Clark: Celebrating the pioneers who helped lead FSU to a better future
There's no way to truly know what it was like. Not unless you lived it.
J.T. Thomas lived it.
He endured it, fought, persevered and then triumphed.
Thomas was the first black football player in Florida State history, and on Saturday, he'll be sharing the stage with three teammates who helped break the color barrier with him -- Bobby Anderson, Charlie Hunt and Eddie McMillan -- in the "Sod Talk" event at 2 p.m. at FSU's Sod Cemetery (next to the Seminoles' practice fields).
If you're there tailgating on Saturday ... go listen to Thomas and his teammates speak. They deserve it, and you'll come away enriched.
Aslan and I talked to Thomas on Thursday for our sensational podcast, "Wake up Warchant." Wake up!!!
It was about a 20-minute interview (it starts around the 22:20 mark above), but it could've gone on for hours. After all, Thomas not only was a prominent figure in Florida State history, but he won four Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He owned multiple restaurants in Pennsylvania after he retired. He has been the definition of success.
A Florida State alum who should bring pride to Seminoles everywhere.
And yet despite being a first-round pick, despite being an All-Pro and a four-time world champion, it doesn't seem like most FSU fans truly know his story. Certainly not the younger ones.
It's a story -- beginning with being a young African-American in the deep South during the 1960s -- that is almost inconceivable to many of us today.
"The walls of Jim Crow were still up," Thomas said. "They weren't down yet. ... I grew up in segregation. I could read the words 'Colored' and 'White' before I could write my name. I was taught in Sunday School, at age 3 and 4, on water fountains how to read those two words."
In 1968, during Thomas' senior year at Lanier High School in Macon, Ga., his head coach and a local sports reporter reached out to the University of Georgia to see if the Bulldogs would be interested in Thomas becoming the first African-American football player in UGA history.
"The coach there, you guys know his name," Thomas said in reference to college football coaching legend Vince Dooley. "He said, 'We're not ready for a black player at this time.'"
Before that conversation, Thomas honestly hadn't given much thought to playing college football anyway. He wasn't recruited by the traditional powers because of his skin color. And he wasn't recruited by historically black colleges because he attended a mostly white high school in Macon, and they didn't know about him.
Keep in mind: This was a man who would go on to play for a decade in the NFL and win four Super Bowls. But in the fall of 1968, as talented as he was, he thought he was playing his last year of organized football that season at Lanier.
Then his phone rang.
"What happened is that week, about two or three days [after Dooley said no], I got a call from Coach Bill Peterson," Thomas said, referring to Florida State's head coach from 1960-'70. "He said, 'I read an article that Georgia said they weren't ready. Well, we are ready.'"
Those few words meant the world to Thomas.
He was so outstanding as a senior that a few other college powers in the Southeast would end up offering him scholarships as well, but his heart was already with Florida State.
"The fact that Bill Peterson said, 'We're ready,' that was a slam dunk," Thomas said. "Keep in mind, in '69 when I got to Florida State, I'm less than four years off the back of the bus. I'm less than four years from getting a hamburger from the back of Burger King. Those are the dynamics you're dealing with.
"And you're in the South. And I think people tend to forget what was going on during that time."
Today, Florida State has a black head football coach and a black head basketball coach. For the past five years, it had a black athletic director. It was just the second Power Five school to have African-Americans holding those three prominent positions.
But back in the late '60s, while it might have been a bit ahead of the curve when it came to racial equality in the Southeast, it wasn't free from ugliness.
"Even at FSU, there were certain places that wouldn't serve us," Thomas said. "In Tallahassee. On Tennessee Street. We'd walk in at 6:30 on a Friday afternoon: 'Oh, we're out of burgers. We're out of pizza.' ...
"A lot of things we experienced, we haven't talked about. But we were part of the change. We understood what was happening, and we knew how to maneuver through those things."
Thomas is a fascinating person. With an extremely unique viewpoint.
When he described his life back in those days, he compared it to being a deer at a pond. How a deer sees everything. It knows what's going on around him. All 360 degrees. All the time.
"It was about survival," he said.
But what I thought was most profound during our interview was when Thomas described how athletics played a role in teaching him and his teammates about each other.
He called it the "95 percent" rule.
When everything is stripped away, and we just stare at the core of a person, we're all 95 percent the same, he said.
We have the same fears, hopes, aspirations, anxieties as everyone else. We might express them differently, depending on our education and upbringing, but we essentially are 95 percent the same.
The 5 percent that's different? Skin color, height, weight, taste buds, etc.
That, he says, is what he learned on the football field at Florida State. And in the locker room. And then in Pittsburgh for a decade winning all those Super Bowls with the Steelers.
"The athletic field forces you into the 95 percent," Thomas said. "You find out very quickly that this guy is just like you. That's the phenomenon of athletics."
In other walks of life, he said, the 5 percent can be what is focused on. It can be what matters to people. But on a field or a court, it's that 95 percent that resonates.
There's one last quote from Thomas that I hope resonates with everyone who reads this.
He said it when talking about what it meant to him to be the first African-American to play football at Florida State. He tried to give us a little insight as to the weight that was on his shoulders as he drove to Tallahassee in 1969.
"If you failed, if you didn't succeed both as on the athletic field and academically, then you succumbed to the stereotypes and racism that had existed for over 100 years," he said. "So it wasn't just about J.T. Thomas. It was about the Deions and the Jameises coming behind me."
Thomas most certainly did not fail. He was a brilliant success -- and has been ever since.
But think about that quote for a moment. Think about an 18-year old having that sort of perspective, having that amount of pressure heaped on his shoulders.
Think about how strong that person must be. How strong they all were. To be able to live it. To endure. To fight. Persevere. And triumph.
If that doesn't make you proud to be a Seminole, then I don't know what else could. And I sure hope it encourages you to get to the Sod Cemetery at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Listen to their words. Have your children listen to their words. Teach. Learn.
Maybe shake their hands if you get an opportunity. Or take a picture.
Celebrate four men who most certainly deserve it.
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Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal Council