KANSAN.COM / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2011 / NEWS
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school, his three track coaches fed him different advice. They said he should look at Emporia State or Washburn or Kansas State. He didn't know why they told him that — he still doesn't know with any certainty — but he didn't listen.
He even had scholarship offers from Maryland State, North Carolina A&T and Arkansas Pine Bluff. None of them interested him. He was set on Kansas.
He enrolled as a freshman in 1950, and when track season finally rolled around that spring, Monroe headed to Memorial Stadium. He wanted to talk with KU track and field coach Bill Easton about joining the team.
Now, finally, here was the payoff for all those years of hard work. His dream was just a few words away.
--world writer
Bill Mayer said,
"Wilt, if you go into some place and they kick you out, you let me know and we'll close the god damn thing down."
It was late one night in 1955, sometime close to midnight, but Wilt Chamberlain didn't care. This couldn't wait.
He drove straight to "Phog" Allen's home from Kansas City. When he got there, he pounded on his coach's door, intent on letting Allen hear about his night. The drive did little to cool him off.
When Allen answered, Chamberlain immediately started in. He told him about the restaurant in Kansas City, the one that refused to serve him unless he ate in the kitchen after he drove more than 1,100 miles from Philadelphia. He told Allen he wouldn't put up with something like this if he was going to play at Kansas. Not a chance.
Calmly, Allen listened and had someone bring his talented freshman hamburgers to Allen's home, a tactful gesture as much as one of kindness. The burger joint, the Greasy Spoon, was also segregated.
"He knew that if I found that out, I'd probably say, 'Fuck Kansas,' and head back to Philadelphia before the first day of classes," Chamberlain wrote in his 1973 autobiography, "Wil: Just Like
The city Chamberlain visited in high school was quite different from the one Monroe grew up in.
"This had never happened to him before," Chamberlain's sister, Barbara Lewis, said. "Never. And it's certainly not going to happen when you're considered the greatest high school basketball player coming out. People are going to bend backward to accommodate you."
Almost immediately, Allen's son, Mitt, an attorney with a reputation for being a bulldog, met with local business leaders. He delivered a simple message, one he also shared with Chamberlain.
Any Other 7-foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door."
Chamberlain visited the University twice when he was in high school and never experienced a hint of racism on either trip. Not once. But the campus is separate from the town around it. It's isolated, an island of sorts, and a player can be shielded from such things if a recruiting trip is properly handled.
"Milt told him in no uncertain terms" former Lawrence Journal
who arrived two years before Chamberlain in 1953, used to leave his white teammates when they boarded a bus hours before home games. He was told to go rest at home; his white teammates went somewhere else. Only later did he learn that his teammates headed to the Eldridge for a pregame nap.
The Eldridge didn't accommodate blacks.
Behind the scenes. Chancellor Franklin Murphy started making similar moves, if only with more subtle approaches.
Then Chamberlain arrived, and King could go almost anywhere, especially when accompanied by the 7-footer. He started eating at restaurants he previously hadn't heard of. The limitations in Lawrence started to vanish.
Murphy, who became chancellor in 1951 after years of racial unrest at the University, met with local movie theater owners and told them if they didn't eliminate the Crow's Nest seating policy, hed show movies on campus.
"When Wilt Chamberlain came to that campus, a lot of that foolishness stopped." King told The University Daily Kansan in 2006.
"He was able to do stuff like that," said Bill Tuttle, professor emeritus of American studies at the University. "And he did it overnight."
But the changes came slowly to those African-Americans not named Chamberlain. If Chamberlain was the source, then those closest to him started to see the benefits while the everyday man still had a ways to wait before desegregation came full circle.
"When Wilt Chamberlain came to that campus, a lot of that foolishness stopped."
It all happened so quickly that spring day in 1951. Monroe approached Bill Easton, the KU track and field coach, about the possibility of joining his team. Easton didn't consider it.
Still, it was a start.
"Before long, things just began to tumble and crumble," Mayer said. "Wilt was a mover in the integration of the community. Now, it wasn't all gone when he was gone, though."
Maurice King, a talented guard
"No way you'll run for me," Monroe remembers Easton saying.
And then Monroe headed home, devastated. He told his parents he was dropping out of college and joining the Air Force. That was that.
MAURICE KING
Teammate
Monroe doesn't know what happened that day. Was it his ability, his skin color or something entirely different that kept him off the track team? There's
"Forty years after I couldn't get a job or go to KU ... my son was the No.1 pick to play baseball..."
"That was one of the biggest heartaches I've ever had in my life." Monroe said.
LEONARD MONROE
no way to really know for sure, but Monroe remembers what he thought that day. More importantly, he remembers how he felt.
--that anyway.
I got back to
cheering for
them and
everything.
It's just so strange that it's so different."
When he read about Chamberlain or watched him play, something happened. The animosity he felt toward the University — for the athletic chance he never got — slowly dissolved. Wilt Chamberlain was playing for Kansas, and he was the best basketball player in the country.
He couldn't find a decent job out of the Air Force, but he kept looking in Lawrence from 1955-58 — the same three years Chamberlain played basketball for Kansas.
"I kept up with him the whole time," Monroe said. "It wouldn't do no good to hold a grudge like
When Wilt Chamberlain rolled into Lawrence, everyone took notice. The students, the alumni, the national media outlets. Everyone.
Including Leonard Monroe.
Chamberlain left Kansas after three years. choosing
to sign with the Harlem Globetrotters and write about his decision for Look magazine for $10,000. It took 40 years before his jersey finally hung in the Allen Fieldhouse rafters. Nearly 21 months after the ceremony, he died of heart failure. He was 67.
After working his way up to the rank of senior master sergeant in the Air Force, Monroe finally found the decent job he was looking for. He returned to Lawrence to open and run the city garage until he retired in 2000.
But the real change came
Wilt Chamberlain receives a polio vaccination with other KU students while at the University. Chamberlain played an important role in the integration of Lawrence
Photo courtesy of SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRARY
Photo courtesy of SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRAR
Wilt Chamberlain demonstrates the perks of being 7-foot-1 to Kansas basketball coach F.C. "Phog" Allen in 1955. After arriving as a highly touted recruit from Philadelphia, Chamberlain played on the freshman team that year.
Photo courtesy of SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRARY
more than 40 years after Monroe dropped out of the University — more than 40 years after he learned he couldn't join KU's track team. His son, Darryl, played in the outfield for the Kansas baseball team. He was pretty good, too.
And from the stands Monroe
watched as Darryl, playing in a Kansas uniform, helped the Jayhawks reach the College World Series in 1993.
forty years after I couldn't get a job or go to KU to run, 40 years later, my son was the No.1 pick to play baseball at KU," Monroe said.
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inside Milton's Café. "So things change, thank goodness."
And with that, he picked up his coffee, took a sip, and looked out the large windows in front of him at the people and shops along Massachusetts Street.