Flipping through a dated scrapbook was a pretty common activity for my twelve-year-old self. Sometimes I’d read the headlines but mostly I’d just be mesmerized by the black-and-white photos. For as long as I could remember my father’s press clippings had captivated me. Images of #23 flying through the air, striking fear into the hearts of all the wide receivers that dared line up across from him. The psychedelic purple-and-red scrapbooks were as familiar a sight to me as the grade-school photos of my sister that adorned the side of the refrigerator. And like distant relatives, they would show up unexpectedly on holidays or family gatherings. If I was questioned by any of my friends regarding my dad’s exploits on the football field, the books served as tangible evidence — physical proof that my dad played, and that he did so at the highest level. As a kid, convincing others of your father’s toughness was, and probably still is, part of the neighbourhood bragging routine.
But then one time, as I flipped through the press clippings and photos I had seen hundreds of times, a certain headline caught my attention:
“A Black Player Wants To Coach.”
As children we don’t always understand the hardships and adversities, the highs and lows, the constant sacrifices that so many of our parents and ancestors endured, all to make it possible for us to live the lives we do. This particular article was in no way written to suggest that a “black player” could not coach; rather, it was written to shed light on the fact that the coaching ranks and front offices remained, as the author put it, “remarkably pale.” In the forty-two years since that article was written, I have learned a great deal about my father and so many others just like him. Because behind the black-and-white images we see in scrapbooks and in old highlight reels were men who endured the kind of racism that my generation could only begin to imagine. And yet despite this they thrived, making lives and careers for themselves as family men, coaches, educators, and community leaders.
As a co-producer on the film version of this book, I experienced an awakening of sorts. Throughout the sometimes long, drawn-out, tedious process of making a documentary, I felt as though I was taking my own journey. Just as many of the men in this story uprooted their own lives and moved to another country in the hope of realizing a dream of something greater than just a sport, I began to feel as if I were riding right alongside them aboard the Gridiron Underground. With every thought they had, I had the same one. With every experience they went through, I wondered what I would have done in that same situation, whether being refused a meal with the rest of my teammates or being unable to drink from a water fountain because it was designated “whites only.” The latter was my own father’s experience growing up in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s in Denton, Texas, where the heat could reach ungodly temperatures in the summer. With each of these stories, these stops along the route to our destination, I was learning more about myself.
Out of all my time with the Toronto Argonauts, the 2004 Grey Cup game particularly stands out. Not just because we won but because there was something happening that was much larger than football. There was Michael “Pinball” Clemons becoming the first black coach to win a Grey Cup. We had Damon Allen at quarterback, a position that to this day still draws a large amount of attention, especially in the States, particularly if the man playing it has a certain skin colour. And finally, there was me, a son playing in the same game his father came to play in this country some thirty-two years before. Even the halftime show was headlined by the legendary Gord Downie, a man who some years down the line would bring national attention to the horrors of the residential school system with his album Secret Path. There was just something about that night that made it seem larger than football — we were breaking down walls.
When we look at the current state of professional sports, we see the re-emergence of the kind of athlete-driven activism that occurred in the 1960s, from individuals like Muhammad Ali who drew support from the Cleveland Summit, a collection of the best black professional athletes across all sports in 1967, to iconoclasts like John Carlos and Tommie Smith, who are remembered for raising their fists in protest at conditions in their own country for Black Americans. (What many people don’t know or remember is that John Carlos played one season in the CFL with the Montreal Alouettes.) Current crusaders such as Colin Kaepernick, Michael Bennett, Lebron James, and others have shown that they want to create a legacy larger than any on-field accomplishments and that they’re willing to sacrifice their careers and financial sponsorships to speak out about the injustices happening around the world.
As a second-generation CFL kid, I sometimes feel as though I am the product of not just a country but also a league. My father came to Canada for an opportunity, and he found it. Not just to play a sport but to live a life, meet a woman, raise a family, and give back to a game that provided him so much.
Since that article I discovered as a twelve-year-old kid, Black Americans have made advances in the coaching ranks. And yet in the NFL, where 70 percent of the players are black, there is still no black representation in ownership. In university athletic departments across North America, women and people of colour still remain underrepresented in leadership positions.
So where does this leave us? We all still ride that train, and each of us may face some of the same ups and downs our ancestors experienced on our individual journeys. But, like those passengers who came before us, it’s up to us to ensure that the next generation’s ride is a little smoother.
— John Williams Jr.
November 2018