A Long Road: 50 Years of Experience from Five African American K-State Alumni Chapter 3

Charles Rankin: I think K-State has evolved into a very, very positive environment from where it used to be and I think that what has occurred is that it's been very positive for the university. There's been many, many good people here who saw it as an opportunity to make the university grow, the demographics of the state of Kansas have changed immensely from when I came. Kansas used to be like 7 or 8% minority counting all groups, now it's almost 30% counting all groups. Communities have changed radically, they're coming to this university to get an education, the job market is absorbing their parents, they are able to afford places like this and KU and K-State, Wichita are all adjusting to that particular population that's coming in. You could see it in the athletic programs, the minority numbers are increasing each year participating in the sports program, generating the revenue, filling up the stadium, all that good stuff.

David Griffin: When I came here there wasn't a whole lot of color. The color that you saw was athletic, we only had football players, a few basketball players. Dr. Jim Boyer, emeritus, was the first full professor of African American color on this campus. He laid the foundation for me, and when I use me generically me from all blacks who came to this campus. He did things that laid the pathway for me to come and begin to do the kind of things that I did. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Boyer. That was a source of support because he would school me, in terms of you got to be aware of some things, whether you like them or not, they are part of reality. The reality is that there were three entities here, one being, the life inside the college of education, a life outside of Bluemont Hall, and the general population, of the university. Then there's the city of Manhattan. So there were three different segments that I had to understand. I think they should be told everyday. Because our young brothers and sisters who are in campus now, they don't understand it. If you mention Jim Boyer, if you mention Veryl Switzer, the majority of students wouldn't know who those two individuals were. So it's important that they understand constantly, that they have an opportunity because of those individuals who came before them. It's not all about Greek fraternities and Black Faculty Staff Alliance and Black Student Union. Those things are critical, they are important, but there are other things that preceded that to make those things happen. They need to understand that. They need to hear that history.

Veryl Switzer: There were about 40 or 50 black students at K-State when I got here. We were given the task of breaking in, the folks getting in line. The white students did not care about us coming to K-State or competing. And those who gave us some attention in a lot of cases they ended up talking very negative about us, calling us names, that happened while I was here. I had my teammates now though were all white there were no black athletes in football, I was the only black football player at K-State at the time when I was here. That didn't bother me so much cause I'd been accustomed to different treatment and I challenged whoever was and I wanted them to know that I had a piece of the experience here as much as they did, and they would call out names, of N*** if you will, the only experience we had we didn't let it get to us on a personal basis, because they didn't know us personally. So those were some experiences we had to live with and I was isolated, most of the time to students on campus.

We had a fraternity and we had a sorority here at K-State back in those days, so we kind of segregated ourselves if you will because we didn't feel that we needed any of those students and we tried to let them understand that the cost of education was also experienced by individuals so I did get a scholarship. I played football, safety, half back and so that was all part of it. I graduated in 1954. I was already committed to coming back K-State, when I came back about 10 years later, as the administrator we would have ended up doing a lot of visiting. Faculty accepted their task quite well, and so I didn't have any problems in the classroom they didn't think much of football players, was the issue, You didn't didn't know whether it was based on being a football player, or being black.