October 20, 1951: The Johnny Bright Incident

October 20, 1951, 70 years ago: Drake University of Des Moines, Iowa plays football against Oklahoma A&M – the name will be changed to Oklahoma State in 1958 – at Lewis Field in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Drake quarterback Johnny Bright, one of the 1st black players to receive serious consideration for the Heisman Trophy, is assaulted by white A&M defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith. "Unnecessary roughness"? Smith knocked Bright unconscious 3 times in the 1st 7 minutes of the game, the last time breaking his jaw.

A&M won the game, 27-14. It was Drake's 1st loss of the season. Photographs of what becomes known as "the Johnny Bright Incident," by Don Ultang and John Robinson, were featured on the front page of the next day’s Des Moines Register, and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Neither his school nor the Missouri Valley Conference disciplined Smith, nor did the Conference discipline the school or any of its coaches, in any way. As a result, Drake left the league in protest. So did Bradley University of Peoria, Illinois, also integrated by that point. The NCAA issued new rules about blocking and tackling, and mandated better head protection, including facemasks for helmets. The NFL followed suit in 1954.

Drake returned to the MVC for sports other than football in 1956, and for football in 1971. In 1978, along with the entire MVC, Drake dropped its program to NCAA Division I-AA, then to NCAA Division III in 1987, and back to I-AA (now the Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS) in 1991, where they remain. Today, aside from this incident, Drake's athletics department is best known for the Drake Relays, 2nd only to the Penn Relays as America's leading track & field meet.

Bright recovered from his injuries, and finished 5th in the 1951 Heisman Trophy balloting, which was won by Dick Kazmaier of Princeton, who will likely remain the last Ivy Leaguer to win it. (Ed Marinaro of Cornell finished 2nd in 1971, and remains the last one to even come close. He later played a cop on Hill Street Blues.)

Drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, Bright didn't want to play there -- not because he thought Philadelphia was a racist city (long before Dick Allen and Curt Flood thought so, and Jackie Robinson had been already notoriously subjected to racist abuse there), but because he knew there were a lot of Southern players in the NFL. He would play in Canada, and receive many honors (or, as they would spell it, "honours") there, including 3 straight Grey Cups with the Edmonton Eskimos.

When he retired in 1964, he was the CFL's all-time leading rusher, with 10,909 yards, a total then surpassed in the NFL only by Jim Brown, but Brown's amazing 5.2 yards per carry, often cited as a reason why he's the game's greatest ever player, never mind running back, is actually surpassed by Bright, with 5.5, making him North America's all-time leader in that stat at the time. Only 2 CFL players have passed him in rushing yardage since.

He is a member of the Wall of Honour of the team now known as "The Edmonton Football Team," and the College Football and Canadian Football Halls of Fame. Drake retired his Number 43 (he wore 24 with the Esks) and named the field at Drake Stadium after him. After serving as a teacher and principal at an Edmonton high school, he died in 1983 from complications from surgery. Ernie Davis of Syracuse became the 1st black Heisman winner in 1961.

With some irony, the name of his pro team was cited as racist, insensitive to Native North Americans. In 2020, the name was dropped. With the CFL having canceled its entire season due to COVID restrictions, they didn't have to play a season as "The Edmonton Football Team." In 2021, they became the Edmonton Elks, allowing them to keep their familiar "EE" helmet logo, and projecting a favorable image: Western Canada has lots of elks, a strong animal with good speed for its size.

Oklahoma State offered Drake a formal apology for the actions of Wilbanks Smith -- in 2005, 54 years later, and 22 years after Bright's death.

In 2012, Smith gave an interview. He said that, when the Drake Bulldogs and the Oklahoma A&M Cowboys played each other in 1950, a Drake player had purposely hit an A&M player, and injured him, and he wanted revenge. He pointed out that he had hit the returning offending Drake player, who was white, in the same game the same way he had hit Bright. He did not play pro football, and worked as an engineer for Exxon. He died in 2020, at the age of 90.