pearl could do and they watched it firsthand and to see him on a national stage and win the national championship like that i mean wake forest still hasn't won a national championship in basketball the four years that gaines and monroe spent together culminated in the school's only national championship in that brief period they achieved something much greater than hoop success however they laid the groundwork for progress while creating a legacy of pride that still resonates a half century later one winning the 1967 national championship was a highlight of my life having to wear a championship ring every day and have people ask me where is that i'm proudly say you know where it came from and how i got it everybody knew about winston-salem everybody wanted to go see winston-salem state play it had to affect you know folks in a positive way i think it created an environment to bring people together and most of all to be respectful and that's the biggest thing about bringing people together you respect me and i respect you man was about love that's my dad's legacy and that's why when you go back to my hometown that people still talk about him in that fashion because of love [Music] i'm not big on legacies i'm big on what did a guy do when he was here on this earth to do it and in the case a house he did it the right way it's what coach gains over the hump and i think that helping to make that happen is one of the great feelings of my life because he was such an inspiration not only to myself but to generations of former players and students of his in our hearts and in our minds the people that have been affected by him understand and know exactly who he is and what he's done for them [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] you

Channel: Clarence Gaines

Views: 1,829

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Id: 9X4SBIK0yt0

Length: 45min 41sec (2741 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021