Post by TheShadow on Sept 24, 2006 8:18:43 GMT -5
www.insidebayarea.com
Art Powell was unstoppable on field, and tried to stop discrimination off of it
By Jerry McDonald, STAFF WRITER
THE MAN Al Davis called "The T.O. of his time" got dumped by the Philadelphia Eagles.
Art Powell, like Terrell Owens, was a headstrong, independent free-thinker who discarded conventional wisdom as easily as he scored breathtaking touchdowns.
Pro football management, with one exception, wanted no part of him. Opponents and even some teammates felt the same way.
Powell would not conform to societal norms, challenging the last vestiges of the Jim Crow South when many other African-American athletes were keeping quiet.
The comparison to "T.O." by his former boss at a press conference elicits a chuckle from Powell. He is 69 years old and living in Aliso Viejo, not far from where he grew up in San Diego.
Powell can see the similarities between him and Owens. They were both basketball players who became extraordinarily gifted receivers. They were controversial, although as Powell points out, in very different ways.
Owens is a multi-million dollar talent in a billion-dollar industry. Powell played when racial quotas were commonplace and black players in Southern locales were housed separately from their white teammates.
"The challenges that were before me were social challenges," Powell said. "I chose to challenge'em while others chose not to challenge 'em. ... I made a lot of people angry."
Powell, having already posted big numbers with the New York Titans from 1960 through 1962, was brought by Davis to Oakland in 1963. In four seasons, he caught 254 passes for 4,491 yards and scored 50 touchdowns in 56 games.
At 6-foot-3, 211 pounds, Powell had great hands, the graceful stride of a sprinter and the size and strength to dominate defensive backs unencumbered by the limited-contact rules that currently exist in the NFL.
He played just one season at San JoseState in 1956 before leaving to play in Canada — leading the nation in receiving — and is regarded by some to be the best all-around athlete to attend the school.
Yet Powell's name draws blank stares not only from the most die-hard football fans, but also from current NFL players who don't know of the sacrifices he and others of his era made.
"I've heard about African-American kids playing baseball who don't know who Jackie Robinson is," Powell said. "If that's the case, no one is going to know who Art Powell is."
Powell grew up in San Diego and said he visited the library often as a youth, reading with particular interest about Robinson and Paul Robeson, an actor, athlete and singer who was in the forefront of the civil rights movement from the 1920s to the 1960s.
Still, Powell said it was never his intention to challenge the system.
"All I wanted to do was be a football player. Period," Powell said. "All this other stuff was dumped in my lap."
Those who know and played with Powell relate to the physical comparison with Owens, but reject the notion of the two being anything alike other than as receivers.
When Powell scored touchdowns, there was no dancing, no Sharpies, no raising his hands to the heavens on the Dallas star.
"The things Owens does are all self-serving, in my opinion, and I don't even know the guy," said Tom Flores, who played with Powell in both Oakland and Buffalo. "The things that Art did were because of beliefs that he had."
Howie Williams, a Raiders cornerback from 1964-69, believes Powell's experience living in Canada while playing in the Canadian Football League in 1958-59 helped shape his perspective.
"You're supposed to be free — he wanted to be free," Williams said. "He lived in Canada, so he'd been exposed to a different society. He didn't expect everyone to like him, but he was going to force Americans to be Americans."
Bill Walsh, the Raiders receivers coach in 1966, has known Powell since his days at San Jose State and has long admired his willingness to act on principle.
"Art was his own man and fiercely independent," Walsh said. "He was not afraid to voice his opinions and to take a stand."
Taking a stand
Owens' relationship with the Eagles was fractured over money. Powell was let go following his rookie season because he was the only one of a dozen African-American players who refused to play in a preseason game in Norfolk, Va.
"We were told colored ballplayers — that was the language in those days — would not be allowed to stay with the rest of the team in the hotel," Powell said. "I chose not to play. The other African-American ballplayers said they weren't going to play either. But they did play. ... It cost me my job."
The Eagles, Powell said, told him to go home and think about it. Meanwhile, the American Football League was formed, and Powell signed with the New York Titans.
In his first season, Powell caught 67 passes for 1,167 yards and 14 touchdowns, but wasn't prepared for what was to come the following season while on a trip to Greenville, S.C., for a preseason game.
"I had never been to a place with colored and white drinking fountains," Powell said.
When the Titans arrived, Powell said general manager Steve Sebo informed the approximately 15 black players they would not accompany the white players to the team hotel. While the white players boarded a bus and left, black players were taken to the outskirts of town.
"They had these old things called jitneys, little bitty trucks with small seats," Powell said. "When we drove in, it was like something you'd see in an old movie. You go through a dirt road, past a bunch of trees, to this place they called a 'colored only' resort.
"The swimming pool was like a swamp. There were no screens on the windows. There were mosquitoes and bugs as big as your fist. Of course the air conditioning doesn't work. So it's a hundred degrees out, and you're just laying on your bed sweating like crazy."
When the Titans played the Houston Oilers on Aug. 25, 1961, Powell again chose not to play.
"I told (GM) Steve Sebo I didn't think it was fair," Powell said. "You preach all year about team play, then you know darn well we're not going there as a team."
After the experience in Philadelphia, Powell did not attempt to get his African-American teammates to join him. He suited up and sat by himself on the bench, letting the hate wash over him like a summer thunderstorm.
"I heard things I had never heard before and haven't heard since, and I can recall every word," Powell said. "People in those days were getting killed, and I was sitting there in the wide open. You just don't know what's going to happen next, I just wanted to get out alive."
His actions, Powell said, angered not only his white teammates, but also black ones.
"They thought you were putting them out in front of a situation they didn't want to deal with," Powell said. "So I pretty much kept to myself. I didn't look for someone to side with me. You just made choices, and in my gut, I thought I made the right choice."
Al Davis came calling
Powell decided he wanted to leave the Titans, and financially strapped owner Harry Wismer allowed the receiver to sign with any team in 1963.
He said he began getting phone calls from George Ross, sports editor of the Oakland Tribune, and Scotty Stirling, a Tribune sports writer. They told Powell Al Davis was trying to reach him.
Powell said he thought Davis was still working on the staff of Sid Gillman with the San Diego Chargers. He was informed Davis had a new job — as head coach and general manager of the Oakland Raiders.
The Raiders were coming off consecutive seasons of 2-12 and 1-13. Powell, living in Toronto at the time, said he wasn't interested.
Davis called anyway.
"He told me he'd bought a plane ticket and for me to pick him up at the airport," Powell said. "My wife and I took Al to dinner. We went back to our apartment, and he told me how he was going to give me a chance to stretch out and show what kind of receiver I could really be. Being the salesman that he is, when he left, he had a signed contract with my name on it."
Playing before crowds averaging 17,435 at Frank Youell Field, on the grounds of what is now Laney College, Powell caught 73 passes for 1,304 yards and 16 touchdowns as the Raiders went from 1-13 to 10-4.
The following season, Powell saw a potential problem when he looked at the pre-season schedule. The Raiders were to play the New York Jets at Ladd Stadium in Mobile, Ala., on Aug. 23, 1963.
"We got information that we weren't going to stay together as a team," Powell said. "They were going to rope off a section for the colored fans to sit in, and the colored fans wouldn't be able to use the bathroom,"
Powell said he regarded it as, "my first big challenge with Al Davis, but it turned out it wasn't a challenge at all."
Davis, after consulting with Powell, Bo Roberson, Clem Daniels and Fred Williamson, switched the game to Youell Field.
"Al never put another game in the South during the time I was with the Raiders," Powell said.
The league, however, was another matter, scheduling the AFL All-Star game in New Orleans following the 1964 season. Powell was one of 23 African-American players who decided not to play because of the treatment of blacks at the Roosevelt Hotel and on Bourbon Street.
Sign of the times
African-American players couldn't ride in cabs, were denied entrance to restaurants and verbally abused at the hotel, Powell said. San Diego Chargers Ernie Ladd and Earl Faison said they were ordered to leave a nightclub at gunpoint by a bouncer. Powell said the players met at 2 a.m. to share their experiences.
They decided to leave town.
Powell, mindful of his experience in Philadelphia, produced a legal pad and asked them to sign their names.
Davis got involved, Powell said, and by the time he landed in New York en route to Toronto, the game had been moved to Houston.
In 1966, his fourth season with the Raiders, the club moved into the more spacious Coliseum. Powell was finally getting to play before some big crowds.
Yet Powell had a business opportunity in Toronto and told Davis he wanted to move on. He said Davis tried to talk him out of it. Eventually, he was traded to Buffalo along with Flores in exchange for Daryle Lamonica.
It was a great deal for Oakland. Lamonica was the perfect quarterback for the Raiders' vertical game, throwing 34 touchdown passes as the Raiders went 13-1 and won the AFL championship.
Buffalo, on the other hand, was a defense and run-oriented team with an antiquated offense.
"When we got there, we looked at our playbook and said, 'Geez. Is that all there is?,'" Flores said.
Powell sustained a knee injury that required surgery early in his first season with the Bills and was never the same. When coach Joe Collier insisted Powell practice every day after his recovery in order to play, Powell resisted.
"I had been a durable player for 10 years. But now it would take me all week just to be ready to play," Powell said. "I figured it was time to do something else."
He played for the Minnesota Vikings in 1968, a fringe player just as the league was exploding. The New York Jets and Joe Namath won Super Bowl III that year, beating the Baltimore Colts, but Powell was done as a player before the public could become aware of who he was or what he accomplished.
"It's a shame he never got to play after the leagues merged their schedules (in 1970) so people could really see what he could do," Walsh said.
A regrettable move
Powell lives quietly with Betty, his wife of 49 years, in a home which he said has no memorabilia or hint of his days as a professional athlete. He has two grown daughters and six grandchildren.
He is recovering from knee replacement surgery and looking forward to getting back on the golf course.
Even now, Powell wonders how his career would have been different had he stayed in Oakland.
"Not every decision you make goes well," Powell said. "I regret it more than Mr. Davis does. There is no doubt playing for the Raiders would have been the best way to finish my career. No doubt.
"You make a decision, you live with it."