The player was being pelted with baby bottles. His teammates surrounded him in an act of solidarity, protecting their most valuable player from further damage. Bottles bounced off shoulder pads and helmets. These were not the lightweight plastic bottles of today but Pyrex bottles that could crack heads open. They arced through the air like arrows launched from distant battlements.
He wondered if there was some significance that he was missing. That the throwing of baby bottles represented a statement about the colour of his skin. Baby bottles hold milk; milk is white.
He was black.
No, that would be too simple. And literal. Maybe he was being infantilized for the colour of his skin, like he was a not quite fully formed human being. He had heard of bananas being thrown somewhere. Go back to Africa, ya great ape! But baby bottles?
He would look back on that singular event years later and ask with true wonderment, “Can you imagine? People throwing baby bottles and yelling at me to get me off the field?”
The thing is that we can imagine. It’s hard to be surprised anymore by what people are capable of, especially knowing the history of the injustices perpetrated against black people over the last three centuries.
Bernie Custis was still perplexed by such behaviour more than sixty years later. Bernie Custis was a civilized man. He was a schoolteacher, a principal. He coached young football players at the junior, college, and university levels for over thirty years. He won awards, was honoured for those accomplishments. He considered it a vocation, not a career, mentoring the young. And part of that mentoring was teaching students and athletes the nature of respect.
Haddonfield, New Jersey, the site of the bizarre baby-bottle incident, is a borough in Camden County, New Jersey, about a twenty-five-minute drive from Philadelphia on the Interstate across the Delaware River. With a good arm and a hurricane behind you, you could probably fling a baby bottle from Bernie Custis’s childhood home in South Philadelphia and have it land at the fifty-yard line in the Haddonfield stadium. For Custis, it might as well have been a thousand miles from the tough but tightly knit mixed-race, working-class neighbourhood where he grew up. Everybody there knew everybody, and for the most part they got along. No one was better or worse off than anyone else. His father had a good job at Westinghouse, and Bernie and his three sisters and brother had a fairly comfortable upbringing.
“My dad was someone who made friends with everyone and he had a lot of friends there, of all races,” said Bernie from the comfort of his easy chair in the den of his home at the end of a Burlington, Ontario, cul-de-sac. This was our first meeting. I didn’t know it then, but he would become the central figure in the Gridiron Underground film. “And I think through him and his experiences, I learned, and so did my brothers and sisters, that you judge everyone by the content of their character and nothing else.”
Bernie, who would go on to teach public school for close to forty years in the Hamilton region, learned early the difference a good teacher could make in a young person’s life. For Bernie, that was a physical education teacher in his elementary school who recognized not only Bernie’s tremendous athletic potential but also his intelligence. High schools, especially in working-class, poor, or black neighbourhoods, were already streaming students into vocational courses to feed the labour force.
“He was concerned that I was involved with a number of the youngsters who were destined to attend vocational schools. And I had shown that I was capable of handling academic programs. And he sort of guided me to go to an academic high school rather than follow my buddies into a vocational school.”
That guidance led to John Bartram High School, built in 1939 at the intersection of 67th Street and Elmwood Avenue, a predominantly upper-middle-class white neighbourhood in Southwest Philadelphia. The school, built in the art-deco style of the period, was named after John Bartram, “the father of American botany” and co-founder with Benjamin Franklin of the American Philosophical Society. Small wonder it earned a reputation as one of the top academic high schools in Philadelphia. But the trustees of John Bartram were looking to develop a top-notch athletic program to go with their academic pedigree, and in the States a reputation for excellence begins with a successful football program.
The second Bernie laid eyes on the school and the athletic facilities, he knew this was the place for him. He didn’t care that the neighbourhood was overwhelmingly white or that he would be one of ten black teenagers in a student body of over three thousand. John Bartram was actively courting top local black athletes. Despite the long daily commute by trolley to get to and from school, Bernie Custis embraced the new opportunity. He would be getting the education he desired and the kind of exposure that could lead to a university athletic scholarship. Even back then, he was looking at the long game.
The day Bernie’s high-school football team, the John Bartram High Braves, set out for that game in Haddonfield back in 1946, “Cus,” as he was known to his coach and teammates, had no idea what kind of reception lay in wait for him. He had participated in track, basketball, and baseball in and around the Philadelphia area without incident. Signs that this day was going to be different emerged when the bus stopped for a team meal at a roadside diner outside Haddonfield.
“This was probably my first introduction to segregation because I noticed that when the waitress put water down at the table for all the players, she skipped me. And it hit me: ‘Uh-oh, I think I’m in a situation where segregation has entered the picture.’ I saw the waitresses in a huddle in the corner, and finally one of them came over and said, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t serve blacks.’ My coach overheard this as well as a number of players, and it caused quite a disturbance.”
I remember thinking at the time that Bernie was being old-school, choosing the term “segregation” over the more familiar “racism.” Later, I realized that he had accurately defined the difference. If the waitress had simply ignored him or refused to serve him because she didn’t like black people, that was racist. But because the restaurant had a policy in place that enforced the separation by race, though still racist policy, it had become, in Bernie’s words, “a situation where segregation has entered the picture.”
In a scene reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s fit of pique in Five Easy Pieces, his coach took his arm and swiped the whole table clean of glasses then announced to the whole restaurant, “Let’s get out of here. Because if Cus can’t eat somewhere, we’re not eating there either!”
It would make for a great scene in a film of Bernie’s story, the white coach standing up for the rights of the lone black teenager on his team. Unless you were that black kid. Bernie appreciated that his teammates had rallied around him following their coach’s lead, but he burned with humiliation at being thrust centre stage in this roadside-diner drama. He wished there had been a simpler, quieter way of extricating himself from the situation. He was just a kid who happened to be black. Rare is the teenager who wants to be the focus of attention, let alone a target of animosity or, worse, pity, in the outside adult world.
Not to sell his coach short for making a grand gesture against racism, but the situation was also an excellent opportunity for the coach to unite the team around a rallying point. See, everyone’s against us, they don’t want us to win — let’s win this one for Cus! As it turned out, the team boarded the bus, drove down the road, and went to another restaurant where everyone was fed without incident. But the table had now been set for the main course: the game against Haddonfield.
When the baby bottles began to fly at the football field, it took Bernie a minute to realize that he was the intended target. Can you imagine? He knew it was out of the question to rush into the stands and reprimand a crowd of frenzied football parents for poor sportsmanship, so he decided that excellence on the field might be the best form of revenge. He went out and scored six touchdowns on the day “with a smile on my face.” As the teams were leaving the field, bottles were once again launched at Bernie. This time he found himself protected not only by a phalanx of teammates along with his older brother, James, but also by members of the Haddonfield team, who all wanted to shake Bernie’s hand — to acknowledge his prolific offensive game and to apologize for their idiotic parents.
That same year, Syracuse came calling with an offer of a full scholarship to play football. The Syracuse football program had fallen on hard times and they were looking to rebuild under Coach Reaves “Ribs” Baysinger. Syracuse was not the only team that approached Bernie about football, but they were the first and that meant something to Bernie. As with John Bartram, it was love at first sight when Bernie visited the Syracuse campus with its aesthetic design combination of beaux arts and Georgian Revival, with wide avenues and green spaces, students lounging and reading or bustling to and fro, books tucked under arms. As a kid from South Philly, he felt that he had been granted admittance to the realm of privilege and academia, and he didn’t have to kick down any doors to get there. He just had to carry a football.
When he entered through the hallowed arches of Archbold Stadium, which is built in the style of the Roman Colosseum, and stood on the grass at midfield, his gaze turning to take in the rows of concrete tiers, he could be excused for feeling overwhelmed by its grandeur. But that sense of awe did not last long. Bernie never lacked for confidence and he saw Archbold Stadium as the perfect stage to showcase his future exploits. He would be the gladiator that the fans came to see defeat all challengers. He could not wait to get started.
By 1947, the year Bernie came to Syracuse, the school had more than doubled its pre-war student population. More and more students, including black students, were finding opportunities to attend major universities following the war through the education benefits and initiatives provided by the GI Bill. Universities, particularly in the north, were looking to recruit star athletes regardless of colour to enhance their athletic programs, especially their football teams. College football reigned supreme, as the professional version of the game had yet to achieve the level of idolatry it now enjoys. Archbold Stadium routinely held 30,000-plus fans for a football game, although attendance had tailed off in the last couple of years because the team had fallen on hard times. Even with the recent influx of recruits, Bernie and lineman Horace Morris were the only black players and the first to suit up with the Syracuse Orangemen since Wilmeth Sidat-Singh in the 1930s, the infamous “Hindu” ballplayer.
Sidat-Singh was born Wilmeth Webb to black parents. His father, a pharmacist, died when Wilmeth was only seven. His mother then remarried an Indian doctor, Samuel Sidat-Singh, and Wilmeth Webb assumed his last name. Whether or not Syracuse officials knew that Sidat-Singh was black and not Indian, they certainly encouraged him to act the role of the latter to the extent that they once even suggested he might start wearing a turban around the campus. He didn’t do it, but though he never pretended to be anything but African-American, he was tagged with the moniker “Hindu.”
“Have you ever been to India?” a reporter would ask.
“No, I’ve never been to India,” Wilmeth would answer truthfully, and someone would write that the Hindu running back had never seen his ancestral homeland.
It was not until a Washington reporter wrote a profile of Sidat-Singh before a big game against the University of Maryland that the truth came out — the star “Hindu” halfback was not Indian at all. The news that he was, in fact, a black man proved shocking. In Maryland, no black player had ever taken the field either for the university or against them. Presumably, a member of any colour or any race would be welcomed as a combatant on the Maryland gridirons, as long as they weren’t a Negro. The University of Maryland, in its infinite wisdom, refused to allow its football team to take the field against Syracuse if Sidat-Singh played.
And so Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, the man that famed sportswriter Grantland Rice called the greatest forward passer of his day, did not dress that day. Syracuse had capitulated to Maryland’s racist ultimatum.
Bernie, who was an avid reader and enjoyed languages — he had studied Latin and Spanish in high school — enrolled in the school of journalism, which was considered one of the best programs in the country. He aspired to be more than a football player. Football was just a means to an end. Unlike the majority of his teammates, he loved learning, and he harboured dreams of becoming a writer one day. His romance with knowledge did not last long, however. The heads of the athletics program began pressuring Bernie to change courses. The journalism program involved a heavy workload, and the powers-that-be did not want their star quarterback’s brain clogged with a bunch of ideas, opinions, and concepts when the rest of his body was required on the field. They wanted Bernie’s mind on football and only football.
Bernie, in his laid-back fashion, could see their point. “After all, they were paying my way,” he said, “so I decided to switch to a liberal arts program.”
In Bernie’s first season at Syracuse he won the starting quarterback position with the freshmen team. The following year, 1948, Bernie became the starting quarterback on the varsity team, becoming the first black player to quarterback a major (white) U.S. university’s football team. The team, however, was dreadful and won only one game all season. The lone bright spot was the play of Bernie Custis, who, despite the team’s 1–8 record, was named All-East quarterback. By the end of the second season, the campus was in open revolt against the head coach. No fewer than three Syracuse University committees undertook investigations into Baysinger’s competency as a football coach: the board of trustees, the Varsity Club, and the student body. After three months of fact-finding, opinion-taking, and witch-hunting, all three committees came to the same conclusion. Reaves Baysinger had to go. The man they called “Ribs” and his entire coaching staff were summarily dismissed.
The person brought in to replace Baysinger was Floyd Burdette “Ben” Schwartzwalder, who had transformed the football team at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, from a mediocre passel of local boys into one of the nation’s powerhouses through a combination of astute recruiting and an innovative offensive system. In 1947, Coach Schwartzwalder had led the Mules to a 9–1 record and a national championship over St. Bonaventure at the Tobacco Bowl in Kentucky. The next season they went 9–1 as well, but this time they declined an offer to play at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida.
Where Baysinger had been more of a father figure to his players, Schwartzwalder was distant, a strict disciplinarian who preached a tough-nosed brand of football. He switched the Syracuse offence from its previous “I” formation to a “wing-T,” with Bernie under centre playing a more traditional quarterback position with the option of handing off to one of the three backs, keeping the ball himself, or passing. The Orangemen finished that 1949 season with a record of 4–5. It wasn’t a huge turnaround in terms of wins and losses, but they were far more competitive in the games they lost. Bernie was a revelation. He had had a strong arm from an early age, working on passing drills with his older brother in vacant lots growing up. But Bernie blossomed under Schwartzwalder’s system, earning the nickname “the Arm” from the local Syracuse sportswriters.
Bernie passed for 1,121 yards in 1949, a school record (although nothing spectacular in comparison to today’s more pass-oriented game). His breakout season almost single-handedly rejuvenated interest in the football team on campus and throughout the city. The school had to add six thousand seats to Archbold Stadium during the off-season to accommodate the demand for tickets. Syracuse football was once again the only show in town.
There was much expected of the team for the 1950 season and even more expected of Bernie Custis. That season, only three black quarterbacks would play at least one down of football at a major university in the whole country, and two of those went to Syracuse: Bernie and his backup, Avatus Stone. Stone was mainly a defensive safety and punter who might take a few snaps from centre in the midst of a Syracuse blowout to give Bernie a rest. He did play most of one game, a loss, when Bernie was injured and unable to play. As a writer with the Syracuse Post-Standard noted, Avatus Stone was no Bernie Custis: “Avatus Stone, brilliant Orange safety man and star punter, filled in well for Custis last week, but he doesn’t have Custis’ experience or ball-handling abilities, and it is this latter feature that probably spelled doom for [Syracuse].”
“Spelled doom for Syracuse”? There’s a sportswriter who didn’t shy away from hyperbole. Then again, football was serious business. And because of this serious business of football, black players were under greater scrutiny by their overlords, the board of trustees, than any others. This was where Avatus Stone ran into trouble. He was, in common parlance, a ladies’ man. To be more specific, a white ladies’ man. And in 1950 at Syracuse, as well as every other major university, north and south, that was a no-no. It may very well be that Avatus Stone, as backup quarterback, took the heat from the trustees in place of the starter, Bernie, who played it coy whenever the subject of “the ladies” came up during our conversations. He would only admit to a few “girlfriends.” Nothing drastic happened to Stone, who maintained his place on the team, but for years incoming black athletes, including Syracuse greats Jim Brown and Ernie Davis, were warned, “Don’t be an Avatus Stone!”
The night Bernie remembered most was the night he came back to his dorm “in the wee wee hours” after an evening out before a big game against Penn State, only to find Coach Schwartzwalder parked in his car outside the building, awaiting Bernie’s arrival. Curfew missed; not even close. Bernie’s punishment was simple but effective. Instead of being allowed to ride on the team bus with his teammates all the way to Penn State, he would be the lone passenger in Coach Schwartzwalder’s car. It was the longest and most excruciating car ride he had ever experienced, 250 miles passed in utter silence except for the vibrating waves of fury emanating from the unspeaking driver.
Bernie laughed in remembering that day. “Wouldn’t you know that I had one of my greatest games that day. I set a total offence record, running and passing, and we beat Penn State. [Schwartzwalder] was probably the most shocked individual in the world. And I took it in stride. You know, at that time in my life things were going pretty well and I was a bit cocky, so I just let it pass.”
But Schwartzwalder was not about to let Bernie off that easy, especially since the punishment had failed to have the humbling effect intended. So he confiscated Bernie’s car keys for a week.
“I deserved it,” said Bernie with a smile.
In the last home game of the 1950 season, the Syracuse stadium announcer introduced the senior members of the team, those who would be departing the next year, one by one at halftime. They saved Bernie’s name for last and he received a standing ovation from close to 40,000 fans. It was a moment that his sister, Joan, who was nine years Bernie’s junior, his parents, Hezekiah (Hezzie) and Nellie, and his brother, James, would never forget. For three years they had driven from Philadelphia to Syracuse for those Saturday afternoon home games, leaving at one or two in the morning after Hezekiah got off his 4–12 night shift at Westinghouse.
As Joan remembers, “At that time there was only one or two other African-American players on the team so with us being there a lot of the fans knew that we were probably related to one of the players. And when they found out we were Bernie’s family that was great.”
Bernie ended his three-year varsity career at Syracuse with 196 completions and close to 3,000 yards passing, accomplished with a conservative offence that stressed the running game. He set individual records that would last for twenty-five years. The icing on the cake that senior year was the invitation he received to play quarterback in the annual East-West Shrine Game, which pitted the best collegiate football players in the land against one another. The game, an end-of-football-season tradition, would be played at the Cow Palace stadium in San Francisco. Bernie was named starting quarterback for the East squad. He was over the moon. He was being recognized on a national scale for his hard work, determination, and achievements.
And then the Shrine committee asked for a publicity photo of Bernie to help advertise the game. Only then did they discover that their All-Star quarterback attraction was black. Since 1925 when the first East-West Shrine Game was played, there had never been a black quarterback. The organizers immediately called Syracuse to tell them that Bernie Custis would not be the East starting quarterback. He had been disinvited from the big game. No reason was ever given, no explanation, nothing. They left it to Syracuse officials to deliver the bad news to Bernie.
Can you imagine?
Bernie was devastated. The disappointment followed him his whole life, whenever he remembered what it felt like to have such an honour bestowed, a national recognition of personal achievement, and then have it cruelly ripped away. No one had the guts to tell him why. They didn’t have to, of course; he knew. Clearly, not everyone lived by Bernie’s father’s code that you judged a person on the content of his/her character and nothing else. There had never been a black starting quarterback in the East-West Shrine Game and 1950 would be no exception. A history of racial exclusion had been spun as “tradition.”
Bernie took a lot of abuse in his playing days at Syracuse. An extra shot given at the end of a tackle. Things said by opposing players at the line of scrimmage. We call it “trash-talking” now, things said by an opponent to get a player off his game, get him thinking about retaliation rather than his immediate task. But today any trash talk that smacks of racism is nipped in the bud, perpetrators dealt with harshly by league officials. Not so back then. A player more or less had to take it and move on. Bernie could deal with that stuff; he just let his game do the talking. But this rescindment on the basis of colour, by a committee whose sole purpose was to bring together the best players in America, was a cheap shot that made all others he had endured pale in comparison.
“I guess there are moments when you are hurt by incidents.” He paused, looking for the right word. “Or disappointed.” He nods. Yes, that’s more what he meant: disappointment in the behaviour of other human beings. “I really felt I deserved to be there. And what are you going to do? At that time it was something that just happened. And if it happened you took it in stride and just carried on.”
No one was going to shed any tears for Bernie, least of all Bernie. He was used to being hit hard, bouncing back up from the turf, hiding his pain. And when one door closes, another opens. In Bernie’s case a door opened as the Cleveland Browns called his name in the eleventh round of the NFL draft. He showed up at training camp in Toledo, Ohio, expecting to vie for the position of quarterback, even though he knew there was little chance of usurping the starting position from the incumbent, Otto Graham. The Browns had won the NFL Championship the year previously behind Graham, and he was considered one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game. But Bernie had the confidence that he could beat out the other quarterbacks in camp for the backup spot. That, in itself, would be a major accomplishment. So, on the first day of camp, Bernie lined up with the quarterbacks.
An assistant coach came over and asked him what he was doing. He told Bernie that he was going to be a free safety on defence, so he should get his ass on over where the defensive backs were running drills. Defensive back? Bernie figured that there had to be some mistake, some screw-up in the paperwork. The coach must have had him confused with somebody else, some actual defensive back who had played that position in college. Why would anyone expect a quarterback to play defensive back? It didn’t make sense. He asked to see Paul Brown, the legendary head coach and general manager of the Browns. Coach Brown would figure out the mistake and set this smug assistant straight.
“After practice, Paul met with me, and he said, ‘Bernie, I feel that you’re capable of playing quarterback and that you’re ahead of your time … but there are no black quarterbacks in the NFL at this time. There will eventually be black quarterbacks. But I’d like you to play safety and see how that works out there.’ I balked at that. I told him that I feel I can play quarterback if given an opportunity. And he said, ‘I will deal with the situation.’”
Paul Brown was, in fact, sympathetic. He had the luxury of having Otto Graham on his team, the best in the game. But even having a black player as backup quarterback was out of the question. Brown was straight with Bernie and Bernie appreciated that. Cleveland and the rest of the NFL teams were not ready to take that next step in the evolution of race equality on the gridirons of America. So Brown looked around for other options on behalf of his player.
“He met me the next day, and he said, ‘I know you want the opportunity to compete at quarterback but I’m sorry to say, Bernie, that that opportunity will not present itself here in Cleveland … but there are teams in Canada that have been enquiring about you and if you want to go there you will be given the opportunity to play quarterback.’ I said I would prefer to go there.” Brown would release Bernie to teams from Canada, but no other team in the NFL could sign Bernie without trading for his rights from the Browns. As Bernie put it, “He traded me to Canada.” The next thing Bernie knew he was on a train from Toledo to his new home in Hamilton, Ontario.
Like most Americans, Bernie knew very little about Canada. He knew a list of cities’ names: Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and, surprisingly, Hamilton, but that was about it. He knew that Hamilton was close to Buffalo and that Buffalo was two hours from Syracuse and that Philadelphia was another six to seven hours (pre-Interstate) from Syracuse. He liked the idea of being as close to the U.S. border as possible. If he got homesick or fed up with Canadian football he wouldn’t have far to go to get home.
He arrived in the Hamilton train station at 2:00 a.m. All he had was a suitcase and the address of a boarding house courtesy of the Hamilton front office. He found the boarding house, found his room, and crept in quietly so as not to disturb his roommate … and that’s when it hit, the most powerful stench he’d ever encountered: stink-foot so bad it brought tears to his eyes. This is a man who had spent years in gyms, locker rooms, playing fields, and dorm rooms, yet he had never experienced a form of body odour to rival that of his mysterious sleeping roommate. This was poisoned-gas-in-the-trenches stuff. He tried to sleep but the fumes from the other man’s feet filled his nasal passages and turned his stomach. Bernie got up, put his clothes back on, and left the boarding house.
He ended up walking the streets of Hamilton, with the lingering stench of those feet in his clothes, until the Tiger-Cats’ offices opened later that morning. The first thing he did was announce his arrival and beg for a change of address. He badly needed a decent night’s sleep. When he walked onto the field at Civic Stadium (later renamed Ivor Wynne Stadium) to introduce himself to head coach Carl Voyles, he was not exactly welcomed with open arms. Voyles chastised him for being late to camp, a head-scratcher in itself since Bernie had come directly from the Cleveland Browns’ training camp. Voyles then provided Bernie with the rattiest uniform imaginable, a sweater with large holes, pants that were too short, shoulder pads with little padding. Bernie was then thrust into a group with six other quarterbacks, wondering what he had gotten himself into. He was puzzled. Hadn’t this team been enquiring about his availability to play quarterback? Why was he being treated with such contempt?
The answer lay in Voyles’s character. Voyles had been born in Oklahoma and attended Oklahoma A&M where he played varsity football. (The Oklahoma A&M Aggies would achieve infamy in 1951 for “the Johnny Bright Incident” in which Bright, a star black football player, was assaulted during a game on the Oklahoma football field.) Not only did Voyles grow up in the South but he coached football in the South at schools like William and Mary in Virginia and Auburn in Alabama, schools where black football players were not welcome. Even when Bernie played football at Syracuse, there were schools in the South that would not play Syracuse because they allowed black players on their team.
On the second day of practice with the ’Cats, in what some (including Bernie) believe was an opportunity to bring the new kid on the block down a peg, Voyles threw Bernie in as quarterback of a scrubs team — made up of all the second and third stringers and the players on tryouts — against the first string. Before the first play from scrimmage, Bernie, still wearing his raggedy mismatched uniform, gathered his band of misfits in the huddle.
“They want to embarrass us,” he told his teammates. “Let’s turn the tables on them. Let’s embarrass them.”
Bernie’s brief pep talk worked something of a miracle on the scrubs. In football, it’s not a matter of winning the minds of your teammates, it’s a matter of winning their hearts. They would have charged across a minefield for a pat on the back from Bernie.
“I was as inspired as I’ve ever been playing football,” Bernie recalled, “and we just ran the so-called ‘varsity’ team ragged, up and down the field. We just thoroughly beat them. [Voyles] was so angry he just stormed off the field in disgust. If the score had been kept that day I think it would have been something like 40–7.”
Voyles had no choice but to install Bernie as his number-one quarterback. He was clearly the best of the bunch in camp, and even a reluctant Voyles would have had a tough time arguing against playing him. Word had gotten around town about the rookie phenom in camp and the press was all over it, declaring Bernie the next great quarterback in Canadian football. According to Bernie, the level of expectation was so great that there would have been a riot in Hamilton — where the fans took (and still take) their football very seriously — if Voyles had not played him. The whole city anxiously awaited Bernie’s debut.
Bernie’s roommate that first season was Dick Brown, a young black player from Cleveland, Ohio, who followed an unusual path to Canadian football. Brown had come to Canada to enlist in the army in 1942. Brown’s father had fought in the American infantry in the First World War and hadn’t thought much of the treatment he had received from his own country as a black soldier, both during and after that war. His advice to his son was that rather than risk being drafted into the U.S. Army, he should go to Canada to enlist in the Canadian Army where he would receive better treatment. Together, they drove from Cleveland to Detroit where they crossed the border into Windsor. There, Brown enlisted in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders infantry regiment. He remained in Canada and his father returned to Cleveland.
Brown became very close with a fellow enlistee, Walter Kasurak, and spent a great deal of time with Kasurak’s family in Windsor. The two friends went overseas together in ’44 during the Normandy offensive under the 10th Infantry Brigade, fighting in the northwest Nijmegen Salient of the Netherlands. On January 28, 1945, while fighting against the German fortress island of Kapelsche Veer in the Maas river, Walter Kasurak was hit by enemy fire and died in Brown’s arms. Two days later the Germans retreated. (Walter Kasurak is buried in Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in Groesbeek, Netherlands, along with 2,338 Canadian soldiers from the Second World War.)
Brown returned from Europe shaken by his experiences. He enrolled at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto and played football for the college’s “Fighting Irish of Bay Street.” The university’s Varsity Blues soon took notice of the talented freshman running back in their midst and brought him up to play for the varsity team. After Brown enjoyed a particularly explosive offensive game against archrival University of Western Ontario, the headline in the Globe read, “Coloured Boy Runs Wild Over Western.”
Cringe.
In 1950, Brown joined the Hamilton Tiger-Cats team under Carl Voyles. It was the Tiger-Cats’ first year in existence in the precursor to the CFL, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (along with Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal). The team was an amalgamation of two previous Hamilton teams, the Tigers and the Wildcats — thus, the Tiger-Cats. Back in those days, football was not a full-time paying job where players made enough money to see them through the entire year and a carefree retirement. No matter how bright a player’s star shone on the gridiron, to make ends meet they needed another job in the off-season. One of the perks of playing in Hamilton was the chance to work for Stelco, the steel plant.
Mark Brown, the son of Dick Brown and a former CFL player himself, although he describes his tenure as having had a cup of coffee in the league, told me his father never liked Carl Voyles — that his father, in fact, “couldn’t stand the man.” Dick Brown believed, way before Bernie ever showed up in camp, that Voyles was prejudiced toward black players. Voyles’s treatment of Bernie only confirmed his belief. But Brown’s dislike for the man ran deeper than the issue of colour. It was an issue of integrity.
In this era before agents, players were forced to negotiate contracts and salaries for themselves. After he was named an Eastern All-Star at defensive back, Dick Brown figured he was due for a raise and went to see Voyles in his role as general manager. Voyles listened to Brown’s pitch and then calmly told him that he should be content with things as they were. Wasn’t he grateful to have a wonderful off-season job at Stelco? Because unless Brown signed a new contract as offered, that job at Stelco would disappear. With a wife and kids to support, Dick Brown had no choice but to sign the contract.
“Coach Voyles had never coached a black player who could play the quarterback position, because at that time there was a stigma that blacks weren’t capable of handling a position of responsibility such as quarterback,” explained Bernie. “And I think this dictated a lot of his actions until we got into the season and he came to realize that I was just as capable as anyone else, forget colour. And I think … he accepted me that year.”
That ’51 season, with Bernie as quarterback, the Ticats went 7–5, tied with Toronto and Ottawa but with a total-points differential far greater than either of their rivals. That mattered very little during the playoffs, however, as Ottawa emerged victorious and earned the right to represent the East in the Grey Cup. But Bernie did earn honours as the East’s All-Star quarterback in his first year of play.
He had also moved in with Dick Brown and his wife in an apartment on St. Matthews Avenue in Hamilton. Bernie was curious about his new home of Hamilton, not just the geography but the people. He would go on long walks to not only get the lay of the land but also to see if he might come upon other black people in town.
“The first black person I saw in Hamilton was Linc (Lincoln) Alexander,” he remembered, “and it was in a park. He was playing with his son Keith. So naturally I went over to him, and I said, ‘Hey, Brother, it’s nice to see you. Are there any others of us here?’ He said, ‘Not many.’ And I said, ‘It’s nice to see you and I hope to see you again.’”
(Lincoln Alexander was a lawyer who became Canada’s first black member of parliament and first black federal cabinet minister, and who served as the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario from 1985 to 1991. Bernie and Alexander would have a friendship that lasted sixty-one years, until Alexander’s death in 2012.)
Despite having a banner year in Hamilton his first year in the league, Bernie came to training camp in 1952 expecting to improve upon it. He had one year under his belt, knew the offensive system, understood the defences thrown against him, and most of all felt that he could even better exploit the larger playing fields in Canada. That’s when Carl Voyles dropped his bomb: he was switching Bernie to halfback.
“Now, I have to ask you a question. Do you know of any All-Star quarterback who had his position taken away from him?” Bernie levelled his gaze at me. The question was rhetorical. “The answer is no. But that happened to me.”
Voyles claimed the shift was made for strategic reasons, to diversify the offence. He may have even argued that opposing team defences could no longer focus solely on Bernie. But where was the sense in taking the ball out of your best player’s hands?
“I was very disappointed and I think if that situation had arisen today, I would have fought it to the nth degree. If someone performs at a better level than I’m performing, then I will concede that they’re better. But that never happened.”
The man entrusted with that initial offensive touch was another import quarterback, Bill Mackrides, who had spent five seasons as a backup QB in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles. Based on the Ticats’ performance that season, in retrospect and based solely on their record, it would be tough to argue that Voyles’s changes diminished the overall product in any way. The team went 9–2–1 during the regular season before losing the three-game playoff struggle against eventual Grey Cup winners the Toronto Argonauts featuring Ulysses Curtis. Once again, Bernie would be named to the Eastern All-Stars, only this time it would be at the halfback position.
Despite his being recognized as an All-Star, Bernie’s disappointment and resentment lingered. He had not left the Cleveland Browns camp or his native country to play the halfback position in Canada. He came to play quarterback. And now he felt that he was being unjustly prevented from that by a coach with a certain bias. There were times when he struggled to hide his feelings. But he never let that get in the way of giving his all on the gridiron. So when Mackrides left the team that off-season, Bernie believed that the quarterback position was now his for the taking.
Instead, Voyles went out and got himself another white American quarterback, Edward “Butch” Songin, a player picked 247th in the nineteenth round of the 1950 NFL draft. Butch Songin was an All-American at Boston College; the only problem was that he was named an All-American in hockey, not football. Songin wasn’t even Voyles’s first choice. He had attempted to sign George Blanda away from the NFL’s Chicago Bears, a move that made Bears owner George Halas threaten the Tiger-Cats with a lawsuit for tampering. That was a legal battle the Ticats could not afford. Yet signing George Blanda would at least have made sense: he was a proven NFL quarterback. But Butch Songin? This was the player that was going to keep Bernie from the quarterback position he so coveted? At what point does a coach’s persistence become an issue of intractability?
The argument can be made that it isn’t a coach’s responsibility to be popular with his players. His job is to win games. If that means putting his best player in a secondary role where his feelings are hurt or his individual statistics suffer but the team succeeds, that coach is not likely to be second-guessed by the team’s owners. Fans may be outraged by their idol’s diminished role but if the results are there, so the thinking goes, they will eventually come around to the coach’s way of thinking. And any player who is perceived to put his own needs above those of the team is seen as a bad apple, or even worse, a cancer.
Bernie had a point when he argued that Voyles’s changes did not greatly improve the team. With Butch Songin at the helm the team attained a mediocre record of eight wins and six losses in 1953. During the playoffs, however, the team steamrolled their way over Montreal to a Grey Cup matchup with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers led by Jack Jacobs at quarterback. The Tiger-Cats emerged victorious in the Grey Cup game, but it took a tremendous defensive play by Lou Kusserow, knocking down a pass intended for Winnipeg great Tom Casey at the goal line with just seconds remaining in the game, to preserve the slim 12–6 victory.
The score flattered the Tiger-Cats. Jacobs completed thirty-one of forty-eight passes that game, a record for passes attempted and completed that stood for twenty-seven years until Danny Barrett of Calgary broke it in the 1991 Grey Cup game against Toronto. The Hamilton cause was aided by two interceptions deep in Hamilton territory. One of those interceptions was made by Dick Brown. And then, of course, there was Kusserow’s heroic save as time ran out.
That Grey Cup victory, however, remained the most disappointing day in Bernie Custis’s pro football career for what it might have been. Bernie touched the ball six times that day. He was the best offensive weapon the Ticats possessed and he was given the ball a mere six times. On those six carries he managed to gain thirty-six yards, an average of six yards per carry. Why would anyone ignore someone who gained six yards every time he touched the ball?
Butch Songin did not call his own plays. Jack Jacobs did for Winnipeg but he was the exception and had had a number of years in the NFL under his belt before coming to Canada. Plus, he threw for 11,000 yards in his brief career in Canada. The point is that it would not have been Songin’s call on how much to use Bernie. That call belonged to Carl Voyles.
“I think it was to prevent me from reaching any kind of stardom that day.”
Bernie felt he could have contributed a hell of a lot more to the game and to the score had he been given the opportunity. The score did not have to be as close as it was. And that’s what tore him apart, the thought of what could have been. He was genuinely happy for his teammates and for the city of Hamilton when they won the game, there was no question about that. But he was stung by his exclusion from any apparent game plan on the biggest football stage this country had to offer.
The thing to understand about Bernie Custis is that it actually pained him to think the worst of people’s motivations. He was also reluctant to use a term like “racist,” because he felt it obliterated any differentiation between thoughts, words, and deeds, and any scale of offence from minor to major. It was a word with a power that could not be taken back; for someone described or accused as racist it was next to impossible to prove the opposite. And for those reasons he never used the word and would never ascribe it to Carl Voyles. That would be for others to decide.
“It was just something that happened and you move on.”
The 1954 season brought changes in Bernie’s personal life. He married long-time girlfriend Lorraine Dafoe, who worked for the hydro company in Hamilton. Lorraine died in 2002; they’d been married forty-eight years.
Lorraine Dafoe was white. “When we got married,” Bernie said, “her dad told us that we were twenty-five years ahead of our time. But that he was behind us 100 percent.”
When I suggested to Bernie that it must have taken a great deal of courage on both their parts to get married, he just shrugged it off.
“We knew it but we loved each other. And we just said, ‘This challenge, it isn’t anything.’”
Bernie took particular delight in recounting a time when he and Lorraine were walking down King Street, one of the busiest streets in Hamilton. A stranger stared so intently at the couple as they passed that he walked straight into a pole.
“You could hear the ringing of the pole for about a block away. And I was close enough to say, ‘You’ve just been punished.’”
In 1954, Voyles went with the same basic lineup that had won the Grey Cup the year before, with Butch Songin at quarterback and Bernie once again at halfback. Results are the measure of a team’s success, and, despite a mediocre season the year before, the team had won a Grey Cup. It was hard to argue that the coach’s private agenda was hurting the team so Bernie kept his mouth shut. The Tiger-Cats actually improved on their regular-season record, going 9–5. The Montreal Alouettes, however, behind their All-Star quarterback, Sam “the Rifle” Etcheverry, the son of Basque sheep farmers who had immigrated to New Mexico back in the 1920s, took first place with an 11–3 record and crushed the Ticats in a two-game, total-points format.
Bernie had his best season in the CFL that year, racking up well over a thousand all-purpose yards: 400 yards receiving, 500 yards rushing, and a further 400 yards in kickoff returns. He was the Eastern All-Star halfback and the Tiger-Cats’ nominee for Most Outstanding Player in Canadian football. He would lose out in that category to Sam Etcheverry, who threw for 586 yards during one game that season, a single-game record that would stand for thirty-nine years. When it comes to awards, an outstanding quarterback on a successful team has a distinct advantage in the eyes of voters over any other outstanding position player. Bernie did not see it as a slight. He was only twenty-six years old and at the top of his game. Nevertheless, it burned that he was not the guy going head-to-head with Etcheverry as a quarterback.
And then came 1955. First, the good news. Butch Songin was gone and the quarterback position was open. This, closely followed by the bad news. Carl Voyles traded for a new quarterback, Nobby Wirkowski, who had led the Argonauts to the Grey Cup in 1952 but had lately fallen on hard times in Toronto. For Bernie, this good news–bad news scenario got even worse. The man Voyles traded to get Wirkowski was none other than All-Star defensive back Dick Brown, Bernie’s best friend. Now this really had to be some kind of joke. Nobby was known to be about as mobile as a garden gnome. He could throw but he could not run.
Dick Brown, on the other hand, felt as if he’d hit the jackpot. He was sad to leave Bernie behind but his euphoria at being free of Carl Voyles more than made up for it. It didn’t matter to him that the Argos were a bad team only surpassed in futility by the sad-sack Ottawa Rough Riders. It seemed that once again Carl Voyles had gone out of his way to alienate his star halfback. Matters grew more complicated when Bernie sustained a thigh injury that was not healing properly. This was before athletes could just have an MRI to determine the nature and extent of an injury. Voyles insisted that Bernie was capable of playing despite Bernie’s insistence that something was seriously wrong. When Bernie refused to play until his thigh healed, Voyles suspended him from the team.
When Bernie didn’t show up at the next practice — and why would he since he’d just been suspended? — Voyles called him at home asking him why he wasn’t at practice, as if having had a timeout in the corner to think about his misbehaviour, Bernie would have come to his senses. As he had all along, Bernie insisted that he could not play, that he was injured.
That conversation marked the end of Bernie’s football career in Hamilton. Voyles sold Bernie, who was basically damaged goods, to Ottawa. Back then, players had few rights or protection, regardless of race, creed, or colour, and no recourse but to accept their fate. (This would change with the formation of the Canadian Football League Players’ Association [CFLPA] in 1965.)
“I went to Ottawa and that was probably the worst experience I ever had,” he said. “They were in disarray in Ottawa.”
To say the least. After three straight seasons out of the playoffs, Ottawa had brought in University of Tennessee assistant coach Chan Caldwell to take the Rough Riders’ reins, yet another American coaching prospect who had no familiarity with the Canadian game. He promptly led the Rough Riders to a 3–9 record and a fourth straight year out of the East playoffs. Bernie’s transfer to Ottawa did not improve the condition of his leg and he saw limited action in only seven games that season. He was, however, reunited with former Syracuse teammate and backup quarterback Avatus Stone, who had come to Ottawa in 1953. Avatus may have been inspired by Bernie’s presence, because he enjoyed his best season in the CFL, winning the Jeff Russell Memorial Trophy as the Most Outstanding Player in the East.
After the season limped to its sad conclusion, Bernie decided that he had had enough of playing football. Lew Hayman, who had integrated the league when he brought Herb Trawick to Montreal back in 1946, was now the general manager with the Toronto Argonauts. He called Bernie to see if he would like to coach the East York Argos, a senior men’s team in the old ORFU, which functioned as a farm team for the big club. Lew Hayman also happened to be a Syracuse graduate and had followed Bernie’s career with interest throughout his college and professional playing days. Hayman was fishing to see if Bernie would be willing to be both player and coach for East York, but Bernie told him he was flat-out done with playing. He did, however, accept the offer to coach.
“[Playing] wasn’t what I wanted to do in life, but I didn’t want to walk away from football.”
On the drive home from an East York practice one day shortly after taking the position, Bernie pulled his car over to the side of the road. If the moment fell short of a road-to-Damascus-like experience, it was, nonetheless, an epiphanic moment in Bernie’s life.
“I asked myself what it was that I did want to do in life, what I wanted to get involved with. Teaching hit me.”
He enrolled at Hamilton Teachers’ College and spent his days in school while he worked nights at Dofasco (Dominion Foundries and Steel Company). At the end of a year he had earned his teacher’s certificate, gotten a job teaching in Hamilton, and begun a career in education that lasted for the next thirty-seven years, with all but two of those years spent as a principal.
“When I look back on that I just say, ‘Wow.’ Once again, determination entered the picture.”
Teaching and coaching would go hand in hand for Bernie over the next four decades. He would become one of the most successful amateur football coaches in the history of Canada. Bernie coached the Oakville Black Knights for four years in the ORFU, winning two championships. He coached the junior Burlington Braves from 1964 to ’72, winning three Ontario titles to go with the two Eastern Canadian ones. This was followed by a stint with the Sheridan Bruins, where he won provincial community college championships in six of the eight years he was in charge. From there he went on to coach the McMaster University Marauders for another eight years and was named Ontario University Athletics Association (OUAA) Coach of the Year in both 1982 and 1984 and Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union (CIAU) Coach of the Year in 1982. His contributions to the field of amateur and university football would lead to his induction into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1994 in the builder category.
“You know, the number of players I’ve had the pleasure to coach is just unbelievable. They’re all over the place. And you know what the rewarding part of that is? I’ve got a lot of young men coaching high-school teams that played for me. Those are the rewards you get from all this.”
Some years after Bernie retired, he received a phone call at his home in Hamilton. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Carl Voyles, who was visiting friends in Hamilton and heard that Bernie was still living there. Voyles had retired from the CFL after the 1955 season and gone into real estate in Toronto. He had done some scouting for Hamilton during the ’60s and ’70s. He and his wife had retired to Vero Beach, Florida.
“I had met his wife here during his time coaching and I asked him how his wife was,” recalled Bernie. “And he started crying on the phone. He told me that she had passed away. But he said, ‘I also called, Bernie, to apologize to you for the way I treated you during your time here when you were playing for me.’ I thought that was tremendous. I told him I appreciated the fact but that I also understood that he had not been exposed to a black player in that position and that we all perhaps, in life, have a tendency to do a wrong thing. It’s good that one realizes it and is willing to try and make amends. I told him that I don’t hold any grudges and I wished him well. And that was my last dealings with Coach Voyles.”
It’s hard not to think about what Bernie might have accomplished as a quarterback in the CFL. All his life Bernie had opened eyes and changed minds with his determination and ability to accomplish whatever he set out to do. His football career was cut short by an injury he might have avoided had he not been made a halfback where he was required to either block defenders or take hits on virtually every play. The city of Hamilton embraced Bernie Custis from the moment he stepped on the field. The fans did not give a damn about the colour of Bernie’s skin. They were excited to have him. He could throw, he could run, he could do it all. He was, in modern parlance, “the man.” And Bernie repaid their adoration by becoming the Big Four All-Star quarterback in his first season.
There are many who would choose to give Carl Voyles the benefit of the doubt, saying that just because he was a southerner it did not necessarily make him prejudiced against black people. Their argument would no doubt centre around the fact that the Ticats won a Grey Cup without Bernie at quarterback. True enough. But the question isn’t whether Carl Voyles was prejudiced against black people. It’s whether he was prejudiced against black quarterbacks. As for winning the Grey Cup, could it not also be true that the Tiger-Cats might have won more than one Grey Cup had Carl Voyles simply allowed the best quarterback on the team be the best quarterback on the team?
“Funny you should ask me that,” Bernie Custis said in a 2011 Tiger-Cats halftime interview, projected across Ivor Wynne Stadium on the giant scoreboard. “When I became a citizen, which I am now and have been for thirty or forty years, the judge asked me to speak to the group that day on what it meant to become a Canadian. I told him that there’s one word that I can use to set the basis and that’s ‘freedom.’ In defining freedom it meant that I felt I can do most things that I would like to do. And pursue aspects of life without any hindrances. See, I couldn’t say that if I was living in the south of the United States.”
The occasion for displaying Bernie’s ten-metre-high face over the end zone was the celebration of the sixtieth year since he became the first black quarterback in professional football back in 1951. Bernie was escorted to midfield by CFL greats Tony Gabriel (whom Bernie had coached in Brantford and gotten into Syracuse on a scholarship), Chuck Ealey (who won a Grey Cup at quarterback with the Tiger-Cats in his rookie season of ’72), and Damon Allen (who retired as professional football’s all-time leading passer in yardage).
Introductions were made. The fans gave Bernie a tremendous reception. Very few had left their seats to hit the food concessions. Bernie’s initial deer-in-the-headlights look disappeared and a beatific smile lit up his face. Standing at midfield in the midst of a standing ovation, he slipped a small piece of paper from the front pocket of his black warmup pants, a piece of paper he had been folding and unfolding all day to continually reassure himself that the words he had written were still there. He was just beginning to show signs of forgetfulness and uncertainty that within five years would develop into full-blown senile dementia and require full-time care. As the crowd roared their approval, Tony Gabriel patted his back, reminding him, “You the man, Bernie, you the man.”
And then Bernie began to speak.
“Sixty years ago I left my homeland and came to a strange city … in a strange country … to play a position I would not be allowed to play in Cleveland or any other city in the National Football League.”
Bernie’s sister, Joan, had come from Philadelphia for the occasion. As she had all those years ago at Syracuse, she cheered her brother on, mouthing the words of his speech along with him, having committed them to memory from his repetitive readings aloud over breakfast.
“For as great a country as the United States was and remains, it was not yet ready to allow a black man to be a starting professional quarterback. And it was not ready for Chuck Ealey … Warren Moon … or Damon Allen. I am proud of the city of Hamilton” — here he paused to let the cheers die down — “for opening its arms to a young man from Philadelphia who never believed that the colour of his skin should be the determining factor in the measure of a man. Thank you Hamilton and thank you Canada for agreeing with that young man.”
Bernard Eugene Custis died in Burlington on February 23, 2017, in his eighty-eighth year. On September 17, 2018, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board announced that a new secondary school being built directly across the street from Tim Hortons Field, home of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and scheduled to open its doors in September of 2019 will be called Bernie Custis Secondary School.