And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Kentucky, Texas Western, and the Game That Changed American Sports (Hardcover)

by Frank Fitzpatrick (Author) "Adolph Rupp's face would not permit a smile..." (more)
Key Phrases: black basketball players, black athletes, black players, Texas Western, New York, Adolph Rupp (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Fitzpatrick wastes no time making his point in this fertile and compelling story of perhaps the most important college basketball game ever played: "What a piece of history," Arkansas basketball coach Nolan Richardson exclaims in an opening quote. "If basketball ever took a turn, that was it."

Richardson may be underestimating. The 1966 NCAA championship final between the heavily favored, all-white University of Kentucky, and the "No Names from Nowhere" all-black starting five of upstart Texas Western (now the University of Texas-El Paso) was a sporting insurrection in a time of social chaos and upheaval. Played out in black and white, everything about this David-and-Goliath confrontation was washed in complex and layered shades of gray.

Through strong interviews and contemporary accounts, Fitzpatrick builds toward the ineffable climax, recreated in spirited detail, on a Saturday night in Maryland. He lays his foundation with a contextual chronicle of the turbulent times, emphasizing the importance of white basketball to Kentucky's image of itself. He lays up strong profiles of the universities, their hoop traditions, the players, and the two extraordinary coaches who led them--the Miners' rumpled tactician, Don Haskins, and the Kentucky squire, Adolph Rupp, whose legend is sadly choked by his racist roots.

"No one has ever studied the effect Texas Western's victory had on integration, nor would such a thing be entirely measurable," Fitzpatrick observes, but it was nevertheless unmistakable. "The number of black athletes at major colleges surged immediately afterward ... and basketball, which had always been linked with sweet-shooting country boys from places like Indiana and Kentucky, became the 'City Game.'" And for young blacks in America, the accomplishment provided something beyond a national title; it held out a hint of hope. Walls' ultimate achievement--by no means a small one--is not letting us forget that. --Jeff Silverman

From Kirkus Reviews
An admirably researched account of the barrier-shattering championship game that slam-dunked segregated college basketball. Outside of Jackie Robinson's baseball debut, perhaps no single sporting event had so profound a social effect as the 1966 NCAA basketball championship. The competitors were the upstart Texas Western (now University of Texas, El Paso) Miners and an established power, the University of Kentucky Wildcats. More than a battle between teams, however, the game pitted two ways of life. The Miners fielded their five best players, who also happened to be African-American; it was basketballs first all-black starting roster. The Wildcats, coached by Adolph Rupp (whom the author compares to the infamous Birmingham, Ala., police chief Bull Connor), were defiantly all-white. Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Fitzpatrick balances present-day interviews with the former players and surviving coaches with contemporaneous accounts to expose the sporting fraternity's subtle and not-so-subtle biases. Texas Western fielded a roster of formidable athletes whose brand of basketball was predicated on fundamentalssmarts, stifling defense, superior conditioning, and intimidationnot on the undisciplined, high-flying ``playground'' game then associated with black athletes (a misperception Fitzpatrick addresses throughout the book). Nevertheless, sportswriters and coaches across the nation dismissed the team's chances, assuming that they would fold under pressure (another persistent clich about black athletes). Defying stereotypes and shrugging off tremendous stress, the Miners controlled the game and won; it was the Wildcats who were flummoxed. The games ``message'' was lost on Rupp, who, despite a loss that would haunt him to his grave, remained steadfast in his defense of racial segregation and held out against recruiting black players until the 1970s. Although Rupp has his apologistssome of his former players try to soft-pedal his interdict on nonwhite playershe comes across as a small-minded bigot who set race relations in Kentucky back several years, if not decades. Fair but devastating in its portrait of persistent prejudice, this is a landmark account of a landmark event. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (March 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684835517
• ISBN-13: 978-0684835518
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,063,038 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 1966 NCAA Title Game: Texas Western 72, Kentucky 65, March 31, 2002

By	Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Ironically, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Kentucky, Texas Western, and the Game That Changed American Sports," preserves a stereotypical view of the game that presumably challenged a prevailing stereotype. The controversial figure in this story has always been Adolph Rupp, coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, whose "Rupp's Runts" were the last all-white team to play for the championship in the NCAA mens basketball title game. Fitzpatrick makes Rupp the iconic figure of white racism. Indeed, before the game, Rupp told the press that a team of five black players could not beat a team of five white players. However, certainly Rupp was not alone in that holding that stupid position. While it would not be surprising that Rupp, as a older Southern white man, would be a racist, his attempts to recruit future pros Wes Unseld and Butch Beard would seem to suggest he might have been something short of a card carrying member of the Klan. Yet Rupp is demonized throughout the book, while his players, most notably Pat Riley and Louie Dampier, are forced into the role of apologists. Unfortunately, Rupp's legacy pretty much ended with this game, while Riley and Dampier both got to prove their willingness to play not only against but with blacks in professional basketball.

I had spent years booing Don Haskins and the Miners in the Pit in Albuquerque for years before I found out that UTEP had once been Texas Western and how won the NCAA title in 1966. The final score was 72-65, but as they often say, the game was never really that close. Fitzpatrick does assemble all the stories and quotes needed to give you a sense for what happened and how it was seen as important. The collision course between the two teams, the programs, the two coaches, the two ways of thinking, is crystal clear from start to finish. However, despite its importance, primarily in opening up the SEC to black basketball players and other athletes, this game certainly did not impact on the national championships for the rest of the decade. After all, the argument could be made that the only reason Texas Western won in 1966 was because freshman were not eligible to play and two-time defending national champion U.C.L.A. had the best player in the country, Lew Alcindor, playing on their freshman team. U.C.L.A. would win the next seven NCAA titles and all of John Wooden's 10 title teams were won by integrated teams. I have to believe, that even if Texas Western had lost, that the value of black players would have been lost on the rest of the country.

As interesting as the story about this pivotal game happens to be, the story about the story is equally fascinating. While it was obvious to everyone who watched the game that a team of black players beat a team of white players, the sports media managed to cover the game without dealing with the racial aspects of the encounter. The aftermath of this story abounds with more irony. Kentucky did not recruit a black player until 1969, at which point Don Haskins was having trouble recruiting black players because of a Sports Illustrated story claiming he was exploiting black athletes by bringing them to Texas Western just to win the national championship (I know, think about it a bit and pretend it makes sense). When Rupp coached and lost his final game, it was again an instance of his five white players losing to a team of five black players. Ultimately, the picture of Rupp in this book makes him more of a pathetic figure than anything else. I guess when you have a larger than life figure like that it is impossible to put anything else in perspective because they overwhelm any story in which they are involved. But even though they are tearing down Cole Field House at Maryland, where this game took place, it is certainly a moment in sports history that needs to be recalled from time to time.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well researched, December 24, 1999

By	WDX2BB (New York State) - See all my reviews

This is a nice, easy read about a milestone game in college basketball history. It certainly dispelled some of the myths I had about the contest. Fitzpatrick talked to all sorts of people and checked many resources, leaving the reader impressed.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Walls crashed, May 5, 2001

By	Jonathan Jackson (Nashville,Tn USA) - See all my reviews

This book was very inspirational to me. Before 1966 there was a myth that five African-American couldn't play on the basketball court together without having one white person on the court to keep things in order. This championship game of 1966 with five African-American's starting as well as winning the game busted integration wide open. If minorities as a whole can apply the same techniques to academics that they apply athletics, we as a race will be able to tear down many racial barriers whether we have affirmative action or not. Just look at the blacks that are in big time positions that are not athletes. Kenneth Chenault/CEO American Express, Frankie Raines/CEO of Fannie Mae, etc.