A Cornerback Throws Jim Crow
Out of Bounds

by Frederick B. Hudson

In professional football, a cornerback is one of two defensive halfbacks placed behind the linebackers and near the sidelines. His role is to stop the opposing team's ball carriers by any legal means necessary.

Walter Beach III played the position of cornerback with the Cleveland Browns with the necessary aplomb to win a Super Bowl ring in 1964. But his blocking and tackling prowess has not been limited to the football field.

In the crucial areas of racial and human rights he has waged the good fight for more than forty years, insisting that his people's rights not be forced to the sidelines and that team efforts help to carry the ball across the victory line with continuous diligence.

His latest challenge to racism has won endorsement by the United States Justice Department which has filed a suit which compliments a suit filed by Beach and ten other minority workers with the New York City Recreation Department in 1999. The suit accuses the Recreation Department of not only failing to promote blacks and Hispanics, but going so far as to seek out and promote whites without conducting any formal interview process. The new team of eleven is planning a touchdown.

Born in Pontiac, Michigan to a hard-working, close-knit family in 1932, Walter showed early athletic prowess, winning all-city athletic honors in football and track in junior and senior high school. He emphasizes that his greatest learning experiences took place not on the playgrounds, but with his father's friends who spent time with him and taught him valuable lessons about living life with pride and dignity. Beach recounts " my father's friends would see me on the streets and make sure my tie was straight. They would encourage me not to hang around the pool hall-they told me I was headed for bigger and better things. I never forgot those lessons."

Less than a month before graduating from high school, Beach decided to join the Air Force which stationed him in Germany. He served as a cryptographer and played for Air Force football teams. After honorable discharge, he decided to attend college at Central Michigan University-he was offered a football scholarship.

Beach avoided the dead-end trap set for many athletes of taking a light academic load-he took a full load of courses and graduated with a double major in history and sociology. Since he was selected as a college All-American football player, he was drafted by the Oakland Raiders of the American Football League and the New York Giants of the National Football League. However, the Michigan native decided to join the Hamilton Tigercats in the Canadian Football League since the franchise was closer to his home.

When Beach joined the Tigercats, he had a rude awakening. He thought that professional sports were committed to having the best players on the field regardless of color-he soon found that that was not the case. He saw black players cut while white players of lesser caliber remained. When Beach was at Central Michigan University, he had the gratifying experience of seeing white coaches and players fight racists who insulted his dignity. "I realized that since all twenty-five professional teams in a league discriminated and sent some black players home, they didn't feel they were jeopardizing their chances for a championship."

Beach only lasted about two or three weeks with the Tigercats because he wanted to play in the college All-Star game that year again the World Championship pro team and the Tigercats forbid it. So Beach followed his instincts, played in the All-Star game and was released by the Tigercats. Beach then tried to join the New York Giants but was cut. The New England Patriots invited him to a tryout and won a berth in 1960. But in 1962 he noted that there were plans to put the black players in a black hotel when they went to New Orleans for a game. Beach called a meeting with the other black players who selected him as their spokesperson to the team owners. After voicing the objections to the segregated housing plans, Beach was released from the Patriots.

When he returned to Pontiac he was hired as a schoolteacher in his hometown-a job he loved. But the salary was not enough to support his family which had grown to include three children. He wrote to the Cleveland Browns and was invited to training camp and made the team. He was a team member of the legendary Jim Brown from 1963 to 1969. He won a Super Bowl Championship ring in 1964.

Beach notes that the Browns were a kind of sanctuary from much of the racism in football because of Jim Brown's presence-"Jim was a strong race man and was a superstar and carried a lot of weight which made it easier for a lot of younger players to be free and liberated men. There weren't any one dimensional black men on the Browns. Among the twelve blacks on the team were activists and intellectuals. One of these was Sidney Williams who later was appointed as Ambassador to the Bahamas." Many of these talented teammates were interviewed as well as Beach in Spike Lee's latest documentary, Jim Brown, All-American. But Beach notes that the Browns management always had an even number of blacks on the teams-so each black could have a black roommate."

After his career ended in 1969, Beach continued some of his off season employment endeavors-working for Cleveland Legal Aid and the Huff Area Development Council. His community involvement attracted the attention of Cleveland's first black mayor, Carl Stokes who appointed him Special Assistant for Youth Affairs. But there was a bit of unfinished business that needed to be attended to. When Beach was terminated from the Cleveland Browns, attempts were made to make his employment with other football teams in the league impossible-his pension benefits were denied. Beach initiated an antitrust suit which was successful in 1975 to regain his back pay and pension benefits.

His interest in law led him to accept a scholarship to Yale Law School in 1969. After exposure to law school for two years, he realized his real talent and interest lay with working with youth. He moved to New York City and worked as a teacher and employment program administrator as well as director of training for the New York City Corrections Department. An opportunity to join the New York Parks and Recreation in 1992 seemed the ideal marriage of his sports background and youth leadership experience.

But racism's stallion reared his ugly head again when Beach attended staff meetings chaired by Commissioner Henry Stern who had held his position under several mayors. In staff meetings Stern insisted on giving all staff members a nickname-Beach refused to choose a nickname. At the end of the meeting Stern asked Beach if it was true he was a former professional football player. Beach told him that he was a former cornerback for the Cleveland Browns. The next day an identification card with a pin arrived for Beach with the name CORNERBACK printed on it. Beach refused to wear the card and always signed in at meetings using his real name-not the nicknames other staff members used.

The park he administered was cited by the President of the United States as one of the best in the country and Beach was promoted to Director of Recreation for the Borough of Brooklyn in 1994. But his sensitivity to other minority workers' career stagnation led him to voice opposition to discrimination experienced by others. He was terminated soon after on a trumped up charge of records fabrication which was later found invalid.

Beach joined other minority workers in a historic class action lawsuit against the Recreation Department that cited the Commissioner for many instances of racial discrimination which included creation of a "Class of" program which recruited Ivy League graduates for special hiring and promotional opportunities which favored their rapid ascent over workers with many more years of seniority.

Beach notes that of the eleven African-American and Hispanic people who filed the suit, he was the only one who was ever promoted to an executive position. "Very few minorities in the history of the Recreation Department ever have had significant decision making power. But the "Class of" people were getting promoted every year. "They would allow a black like me to be the Director of Recreation in a predominately black borough like Brooklyn but they have never had one in predominately white boroughs like Queens, Manhattan, or Staten Island."

(Football photo courtesy of the Cleveland Browns. Current photo courtesy of Gail Boyd.)

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