How Don Meredith helped keep the cowboys together despite segregation and unrest

Editor’s note: This story is excerpted from News editor Dave Lieber’s new book, “Dandy Don Meredith: The First Dallas Cowboy.”

You can’t tell the early history of the Dallas Cowboys without examining a controversial and embarrassing issue that plagued the team – and quarterback Don Meredith’s role as leader of the team.

In the early 1960s, when the new team was formed, white players lived in North Dallas, near the team’s practice facilities. Black players had to live in or around Oak Cliff, adding 20 minutes to the commute to practice.

Wide receiver Bob Hayes recalled that white players were not allowed to room with black players when he joined the team. He said there were no such restrictions on the U.S. Olympic team.

“When we wanted to go out in the evening, the blacks and the whites lived too far apart to go out together. So the team split into white and black cliques,” he wrote in his autobiography.

At the start of the 1962 season, not a single hotel in Dallas would welcome black players from visiting teams. Cowboys general manager Tex Schramm enlisted the help of white businessmen and convinced the Ramada Inn near Love Field to accommodate black players. But there was one condition. Other hotels were not allowed to spread the news because it could lead to a boycott of the Ramada.

Dallas also had a restaurant problem. Black players had great difficulty finding a restaurant. They couldn’t even stand on the street without being harassed by the police.

Away games, especially in the South, were problematic. Once, in New Orleans, Hayes noticed a homemade banner near the stadium roof depicting himself and Meredith (identified by their jersey numbers) with nooses around their necks. The Saints organization would not take the banner down.

Wide receiver Frank Clarke, one of the first black cowboys, recalled, “If you went into a five-cent store, you would see drinking fountains marked ‘colored’ and ‘white.’ I had never seen anything like that. It kind of takes your breath away. You think, ‘My goodness. How far are we from lynching?’ Even though we had no reason to be threatened, I couldn’t get away from the fact that we were in Texas.”

“Not easy for a black athlete”

Running back Don Perkins recalled being invited to lunch at the Highland Park cafeteria with Gil Brandt, the vice president of player personnel, and Meredith. A waiter approached Perkins and said, “Hey, they’re not serving you here.” The group left.

Perkins called a real estate agent about a vacant apartment, but at the meeting the agent said the apartment was already rented.

“It’s not easy for a black athlete to live in Texas,” Perkins complained to a reporter in his native New Mexico, where he lived with his family during the offseason. “The black cowboys can only find houses infested with cockroaches. Right now I have no place to stay this season. If I don’t find somewhere soon, I’ll be camping on Tex Schramm’s doorstep. I think he should know what places we’ve been offered and where we’ve been turned away.”

Schramm told reporter Steve Perkins that Don Perkins (no relation) doesn’t have to camp out. “He can move into my house with me.”

On the subject of the “Negro problem,” Schramm said: There are problems with housing in Dallas, with jobs and schools. “That applies everywhere. It’s not just the case with the Cowboys.”

He added: “I wish he (Perkins) had kept his mouth shut until training camp.”

Then Schramm added, “Who integrated the hotels in Dallas? Us, when we brought NFL teams into the hotel. Who started integrated seating in Dallas? Us, at the Cotton Bowl, and nobody noticed. … But we’re ending segregation. Can anyone name another industry, another profession, where the color of your skin doesn’t matter?”

Schramm met with apartment owners and had the rules regarding roommates lifted. From now on, newcomers were assigned roommates in alphabetical order and not by skin color.

Landry addressed the issue with his team, saying, “Guys, we know what’s going on here. We don’t necessarily agree with it, but that’s the way it is, so we have to do what we can to not create unnecessary problems.”

Renfro’s lawsuit

This all sounded good, but it was hardly enough. Although segregation was illegal, it was widespread. In Dallas, the whites’ method of keeping blacks out of their neighborhoods was to firebomb their homes. It was a terrible time for black families.

Our thanks go to future Hall of Fame defensive back Mel Renfro for making a difference.

His father warned him not to get involved and said, “Melvin, don’t make a scene. It will only get you in trouble.”

Renfro didn’t follow that advice. He and his wife, Pat, spent two years trying to find an apartment in North Dallas. In one case, a property manager told them over the phone that they could rent an apartment for $350 a month. When Pat tried to arrange that, she was told the apartment was now for sale, not for rent.

“I was so excited that I could hardly play the game,” Renfro wrote in his autobiography. Forever a cowboy“Later I told my teammates what had happened. They were not surprised. Many of the black players admitted that they had experienced the same thing themselves.”

Following the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Congress passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Act prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex.

Dallas attorney and former Senator Oscar Holcombe Mauzy heard about Renfro’s problems.

He called Renfro: “Mel, do you want to fight this?”

“You bet,” Renfro replied.

“I represent you free of charge.”

They filed the first civil lawsuit under the new housing law in a federal court in Texas.

When the Cowboys learned that Renfro wanted to take the matter to court, Schramm called Renfro into his office, where he “beat me for 35 to 40 minutes.”

“Mel, you can’t do that! It will hurt you.”

“But it hurt me that I was denied an apartment,” Renfro replied.

Mauzy asked the court to allow the Renfros to move into the Executive Duplex Apartments in North Dallas.

Opposing attorneys pressed Renfro, and some real estate agents tried to block the case because they feared it would upend the Dallas real estate market.

The case was presided over by Sarah T. Hughes, the federal judge who swore Johnson in as president after Kennedy’s assassination on the plane.

Renfro won the case and was awarded $1,500 in damages. The owner of the apartment complex had told him he could choose any available duplex. However, because the address was known and Renfro feared for his family’s safety, they took another apartment in the neighborhood.

Renfro always felt that Schramm was punishing him by paying him a lower salary than other players in the league who played the same position.

Renfro has played in ten Pro Bowls and four Super Bowls, but his greatest victory has certainly come in court.

Meredith’s leadership

Regarding Meredith’s role in healing racial wounds, wide receiver Hayes wrote in his autobiography, “Although Don was one of those good old boys from East Texas and SMU, he was fair to everyone on the team, not just the whites. I would say the blacks were more comfortable in Meredith’s presence than we were in the presence of other white players on the team.”

“The bottom line is that we won with Meredith. We were happy with Meredith. We felt comfortable with Meredith and Meredith was a leader on the team. He may not have been the all-out serious leader. But leadership is leadership.”

Star fullback Walt Garrison agreed: “When Meredith was with the Cowboys, the atmosphere in the locker room was always great. The team spirit, the camaraderie between the players, black and white, was the best.”

“Most of this was thanks to Joe Don. He was the undisputed team leader. And it was only because of his nature – friendly, open, relaxed and funny – that we were always a happy team.

“After practice, we’d go to the bar and work out any problems we had. Meredith had organized that. Thursday afternoon was officially ‘bar day’ because that was the last hard day of practice of the week. And most of the team would go to the VIP lounge, a bar off of Central Expressway. Meredith would get up and sing and drink and talk and drink and just hold court. ‘Okay, what’s going on? Who’s in trouble?'”

Concluding remark: In his autobiography, black Cowboys tight end Pettis Norman writes: “I began to think about the rent I was paying when I rented apartments. I looked at the quality of the apartments available. Then it dawned on me that I should build an apartment complex and become a landlord of affordable, quality apartments.

“With a loan of about half a million dollars – an extraordinary sum at the time – I worked with architects, engineers and construction companies to build 74 housing units in South Dallas.”

He named it the Golden Helmet Apartments and opened it with great pride. The Golden Helmet still exists today, but under a new name.

The author, Dave Lieber, is the Dallas Morning News’ Watchdog columnist. His book, Dandy Don Meredith – The First Dallas Cowboy, was published on July 4, 2024. Copies are available at Read more from DonMeredithBook.

Authors’ event

Dave Lieber, the author of Dandy Don Meredith – The first Dallas Cowboywill speak about the legendary quarterback on July 18 at 7:30 p.m. at the Allen Public Library. Admission to the program is free and the presentation will also be streamed live on actv.org and youtube.com/AllenCityTV. The library is located at 300 N. Allen Drive in Allen. For more information, call 214-509-4911.