It’s taken a while, but UK is ‘doing right’ by another of its Black sports pioneers

In the months after the University of Kentucky unveiled statues in September 2016, honoring its first four Black football players for their roles in breaking the color barrier in Southeastern Conference football, a letter-writing campaign began calling on UK to extend equivalent recognition to ex-Wildcats track star Jim Green.

A world-class sprinter, Green was a late-1960s contemporary at UK of football players Nate Northington, Greg Page, Wilbur Hackett and Houston Hogg. Green was the first Black athlete competing for an SEC school to win conference and NCAA individual championships in any sport. He was also the first Black athlete who earned his college degree from the University of Kentucky.

It took longer than the writers who were deluging the Herald-Leader Letters to the Editor email box in the fall of 2016 and into the winter of 2017 might have wanted, but UK’s announcement last month that it will name its proposed indoor track and field center after Green represents the university “doing right” by Green and his legacy.

“This was a shock to me that this happened,” Green says. “I was overjoyed, excited, enthusiastic. How many African-American kids grow up to see their name go up on a building on a prestigious campus like the University of Kentucky’s?”

Green, now 75, is one of the most dynamic athletes ever produced in the commonwealth. A multi-sport star at tiny Eminence High School in Henry County, Green was recruited by three UK sports programs.

After Green once scored 10 touchdowns in a high school game, Charlie Bradshaw envisioned him playing football for the Cats at Stoll Field.

Adolph Rupp and his coaching staff had a different idea in mind for how to deploy Green’s speed. “Coach Rupp wanted me to play basketball and just run down the court and (they would) throw the ball to me and I’d put it in (the basket),” Green says.

However, it was UK’s then-youthful track and field coach, Press Whelan, who won out over his more famous colleagues in the recruitment of Green.

Though he trained on the railroad tracks for a school that did not have its own track, Green became an enormous high school track and field star. He won Kentucky state track and field championships in the 100-, 220- and 440-yard dashes as a sophomore, junior and senior.

“I knew that track was my love and my first choice,” Green says. “I just decided I wanted to stay with track and field.”

‘A tough situation’

During his recruitment, Green says Whelan — who died in August at age 84 — kept it real about what the challenges of being one of the first Black athletes in the Southeastern Conference in the late 1960s were going to be.

“He said, ‘People are going to say things about you. People are going to talk about you. You will have to be tough enough not to let that bother you,’” Green recalls.

Green says Whelan was mostly right in his portrayal of how things were going to be.

“It was a tough situation,” Green says. “You go into the SEC and you have guys on different teams, your competitors, who would call you names and say things about you. Just openly call you the ‘N’ word and the ‘F’ word and all kinds of stuff. You just had to hang in there and be tough-skinned.”

Faced with overt racism, Green let his performance be his answer. As a freshman in 1968, he won the NCAA indoor championship in the 60-meter sprint. He would win the same event championship a second time in 1971.

In SEC competition, Green won eight individual championships — the indoor 60-yard dash (1968, 1971); outdoor 100-yard dash (1968, 1970, 1971); and outdoor 220-yard dash (1968, 1970, 1971).

Green left UK with a degree in special education. He was the first Black athlete to earn a degree from the University of Kentucky. “I never did anything in special education,” Green says. “I became a pharmaceutical rep for 25 years.”

At his best, Green’s times were those of an Olympic medal contender. However, ill-timed hamstring injuries essentially doomed his bids to make the 1968 and 1972 U.S. Olympic teams.

“I don’t worry about (not having) an Olympic gold medal or anything like that,” Green says. “I kind of feel like there are a lot of guys who made an Olympic team who have not done as well as I have. I’m not bragging or anything, but God has been very, very good to me. I can’t complain about anything.”

The ‘Jim Green Center’

Current UK track and field head coach Lonnie Greene says he is optimistic that the “Jim Green Indoor Track and Field Center” will be available for occupancy by November 2023. The new venue is part of a UK Athletics facilities revamp that includes removing the current indoor track from the Nutter Field House so it can be converted for football-only use.

Greene says he envisions an indoor track facility with a “wow factor” that immediately impresses recruits. The UK coach says another goal is to install one of the “fastest” running surfaces in the country. “In our sport, a ‘world-class facility’ is really determined by ‘How fast are the times that came off that track?’” Greene says.

A $7.5 million gift from longtime UK sports boosters Joe and Kelly Craft will be applied toward the new indoor track center and the renovation of Nutter Field House.

“When I was first approached about the naming of this facility, when they said, ‘What do you think about naming the facility for Jim Green?’ my reaction was, ‘This is totally appropriate,” Greene says. “I was like, ‘Yes, man, let’s run with it.’”

A University of Kentucky publicist says the “Jim Green Indoor Track and Field Center” will be the fourth major building on the UK campus named for a Black person. The others are the Greg Page Stadium View Apartments (named for the former UK football player); the Lyman T. Johnson Hall (named for the first Black student to attend UK); and the John T. Smith Hall (named for the first Black vice president in UK administration).

Jim Green says he sees the legacy left by the four Black football players who integrated the SEC and himself when he watches University of Kentucky sports teams now.

“I feel like every African-American athlete that has come to the University of Kentucky since us, we have had an imprint on,” Green says. “… Sometimes, you look at the (UK) football team now, and the 11 starters on defense are all what color? They are all African-American. That all started with us.”