James Burney McAlester: The First Native American to Play Football for Vanderbilt University

By Will Thomas

James Burney McAlester was born in North McAlester, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) June 7, 1876*. He went on to become the first Native American to play football for Vanderbilt University. His father, James J. McAlester, served as U.S. Marshal for the United States Court in the Choctaw Nation from 1893 to 1897. His mother, Rebecca Burney, was a member of the Chickasaw nation, and his uncle, Benjamin C. Burney, was Governor of the Chickasaw Nation from 1887 to 1880.

J. B. McAlester, Nashville, Tennessee, 1898. Calvert Brothers Studios Glass Plate Negatives.

J. B. McAlester studied law at the University of Missouri and then at Vanderbilt University. During his time at Vanderbilt, he played left tackle on the 1897 football team. In his book 50 Years of Vanderbilt Football, famed sports writer Fred Russell calls the 1897 team the "Greatest Eleven of the Nineties." He also notes that McAlester was the only Native American to play football for Vanderbilt (at least, as of the time of the book's publication in 1938).

1897 Vanderbilt University football team in Fred Russell's 50 Years of Vanderbilt Football. Library Holdings.

During the 1890s and early 1900s, Vanderbilt's greatest rival wasn't the University of Tennessee – it was Sewanee (now named University of the South). Between 1891 and 1944, Sewanee and Vanderbilt would battle it out on the gridiron 52 times. Vanderbilt won 40 of the games, Sewanee won 8, and there were 4 tie games.

Statements by Sewanee team captain, Oscar Wilder and Vanderbilt team manager, Lester G. Fant (misspelled in the newspaper), about the 1897 game, Nashville American, Nov. 25, 1897. Newspaper Microfilm Collection.

In 1897, the two teams met in Nashville November 25 (Thanksgiving Day). The game, which Vanderbilt won 10-0, received a great deal of coverage in the Nashville American newspaper (later renamed the Tennessean).

List of players on the Sewanee and Vanderbilt football teams with their respective weights, Nashville American, Nov. 25, 1897. Newspaper Microfilm Collection.

One article lists the offensive players for each team and gives their respective weights (although it incorrectly lists McAlester as "J. E." McAlester). Tipping the scales at 190 lbs., McAlester was the heaviest player on Vanderbilt's team. Now, of course, an offensive lineman under 200 lbs. or a 134 lb. quarterback is something you might only expect to see on a junior high school team.

Illustration depicting Vanderbilt scoring a touchdown against Sewanee, Nashville American, Nov. 26, 1897. Newspaper Microfilm Collection.

*There is some discrepancy about when McAlester was born. His World War I draft registration (which he filled out) lists his birth year as 1876. His death certificate, however, lists his birth year as 1874, and his tombstone lists it as 1875. The date he himself gave is most likely the correct one.

The Tennessee State Library and Archives is a division of the Office of Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett

Former Tennessee State University Women’s Track Coach Ed Temple Was a Pioneer

By Blake Fontenay

Interviewing successful people isn’t always a lot of fun. Often people who have accomplished a lot in their lives are defensive, bored with answering the same questions many times over or just focused on getting to the next appointment on their calendars.

When we interviewed Ed Temple for the first profile in our Tri-Star Chronicles project in 2015, he was none of those things. The legendary coach of the Tennessee State University Tigerbelles sat for hours, answering every question asked of him forthrightly and often with a wry sense of humor.

The word “legendary” is used loosely, but it really applied to Temple, who passed away Sept. 22. He coached Tennessee State’s women’s track team for more than 40 years, winning 34 national titles. Forty of the women he coached competed in the Olympics, winning 23 medals. And, as he noted with pride during our interview, all of the Olympians earned their college degrees.

Beyond his winning record, though, there were a number of things that stood out about Temple that will become part of his legacy.

One was his unrelenting commitment to discipline. He had many rules that he expected his athletes to follow. They weren’t allowed to cruise around in cars with friends. They were expected to fix their hair and makeup before giving interviews. And being on time for meetings and practices was a given. Wyomia Tyus, an Olympic gold medalist, said in an interview for Tri-Star Chronicles that Temple threatened to send those who disobeyed his rules home on the train “with a comic book and an apple.”

Temple used athletics as a gateway to help African-American women get college education. He hosted summer training camps for high school girls he hoped to recruit to Tennessee State. Since he had no budget for scholarships in the early years of his tenure, he arranged jobs for students on campus. Temple praised those who were doing well in their classes and chastised the ones who weren’t in front of their teammates.

“Athletics opens doors,” Temple liked to say, “education keeps them open.”

Tigerbelle Track Team and Coach Edward S. Temple with medals from a 1958 meet in Moscow
Members of the Tigerbelle Track Team
Image Courtesy of Tennessee State University Special Collections and Archives, Brown-Daniel Library

Temple was more than a coach. Many of his former athletes described him as a father figure who made lasting impressions on their lives. He and his wife doled out life lessons while supplying the young women with barbecue and birthday cakes. Many of those women came back to visit Temple, even more than 20 years after his retirement. Edith McGuire Duvall, another Olympic gold medalist, said she learned to appreciate Temple’s humor during those visits with her former coach.

“He was not funny then (as a coach),” Duvall told Tri-Star Chronicles. “He was all business. We have a different relationship with him now than when we were running.”

Coach Ed Temple and his children are presented 'Keys to the City', 1964.
Image Courtesy of Tennessee State University Special Collections and Archives, Brown-Daniel Library

Temple also played a key role in raising the profile of and increasing the resources provided to women’s sports. When Temple began his career in 1950, he was paid $150 a month and his track team’s budget was only $64. The school’s training facilities consisted of an incomplete cinder “half track” located near the agriculture department’s pig pen and a dump site.

“Running a 440 (meter race) was out of the question,” Temple wrote in his autobiography, “and on hot days down there by those pigs you sort of lost your motivation to run much of anything.”

Lacking resources for fancier transportation, the team traveled to track meets in a station wagon. Since they were living in the segregated South, the team packed its meals and took bathroom breaks by the side of the road.

While Temple and his Tigerbelles earned international acclaim for their achievements at the track, they made do with scant resources for years. As Temple put it: “Fame don’t pay no bills.” Temple achieved a breakthrough when he successfully appealed directly to then-Governor Buford Ellington, who had once supported segregation, for a bigger budget and athletic scholarships for the women’s track program. The program grew from there.

Members of the 1955 Tigerbelle Track Team
Image Courtesy of Tennessee State University Special Collections and Archives, Brown-Daniel Library

Later in life, Temple got recognition for the work he did in near obscurity early in his career. He was inducted into a slew of different sports halls of fame. In 2015, a statue of Temple went up outside First Tennessee Park, a short drive from Tennessee State’s main campus.

Temple used to tell his recruits: “There’s a right way, the wrong way and Coach Temple’s way.” History will probably look kindly on “Coach Temple’s way.”

To read more about Temple’s life story in Tri-Star Chronicles, please visit: http://sos.tn.gov/tsla/tri-star-chronicles-ed-temple.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A memorial service for Temple is scheduled from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Friday at the Kean Hall Gymnasium on Tennessee State University’s campus.

The Tennessee State Library and Archives is a division of the Tennessee Department of State and Tre Hargett, Secretary of State

The 20th Anniversary of the Days the Eyes of the World Turned to a Tiny Corner of East Tennessee

By Blake Fontenay

It started out as just an idea. A crazy idea, to some people's way of thinking.

It was the late 1980s and Atlanta was preparing a bid to become the host city for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. A group of kayakers from Atlanta that had been making regular weekend trips north to paddle along the Ocoee River in East Tennessee began to wonder: If Atlanta wins the bid, where would the Olympic whitewater canoe and kayak events be held? More to the point, could those events be held on the Ocoee?

American kayaker Richard Weiss, who finished sixth in the men’s division in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games.
Image courtesy of Robert Harrison

The group's members decided the idea was worth pursuing. And almost immediately they encountered reluctance from a number of different quarters: The local businesses that rented rafting equipment along the river worried the disruption caused by the Olympics would cost them money. The United States Canoe and Kayak Team had been focused on its flatwater racing program and wasn't convinced the time was right to divert attention and resources into whitewater racing.

Residents in Polk County, the proposed site of the racing venue, were often divided in their views on various issues depending on which side of Big Frog Mountain they lived. The U.S. Forest Service and the Tennessee Valley Authority, two of the federal agencies whose support was needed for the project, had a rivalry of their own. And Tennessee state government officials weren't ready to commit funding to the project until they knew more about the potential economic benefits.

After Atlanta won the bid, its Olympic committee and the International Olympic Committee weren't overly supportive of the grassroots movement to hold the whitewater events on the Ocoee. The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games was willing to include the whitewater events on the Ocoee, but only if someone else would pay the bills. The International Olympic Committee was either indifferent or outright opposed to the inclusion of the whitewater events, depending on which source one chose to believe.

On top of all that, the proposed site wasn't an ideal location. It was a two-hour drive from Atlanta, where most of the Olympic events were being held, in a forest accessible only by a winding two-lane highway. Cleveland, the nearest town of any size, was 30 miles away.

Olympic action on the Ocoee River course in 1996.
Image credit: United States Forest Service

Yet despite all the obstacles, the people who wanted the Ocoee River site kept pushing. They convinced local residents and businesses to get behind the effort. They convinced the U.S. Canoe and Kayak Team the whitewater program would be beneficial. They convinced the federal agencies to put aside their differences long enough to bring the project to reality. And they convinced Tennessee state government officials that the potential economic benefits justified the funding necessary to develop the racing course.

Even with all the approvals in place, the project wasn't an easy one. Engineers had to build a challenging Olympic course along a section of the riverbed that was dry most of the year. They also had to install spectator seating, parking, infrastructure and landscaping. Work to get the venue ready continued into the final week before the Olympic events.

Workers at Lee University, the site of a makeshift Olympic village, had to scramble to get the campus ready for the 400 athletes, coaches and support personnel who stayed there during the three days of competition. Upgrades to Lee University's campus in Cleveland included new electrical wiring, plumbing and water heaters. Workers doubled the size of the school's cafeteria to help accommodate the voracious appetites of the high-energy athletes.

The Ocoee Whitewater Center, which remains open to this day.
Image credit: United States Forest Service

On the night before the start of the canoe and kayak events, a terrorist attack at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta cast a pall over the games. However, the events along the Ocoee went off without a hitch - and later earned national and international praise. Jeff Dimond, a spokesman for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said the Ocoee events "sort of saved the day. Everybody in Atlanta was down from what had happened, and it was raining and there was a general gloom over the Olympics. Then this came up on TV, and we saw everyone having a good time, and it just picked everybody up."

American kayaker Dana Chladek, who won a silver medal in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games
Image courtesy of Robert Harrison

The Ocoee whitewater events were - and still are - the only Olympic events ever to be held in Tennessee. To read more about the 20th anniversary of this historic time, please check out our Tri-Star Chronicles story, photos and videos at http://sos.tn.gov/tsla/tri-star-chronicles-shooting-rapids

The Tennessee State Library and Archives is a division of the Tennessee Department of State and Tre Hargett, Secretary of State