THE GREEN MONSTER
By Pete Cava
Mention the Green Monster, and most folks start daydreaming about the sound of bat against ball and the taste of hot dogs, peanuts and crackerjack at Boston's Fenway Park.
For a generation of North Carolina track and field athletes, however, the Green Monster symbolizes one of the last gasps of institutionalized racism.
Up until the late 1960s, track and field athletes from four historically black North Carolina colleges � Winston-Salem State , Johnson C. Smith, North Carolina A&T and North Carolina College (known today as North Carolina Central) � rode the same bus when they traveled to meets in the Southern and Middle Atlantic States .
�It was during segregation time,� recalled North Carolina A&T track coach Roy Thompson. �That was the bus we used to ride to meets. I can't remember the make. It was an old model.�
Thompson, who entered college in the fall of 1964, competed in the sprints and horizontal jumps. He thinks whoever nicknamed the bus might have been off a few shades on the color spectrum. �I don't know who nicknamed it the Green Monster,� he said. �It was more like silver and blue.�
Mention the Sixties nowadays, and some grow nostalgic for the Beatles, Motown, long hair and tie-dyed shirts. For Thompson and the first wave of Baby Boomers who came of age in the middle years of the decade, however, it was a troubled time.
That August the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives gave President Lyndon Johnson the authority to increase U.S. presence in North Vietnam . Young men who didn't attend college were likely to be drafted into military service. America 's long nightmare in Southeast Asia was just beginning.
As the struggle for social justice crested, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law. That summer three civil rights workers � two white, one black � were massacred in Mississippi . Racial violence erupted in the Harlem section of New York City and in Rochester , N.Y.
There were kernels of hope. �Before I started college,� said Thompson, �I never associated with many white people because most everything was segregated. But we had some interaction through track and you got to meet guys you could talk to. We got a chance to know them and they got a chance to know us. I met some really good people.�
One of the white athletes Thompson befriended was Duke University high hurdler Jeff Howser, who placed fourth in the 1968 NCAA Outdoor Championships. �We used to call him the fastest white boy in the world,� said Thompson with a chuckle. �He became a friend, someone we could talk to.�
Despite federal legislation and the interracial inroads by young people like Thompson and Howser, Jim Crow hung on like a pit bull. And when black college students traveled to away meets, they were forced to take a communal bus.
During the 1960s Mike Byrnes of the National Scholastic Sports Foundation was a high school coach on Long Island . Byrnes believes a team made up of athletes who rode the Green Monster might have cracked the top ten in the Olympic medal count. �If that bus had ever been in a wreck,� said Byrnes, who worked with the 1968 U.S. Olympic squad at its training camp in Lake Tahoe , �this country would have lost an awful lot of talent.�
�You gotta believe it!� agreed Thompson, who remembers riding the Green Monster with notables like Winston-Salem State hurdler Leon Coleman, North Carolina College long/triple jumper Norman Tate, Johnson C. Smith quarter miler Vince Matthews and long jumper Bob Beamon, Thompson's A&T teammate.
Tate, Coleman, Matthews and Beamon competed for the U.S. at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City . Beamon placed first in the long jump with a jaw-dropping world record leap of 29 feet, 2 ½ inches. Matthews won gold as part of the triumphant U.S. 4x400 meter relay team.
�Vince was a character,� recalled Thompson. �He was a lively, charismatic person. He was a fun-loving guy, but he was also a very well-read guy.�
Passengers on the Green Monster included other top-notch athletes, like Edwin Roberts of North Carolina College . Roberts won a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo , running the third leg for Trinidad in the 4x400 relay. �There were lots of other talented people on that bus,� said Thompson. �All-Conference picks, All-Americans � a really talented group.�
Also onboard the Green Monster was future Pro Football Hall of Famer Elvin Bethea. �Elvin was a great shot put and discus guy for us at A&T,� said Thompson. �He was also an outstanding defensive lineman. The Houston Oilers drafted him, but I always thought he could have been an Olympian if he didn't play football.�
Rides on the Green Monster dragged on for what seemed like eternity. A one-way trip to the Quantico Marine Relays in Virginia took five hours, and it was eight hours to the Penn Relays in Philadelphia . Tallahassee , site of the Florida A&M Relays, was a nine-hour ordeal. �We read during the trips,� said Thompson, �and talked trash to each other � �You'll be watching my back all through the race,' or �I'm gonna lean into that curve so hard, when I come out of it I'm gonna have to brush dust off my face.'�
Athletics wasn't the only topic of discussion onboard the Green Monster. �Most of the guys on the bus were involved with civil rights,� said Thompson, �so it wasn't all just track. You'd hear talk about the ideology of Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King. Our consciousness was about what was happening in the country, and to us.�
Thompson said racism was overt, still out in the daylight like yellow dandelions on a green lawn. �Sometimes our bus would go into a filling station, and right behind us the Ku Klux Klan would pull in to gas up,� he said. �With their hoods and everything.�
In Southern cities, black athletes were barred from staying in most hotels. �In Florida we stayed in a gymnasium,� recalled Thompson. �You know those old army cots? They had them lined up on the gym floor with index cards taped on them with the names of schools. The coaches had to put up four or five dollars a bed. There were forty teams sleeping together, and during the night you had all these people talking trash about what they were going to do to each other the next day. That's how competitive it was.�
The Green Monster rarely stopped for meals. Thompson said that the athletes usually brought sack lunches aboard the bus � fried chicken, fresh fruit � stopping only for restroom breaks. The bus once made a rare visit to a restaurant. After the athletes gave their orders, they were informed they weren't welcome to stay. They were told they had to take their meals back outside.
�We tried to cancel the orders,� said Thompson. �But they called the police and made us take them. It was common for restaurants to refuse us service. The only time I got to stay in a restaurant for a meal was at a Horn and Hardart in Philadelphia .�
Thompson remembers one post-meet tradition on the Green Monster. �If you didn't win any hardware,� he said, �you got ragged pretty good on the way home.�
After graduating from A&T, Thompson spent 1970 through 1972 in the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam . In places like Cam Ranh Bay, Long Binh and Tan Son Nhut, those long rides on the Green Monster seemed like another world. � Vietnam taught me the value of life,� said Thompson. �I learned you have to live every day to the fullest because it can be snuffed out at any moment.�
The gauntlet of the Sixties claimed some of Thompson's generation and left others scarred for life. Those who came through it were changed forever.
Since then, America has transformed itself. The Green Monster is no more. But many of the friendships forged on that bus continue. �We became very close during those rides,� said Thompson. �I see Norman [Tate] a lot and I see [Bob] Beamon once in a while.�
Some of the interracial friendships lasted, too. Duke hurdler Jake Howser, remembered as �the world's fastest white boy' by Thompson and his A&T teammates, is currently the strength coach at his alma mater. �We're friends to this day,� said Thompson.
There's no doubt the Baby Boomers' predecessors, tempered by Depression, World War II and the jittery peace of the Cold War, deserve the title of the Greatest Generation. Not far behind are those who kept faith with the American promise during the Sixties: young men who rode the Green Monster while dreaming of a better future
. . . and young people of all shades who brushed aside the thick curtain of racism to look into each other's souls.
Injustice hasn't been eradicated � only curbed, like a disease by vaccine. Thompson believes interaction between races is more positive. But in some ways, the Green Monster still chugs along. �Racism is more covert,� he said, �and there's still that undercurrent. You can legislate people's behavior, but you can't legislate their hearts.�
In the second stanza of America the Beautiful , Katherine Lee Bates wrote: � America , America , God mend thine ev'ry flaw.�
Only when that comes to pass will the Green Monster stop running for good.
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