In early days of integration, Woodrow player set the tone
02:02 AM CDT on Sunday, May 3, 2009
In her Feb. 25, 1968, column on African-American affairs for The Dallas Morning News, Julia Scott Reed opened with this paragraph on John Paul McCrumbly:
"It isn't often that a 15-year-old Negro boy is the weekend guest in the home of the district attorney and is chosen as a captain of a predominantly white football team."
Whether charming Dallas County's legendary DA, Henry Wade, or, later, becoming Woodrow Wilson's first black football star, McCrumbly found a home among Woodrow's faithful.
Both sides made sure of it.
McCrumbly remembers a football assistant, Bruno Kimbrell, visiting his home. Had it not been for integration, John Paul and his older brother, Donald Ray, would have gone to Madison. Woodrow coaches wanted to avoid any transition problems. Kimbrell asked the brothers' mother, Mary Lou Houston, "how to deal" with her sons, and this is what she told him:
"All you have to do is sit down and talk to them, and there won't be any trouble."
Not if Houston had anything to do with it.
"I'm sending my boys over here for an education," she would tell Woodrow's head coach, Cotton Miles. "I expect them to act right, do right and be good citizens."
They were as good as her word and even better on the field. John Paul, especially. At 6-2 and 230 pounds, he played fullback and middle linebacker. His junior year, when Woodrow made the state semifinals, he rushed for more than 1,400 yards and scored 19 touchdowns.
"John Paul was very popular," said Miles, now 85. "There was even a battle cry.
"Every Friday night, you could hear a thousand people saying, 'Give the ball to John Paul.' "
The coaches didn't argue when it came to that kind of talent. But McCrumbly made himself into a player, too. In seventh grade, he suffered from asthma so severe, he could barely walk, much less run. Every day after school, he strapped weights to his ankles and wrists and walked laps around campus. In time, the breathing problems abated, and his talent emerged.
And as for any problems at a predominantly white school?
"When we went up there to Woodrow, we just asked them to meet us halfway," McCrumbly said. "There was no name-calling or anything like that.
"Now, other teams did, but it didn't make no difference to us."
McCrumbly, now 55, would go on to play at Texas A&M and briefly with the Buffalo Bills before returning to the Dallas ISD, where he's worked in security ever since.
But his experience at Woodrow was special, never more so than last weekend, when he was inducted into its Hall of Fame.
"It was a privilege, coming through the neighborhood in that parade," he said.
"I'm real proud to be a Wildcat."
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