In my Minneapolis, MN, high school, I played football, basketball, baseball, and track. Marshall High was a public school that merged with the private University High two blocks away. U-High was unusual in that we had grades 7–12, and I was a seventh grader at U-High before becoming part of the combined school in eighth grade, Marshall-University High. M-U was the first voluntarily integrated high school in the Minneapolis public school system, though Black students initially comprised less than 10% of the school’s population. A group of Black kids lived in the district in SE Minneapolis, though the majority came from Black neighborhoods on the North or South side.
M-U was a small school compared to the other schools in the conference that were grades 10–12. We didn’t fare very well in athletic competitions against the much larger schools with more serious programs. I didn’t start playing basketball until my sophomore year. I didn’t love the game as I did football and baseball, but I was pushed into the sport as I kept growing taller. In my junior year, I was on the varsity team, playing for a coach named Art Chido, who I believe taught science as well. Coach Chido was a nice enough man; when he got irritated, the most he would say was, “Hell’s Bells.” He was let go as basketball coach after a 2–19 season and replaced by his assistant, Ed Prohofsky, who would coach my senior year.
I already had a good relationship with Mr. Prohofsky. He was the head track coach, and I threw the discus and shot put along with the long jump. I demonstrated some success in the discus, which he knew little about. But he got me some slides from the library showing how to do the spin involved and helped me work on my release. I still own the school record for the discus at 155′ 10″, probably because M-U closed down not long after I left, so nobody will ever take it from me.
I had worked with Coach Ed during football season, where he was an assistant, and I had taken his gym class. When practice started at the beginning of my senior year, I was looking forward to it, as were some of my friends trying out for the team. During the average school day, we often found time for pick-up basketball games, and everyone was confident about their prospects for the team. As we got into the season’s first games, a few of my Black friends were dissatisfied with their playing time and decided it must be because they were Black.
I’ve played team sports from childhood into adulthood and have never been on a team where someone wasn’t unhappy with their playing time. Sometimes, there is enough difference in talent for an objective observer to see who the better players are. Looking back, there wasn’t a huge gap in talent between some of those who played more than my friends. My friends felt differently and decided to boycott the team, seeking to play more. Things didn’t go as they had hoped, and they ended up leaving the team and accusing Coach Prohofsky of being racist. Those friends told me and a couple of others not to participate in the boycott. They felt I had a chance to be successful in basketball and didn’t want to hurt me. I never had to choose whether to stand with my friends or the coach.
Things died down after a couple of games, and the team went on to have a much better season than the year before. We made a run in the district playoffs, being eliminated one game short of making the state tournament. M-U would go on to win the state championship two years later under Coach Prohofsky.
I last lived in Minneapolis when I left high school, though I did go back to visit my grandparents when they were living, usually every other Christmas. I would go by and see my former coach and catch up. Then, after my grandparents passed, we lost touch for a couple of decades until, one day, I got a call from Mr. Prohofsky. We talked for over an hour, and he brought up the boycott during his first year as head basketball coach. I could hear in his voice that the incident pained him, and he told me how much it meant to him that I stuck by him. He was surprised to hear that the same people who had left the team encouraged me to stay.
The thing about racism is that it often isn’t cut and dried or black and white. So much is a grey area where you can’t say. I can speak to my relationship with Mr. Prohofsky. He helped me develop in track; he brought back former basketball players who played my position (center) to show me techniques for protecting the ball and blocking out. It’s true he benefitted from my success, but I gained more. I became an All-City basketball player my senior year and had the fundamental skills that made me a successful college player.
There may have been things going on in the background that I did not know. Coach started three Black players: myself, point guard Craig Kelly, and forward Garry Johnson, whom you might recognize as Jellybean from the band The Time. A fourth white starter clearly earned his spot, but was the other guard any better than my friends? Was the new coach under pressure to maintain a certain degree of white presence on the court? That has certainly happened in other places.
Ed Prohofsky is someone I’ve always respected and considered part of the village that raised me. Coach Ed went on to join the Minnesota Lynx organization when they got their WNBA franchise. Mr. Prohofsky concluded a long and successful career of working with athletes, many of them Black. Though the talk of him being racist completely died down after weeks, if not days, it still pained him a half-century later. One of my friends who boycotted the team went back and apologized. He didn’t rejoin the squad but became the team manager and helped us out. My friend likely never gave the boycott another thought after leaving high school. Coach Ed was still thinking about it 50 years later.
As much as I write about race and racism, I’m generally very slow to accuse someone of being a racist. If I’ve said it, you can be certain I can document my reasons for believing it. I’m equally hesitant to say something isn’t racist because I may not know that either. Much if not most of the time, I’m just not sure.
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This post was previously published on Cultured.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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