Nearly 50 years after Washington football players protested what they considered racial injustice under coach Jim Owens, two former UW players weigh in on the protests in Missouri.
To former Washington wide receiver Ralph Bayard, the incident at the University of Missouri this past week was hauntingly familiar.
The allegations of racial injustice. The African-American football players who decided they couldn’t tolerate it any longer. The turmoil that resulted when those two forces collided.
“It hit home,’’ said Bayard, now 66 and nearly half a century removed from the unrest that erupted at Washington in 1969 under coach Jim Owens.