Never thought when I mentioned this example of Hollywood ignoring facts to suit its own reality that the story would rebound to back to North Carolina. But, man, has it ever.
Recall the dust-up over The Express, the new biopic on the life of Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman Trophy winner. The film portrays a Davis visit to play the West Virginia Mountaineers as an ugly near-riot of racist antics and incitement from the stands. Trouble is, it never happened.
This little oversight predictably sent the folks of West Virginia into orbit. The upset reached the halls of state government, including the governor. In an evident attempt to quell the uproar screenwriter Charles Leavitt wrote to Gov. Joe Manchin this week. Don’t blame me for the WVa thing Leavitt wrote, as the AP reports:
But screenwriter Charles Leavitt told Gov. Joe Manchin this week that the scene was supposed to depict a 1958 game at Tar Heels Stadium in North Carolina — a choice that also displayed artistic license.
“When I saw the film for the first time, I was as surprised as you were to see West Virginia inserted in place of North Carolina,” Leavitt wrote Manchin in an Oct. 20 letter.
Leavitt, who also sent the governor a copy of his script, told Manchin he apologized for the depiction while noting it was “something I had no hand in.”
First the facts. Syracuse did not play UNC during Davis’ time at Syracuse. The teams did not meet until 1995. And there is no “Tar Heels Stadium.” Kenan Memorial Stadium was built in 1927 and has been the home of the Heels ever since.
In his letter Leavitt tries to argue that his “research” turned up racist behavior at football games at universities across the South in the 1950s, including UNC, hence portraying Davis being on the receiving end of racial abuse at UNC is A-OK.
UNC officials have yet to respond to all this. One hopes that is because they are researching the facts of the where, when, and how the first visiting black players were greeted by UNC fans. Leavitt’s blanket assumptions are certainly not a substitute.
This is because there are accounts of black players not being subject to abuse by fans in the South even in the mid-1950s. For example, Washington State halfback Duke Washington was applauded by some University of Texas students following a long TD in a game in 1954, despite being the first black player to set foot in the Longhorns’ stadium. Local Jim Crow laws did force Washington to stay with a local black family rather than at a hotel with his white teammates, however.
And what little I can piece together on short-notice on the treatment of the ACC’s first black football player — Maryland’s Darryl Hill in 1963 — cites Clemson, South Carolina, and Wake Forest as hostile places with no mention of UNC. In Columbia a riot broke out with a crowd chanting “Kill Hill!” and in Winston-Salem paramedics refused to let an oxygen mask be used on Hill after he came out of the game for an injury. Not exactly proof that Tar Heel fans greeted visiting black players with flowers and trumpets, but precisely the sort of historical footnote any competent screenwriter might want to consider.
In short, I want to see Chuck Leavitt’s research. I want to see what exactly caused him to write — to imagine — that Ernie Davis would be subjected to racist Tar Heel fans had he visited Chapel Hill in 1958.
Update: Black students first entered the UNC School of Law in 1951 and the first black undergraduates arrived in Chapel Hill in 1955. Meanwhile, at NC State in 1956 a black player joined the tennis team and a year later two black runners were on the track team.