C.R. Roberts, whose record-setting performance helped Southern California beat Texas in a 1956 road game played in the segregated state, has died. He was 87.
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C.R. Roberts, who led USC past Longhorns in segregated Texas, dies
C.R. Roberts, whose record-setting performance helped USC beat Texas in a 1956 road game played in the segregated state, has died. He was 87.
Roberts died of natural causes on Tuesday at a care facility in suburban Norwalk, the university said Wednesday after being informed by his daughter Dr. Cathy Creasia.
Roberts, a fullback, set a single-game rushing record with 251 yards on 12 carries in the Trojans' 44-20 victory in Austin, a mark that stood for 20 years. Fearing rioting by the segregated crowd, USC's coaching staff pulled Roberts early.
Upon arrival, the Trojans tried three different hotels before finding one that would allow its Black players to stay. USC officials had permitted Roberts to travel despite Texas' segregation laws.
"I was upset that they didn't want me down there," Roberts said in a 2015 USC online article for Black History Month. "Damn right, I had something to prove to them."
The hotel housekeepers were Black and they tried to convince Roberts and his other Black teammate to leave. He assured them he was allowed to be there as part of the team.
Roberts recalled Black people who lived in the area came by, entering through the back of the hotel and donning staff uniforms so they could greet the Black players staying in a whites-only hotel.
"That night, maybe every black person in town must have come by to see us," Roberts said in the article. "They were just so proud to see us in that hotel."
The University of Texas and the University of Southern California football teams face each other over the weekend. The two schools have played some...
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In 1956, UT Football Didn't Want To Desegregate. So This USC Fullback Did It For Them
USC fullback C.R. Roberts broke a school record for yardage in a single game in the Trojans' 1956 bout against the Longhorns.
The University of Texas and the University of Southern California football teams face each other over the weekend. The two schools have played some important games through the years, like the 2005 national championship game. But the biggest game may have occurred 62 years ago on the Trojans first trip to Austin.
It was Sept. 22, 1956, shortly after the University of Texas decided to integrate its student body that fall, allowing African-American students to enroll for the first time.
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Another article:
C.R. Roberts is most comfortable when he’s on the move.
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Must Reads: They shouted racial slurs as he ran into the record books. The story behind USC’s 1956 win against the Longhorns
C.R. Roberts is most comfortable when he’s on the move. Even at 82, he defaults easily to his natural pose, weight shifted forward to the balls of his feet in a fighter’s stance.
Roberts wasn’t a boxer. He was a running back who sparred with the world around him. On this July afternoon, he walks across the second floor of USC’s Heritage Hall, trying to remember his greatest battle. It comes with a story that stayed buried in his memory for nearly six decades — at least the part he finds interesting.
Roberts’ mind, drifting from the effects of age and dementia, isn’t sparked by discussing the 1956 USC-Texas matchup in Austin. Sure, he ran the ball 12 times for 251 yards, a Trojans single-game record that stood for 20 years. But he doesn’t see the importance of that anymore.
For so long, Roberts would tell people how he had something to prove that night. He may have mentioned that African Americans from around Austin came to the USC team hotel to get a glimpse of him, but that’s about as far as he usually went.
“All the time I was growing up,” says his daughter, Cathy Creasia, “it never was really put in this context of a civil rights story, even though in its essence it is. And it became one of those stories that kind of got lost.”
It may have remained hidden if not for a USC football fan, documentary filmmaker Jeremy Sadowski. Three years ago, he stumbled across a quote from Roberts while researching a project about USC’s first black player, Brice Taylor, from the mid-1920s. Sadowski wondered: Who was this C.R. Roberts?
“I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable USC football fan,” Sadowski says, “and I had never heard of him before.”
Roberts was not aiming for attention on Sept. 22, 1956. He just wanted the right to play a football game with his teammates in another state and not have to fear for his life to do it.
“We broke the law and got away with it,” Roberts says proudly. “They had sharpshooters in the stands.”
Now that he’s sharing his unvarnished story, it can grow with each telling. Roberts does not know for a fact that there were observers with guns marking him in the stands, but that is how it felt as Texas fans yelled the N-word at him and his fellow black teammates, Lou Byrd and Hilliard Hill.
That night, Jim Crow still ruled in the Texas state capital, but racial dynamics were starting to change.
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R.I.P.
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