A star athlete is not allowed to participate on his local university track team

I, Leonard Monroe, was born in 1931 in Lawrence, Kansas. I attended the integrated Pinckney School; junior high at Old High, Manual, and Central; and graduated from Liberty Memorial High School in 1950. I was the second fastest quarter miler in Kansas. When the KU track coach refused to let me join the University track team, I dropped out of KU and joined the Air Force. After serving initially in Okinawa, where I worked as an electrician and took extension university courses, I later was stationed at other sites in the United States, Europe, and Viet Nam. I married my wife, Jackie, while stationed in New Mexico. After leaving the Air Force, we later returned to Lawrence, where I was employed as the manager of the city garage until I retired in 2000. We have six children.

Segregation in School and Sports

All of us went to Pinckney School and there weren't any problems there. We was integrated at Pinckney School. I don't know if I was in the fourth or fifth grade or something like that, that they tried to get all the blacks to go to North Lawrence to Lincoln School, which was a black elementary school over there. But, my dad and some of the others, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Hill and different ones that lived in West Lawrence there, they said, "No, our kids are not going to go across that river to go no school." They said, "We're going to keep going to Pinckney School just like they doing now." I guess you might say that was one of the first--what do you want to call it--boycott? And, so we never did go to Lincoln School. We all just went all the way through Pinckney and played together. We had a lot of fun.

High school was really, I think, the first time I ran into segregation in the schools. For some reason we could play football and we could run track, but we couldn't play basketball. We had our own basketball team in Lawrence at Liberty Memorial, called the Promoters, and we were actually pretty good. We won a couple of championships in the league and had a lot of fun, and they didn't integrate the basketball team until 1950.

I don't know if I was at my best or not, but turned out to be pretty good. I think I ended being like the second fastest quarter miler in the state of Kansas.

Mr. Woody, William Woody--as a matter fact, Woody Park used to be Lincoln Park, but now it's Woody Park, named after him--he timed me one night at the Haskell night relays on a quarter mile and I ran 49.8, and that was on a cinder track,

And, so, my senior year coaches asked me where I was going, I said, "I'm going to go to KU." So, they kept telling me, said "Well, why don't you go to K-State or Washburn?" You know? I said, "Nah, I want to go to KU, because they got the best track team at KU." He said "Well, we'll just wait and see what happens." And, I had a lot of scholarships, but they were all from black colleges. Byron State, which is now right on eastern shore, Morgan State, North Carolina A&T, and one of my uncles was a professor down at Pine Bluff and he wanted me to go to school down there, but I told him "I'm going to go to KU." So I started KU in 1950. So it come time for track season, so I go down to the stadium and I wanted to go out for track. I went down there alright, but Bill Eason at that time was the track coach. As a matter fact, I guess he was one of the best track coaches in the nation. But he says, "You'll never run for me." He wouldn't even give me a uniform.

That was the biggest heartbreak I ever had in my life. I just couldn't understand. At that time, I said I knew that things was prejudice because growing up here, a lot of places we couldn't go eat. Now, the ice cream parlor, you could go in there and buy all the ice cream you wanted, but you couldn't stay in there and eat it. You couldn't sit down. So, I grew up kind of used to that, but never had been stopped from going out for sports.

Boy, that really hurt. That really hurt and by that time, of course, all my scholarships for the black colleges weren't available-and I still didn't want to go to K-State or Washburn. At that time the Korean War had broken out and some of my buddies was gone to military, so I just dropped out of KU and joined the Air Force.

So, I signed up for courses for LSU, and it come time to start class, so I went down to the education center, Because I paid a tuition, we only had to pay so much and the government paid the rest. He said, "Where you going?" I said, "LSU." He said "Oh, no, you can't go to LSU." I said, "What do you mean? They didn't say that when I was signing up for all this stuff." He said, "That's all good, but you what have to do now, if you can find 19 other blacks that want to further their education, we'll be sure to get you a bus, then you all go over to--it was Minden or something like that. I don't know just where it was at now. And I looked at that man. I said, "You must be crazy. I have to go out here and find 19 other blacks who want to further education where we can get a bus to go somewhere to go to school." That stopped my education again.