The 1970 Forest Bearcats: ‘We weren’t thinking about making history…we were thinking about making touchdowns’

By Rick Cleveland | Aug. 27, 2020

FOREST – Fifty years ago this month, the young people of this Scott County town had no idea what to expect. They just knew life – and school – would be different because the two high schools in town were combining into one.

Previously all-white Forest High School was merging with previously all-black E.T. Hawkins High School. There would be no black school, no white school – just one school. This was happening all over Mississippi. And, as happened in many communities across the Magnolia State, the football team showed the way.

Before we proceed, you should know this: Football was – and still is half a century later – huge in Forest. The Forest High Bearcats were a Little Dixie Conference power. The E.T. Hawkins Black Bearcats had a proud history as well.

Football practice started a month before classes began. In Forest, the first black and white students to mingle were the football players. You should know the 1970 season would have been a season of change even without integration. Gary Risher, a 28-year-old Forest native, was taking over for his former boss, Ken Bramlett, who had moved on to a college job after leading the 1969 Bearcats to a 10-0-1 record and the Little Dixie championship.

But graduation losses had decimated that team. Eighteen seniors had been lost, including several who would go on to play college ball. Risher, a former Bearcat himself, wasn’t starting from scratch, but he was definitely rebuilding and time was short. Risher hired another former Bearcat, Billy Ray Dill for one of his two assistant coaches.  Those two led Forest through spring workouts, not knowing if integration would occur the next school year or be delayed until 1971-72. Risher kept the other assistant’s job open.

Once the decision was made to fully integrate for the 1970-71 school year, Risher made one of the best coaching moves he would ever make. For his line coach, he hired James “Bo” Clark, another Forest native, who had been the head coach at Hawkins. Amazingly, it seems now, Risher and Clark had grown up in the same town, been high school coaches in that same small town and had never met.

The same was true for the players. Said Lee Dukes, a senior wide receiver/defensive back who had never had a black teammate or classmate: “We lived in the same town, we walked the same streets, but we didn’t know one another.”

In 2016, Clark talked about the day he was hired by Risher. “I was working T-ball games, my summer job,” he said. “I looked up from what I was doing and saw a man get out of a pickup truck. He walked toward me and asked if I was Coach Clark. I replied I was, and then he introduced himself as the new Forest High football coach. He asked me to be his line coach and stressed the point he would not tell me how to coach the linemen. That would be my responsibility; he just wanted results. We shook hands on it, and he said, ‘Let’s go to work.’ Believe me, we did.”

It was brutally hot that August and the team practiced twice a day. It is said that misery loves company and perhaps that helped the black and white players come together. They shared the same misery. Said Willie Bowie, a wide receiver and kick returner who came over from Hawkins, “I am not going to lie. Those two-a-days were tough, really tough.”

Eighty-five players showed up for the first practice. By the time the season started, that number was down to 40. The oddest part: Bo Clark, the black assistant coach in charge of the linemen, had no black linemen. All his players were white.

Forty-six years later, Clark remembered his first meeting with his players. “Gentlemen, I am going to be your line coach, and I am going to respect you as a player, and in due time I think you will learn to respect me as a coach. But one thing I know for sure, I am going to be your daddy away from home.”

Clark saw bewildered looks on all the white faces, so he repeated himself: “Gentlemen, I am going to be your daddy away from home. And when I blow this whistle, I better be the last man to hit the sled!”

As it happened, Clark did become much like a second daddy. “He was always there for you,” said Bubby Johnston, a lineman and kicker on the team. “You could talk to him, and he would always shoot straight with you. He was a great motivator.”

Risher, the young first-time head coach, was demanding, but he also tried to make football fun for the players. For instance, each week he would install a new trick play to be used in that week’s game.

Said Johnston, “We players ate that up. Some of those plays even worked.”

All three Forest coaches consistently delivered the same message, that the color of one’s skin made no difference, that they were all in it together with one goal: Win. And, boy, did the first integrated team in Forest history do that…

Said Bowie, then a junior and the fastest man on the team: “As teammates, we just treated one another with respect. We took care of business. We weren’t thinking about making history. We were thinking about making touchdowns.”

They made plenty of those, and they didn’t give up many. Only one opponent scored more than one touchdown. The Bearcats allowed fewer than six points per game, while scoring nearly 27 per game themselves.

The Bearcats opened with a 27-7 victory over Neshoba Central and followed that with a 47-6 trouncing of Raleigh.

Said Johnston, “You could feel the whole community coming together behind the team.”

Indeed, as Little Dixie Conference play approached, the community and the newly integrated school rallied around the Bearcats. This was back before Mississippi had any state playoffs and before high football teams were divided into classifications. Most of the state’s bigger high schools played in the Big Eight Conference. The Little Dixie was the next level. Competition was fierce with football towns such as Mendenhall, Magee, Brandon, Pearl, Clinton, Morton and Monticello among those in the mix.

Many of those conference games were defensive struggles decided in the fourth quarter. Brandon went down 6-0 on a late fourth quarter touchdown. Clinton fell 10-6 in a driving rainstorm. Joe Buddy Madden (white) and Lee Evans (black) combined to bat away a late pass and preserve a hard-fought 12-6 victory over Pearl.

Those Bearcats of 1970 prided themselves on playing physical, hard-hitting defense. Risher, the head coach, often left the last words of pre-game and halftime talks to Bo Clark. Those words were always these: “All right, let’s go hit somebody!”

Jackson homebuilder and accomplished golfer David Lingle quarterbacked the Forest Hill team that fell 25-0 to Forest. Forest Hill, a good team, ran the wishbone, which meant Lingle was a marked man since he ran the option on nearly every play.

“I felt like a rag doll out there, they beat me up so bad,” Lingle said, chuckling.

Fifty years later, he can laugh. Not then. Forest junior defensive end Jackie Calhoun, who would later play at Mississippi State, hit Lingle so many times he must have made himself sore.

Said Lingle, “If I handed off, I got hit. If I kept the ball, I got hit. If I pitched it, I got hit. Man, they hit hard. I remember walking off the field and their head coach coming up to me and saying, ‘Good game.’ I said, ‘It might have been a good game for you, but it wasn’t for me. I feel like I might die.’”

The Bearcats kept winning, even when Dukes, a star receiver and defensive back, went down with a leg injury. That just gave Bowie more chances to catch the ball and dazzle in the open field.

Risher called one of those trick plays in the Newton game. Quarterback Mike Massey passed to Bowie, who deflected the ball to fast-charging Ken Gordon, who raced to the Newton 7 to set up a touchdown in a 28-12 Forest victory. Most coaches would call that play a “hook and lateral.” Risher called in: “Sweet Georgia Brown.” His players loved it.

The Bearcats took a 9-0 record into the regular season finale against arch-rival Morton with the Golden Chicken trophy and the North Little Dixie Division title on the line. Despite the terrific running of Forest’s all-conference halfback Billy Thompson, Morton led 7-3 into the fourth quarter. Fittingly, the Bearcat defense delivered the winning points. Bobby Latham broke through the line to block a punt and Madden picked it up and ran it in for the winning points.

On the sidelines, Risher saw Lee Evans, a black defensive back, celebrating the go-ahead touchdown, dancing with Forest Mayor Fred Gaddis. Said Risher, “Ol’ Lee Evans was having a good time, dancing all around. I jacked him up and told him to get out there and he better make the next tackle. Well, he did better than that. He made several tackles in a row to clinch the victory.”

Forest, 10-0 and champion of the north, would play Monticello, winners of the South Little Dixie and coached by the legendary Parker Dykes, for the overall league championship. Risher, looking for an edge, switched from the Bearcats’ normal Power-I formation to a Winged-T to for the championship game.

That Friday was one Risher will never forget. Robin Risher, his infant son, became ill that morning and was rushed to a Jackson hospital where he was pronounced in critical condition.

“I got to the hospital and everyone was shaking their heads like there was no hope,” Risher said. “I was told to prepare for the worst.”

The Risher family was quarantined as a precautionary measure. Risher remained at the hospital while the Bearcats took on Monticello. “I had all the confidence in the world in Bo Clark and Billy Ray Dill,” Risher said. “There was no panic from anyone.”

There need not have been, although the score was tied at 10 going into the fourth quarter. That’s when Bearcats, as had been their habit all season, took over. Thompson, who rushed for 115 yards, scored two fourth quarter touchdowns to clinch a 22-10 victory.

Meanwhile, Robin Risher was diagnosed with meningitis. He would remain hospitalized for 10 days and would fully recover.

Fifty years later, the surviving 1970 Forest Bearcats are well into their 60s. At least seven have died, including Billy Thompson, the hard-charging 1,000-yard rusher and the team’s leading scorer with 67 points. Gone, too, is the much-beloved Bo Clark, who would serve on the Forest Board of Aldermen for the last 37 years of his life. Clark died last June. He was 88.

Risher, the head coach, is battling cancer. Dill retired after a career with the Chevron Oil Refinery in Pascagoula, where he last coached as offensive coordinator of an undefeated 1976 State Champion Pascagoula High team.

Surviving players and coaches will be celebrated at halftime of a Sept. 18 Forest-Florence game at L.O. Atkins Field, where 50 years ago the town’s first integrated football team, under a brand-new coaching staff, overcame so many obstacles to achieved perfection. In so doing, the 1970 Forest Bearcats helped bring two races, two schools and one proud town together.

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We asked our readers to choose their favorite of the five flag designs the Mississippi Flag Commission selected Aug. 18 from a narrowed pool of thousands of original entries.

After flying the top five designs over the Capitol Tuesday, the commission narrowed the choices to two.

We wanted to show you how your reader poll results measure up against the commission’s selections.

Of the 2,647 readers who participated in our poll, 39% selected Flag 2, which was not one of the two designs selected by the commission.

Flag 4, which includes a magnolia blossom on a blue background with red and gold stripes, received 25% of the votes from our readers. It was one of the two selected by the commission.

Flag 1, also one of the two selected, received 16.8% of our readers’ votes. The design includes a red-white-and-blue striped shield, which pulls inspiration from the state’s territorial seal of 1798.

Neither Flag 3, with 10.6% of our readers’ votes, nor Flag 5, with 8.7%, made it to the final round of designs.

On Sept. 2, the flag commission will pick one of the two designs, which will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot for voters to accept or reject a new Mississippi state flag.

Read our full Mississippi state flag coverage.

View the complete results from our reader poll:

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Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today

School resource officer Derrell Washington gets emotional as he holds up the picture of Maxine Waters that Fullilove shared on his Facebook.

CLARKSDALE — Nearly an hour into an emotional and intense school board meeting, school resource officer Derrell Washington stood up to address the Board of Trustees of the Clarksdale Municipal School District. As I heard his voice cracking, I looked in his direction, repositioning my foggy glasses on top of my white N95 mask.

With tears in his eyes, Washington said he was offended.

After all, H. Clay “Sandy” Stillions, board president of the Clarksdale schools — a predominately Black school district — held his left hand in front of him to show a piece of paper to the meeting attendees, which included about 10 Black people and three white. It was a photo of a frowning U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, the Black California congresswoman known for clashing with the Trump administration. The photo bore the caption: “This Is What Coronavirus Looks Like Under A Microscope.”

“Everybody look at this picture and tell me that’s not a scary picture?” Stillions, who is white, said.

Washington immediately replied, “That’s not a scary picture.”

“It looks pretty scary to me,” Stillions responded.

As the country is forced to face a national reckoning on race and racism, this Mississippi Delta school district is, too. That night, a high school senior and youth advocate gathered community members, politicians, and students to protest racism within the Clarksdale Municipal School District.

The Waters photo was a topic of discussion at the meeting because it was shared by a district employee on his personal social media. Rodger Fullilove, director of facilities in the district, shared the meme of Waters on his Facebook page on April 3. Stillions, the board chair, laughed at the post on social media and commented, “Man, that’s some scary stuff.”

When Stillions was confronted about his comments at the board meeting that night, a tense exchange followed that prompted tears from several Black attendees. As it was all happening, my right leg began shaking. I constantly looked down at my audio recorder, trying to collect my thoughts and keep my composure.

Any good journalist is trained to remain neutral while covering meetings like these, but how could I? I looked around the room to connect with all the other Black people present, and all I could think about was, “What if Maxine Waters’ face was replaced with mine?”

And as I’ve personally covered race-related issues several times this year, this moment mirrored the larger issue of inequitable systems and privilege disproportionately affecting Black people.

During this period of heightened racial tensions and lowered tolerance for racism, Mississippi public officials continue to express offensive and racist comments towards Black people. In recent weeks, I’ve written about a white former Clarksdale nurse wishing death on Black protestors and former fire chief calling the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus a racist symbol.

So there I was again, covering a powerful white leader doubling down on insensitive comments that hurt Black people. This time, he was doing it to our faces. However, I did what so many Black journalists across the country have been forced to do this year: I gathered my composure as best I could in a difficult situation, and I kept observing the exchange.

Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today

Marchellos Scott, Jr. speaking to press before his protest

At the school board meeting, Clarksdale High School student Marchellos Scott, Jr., 17, stood in front of the district’s central office in his navy blue suit jacket, gray vest and pants, and matching tie. He carried a black briefcase while waiting on his group to show.

Less than thirty minutes before the start of the school board meeting, more than 20 participants held signs in their hands with phrases like “He Must Go!,” in reference to Fullilove, as well as different signs that read “Black Lives Matter,” and “Get In Good Trouble,” inspired by the late civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis.

Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today

Students and Clarksdale Mayor Chuck Espy takes a photo in front of the Clarksdale Municipal School District central office before the protest.

People came to the meeting to ask for the facilities director’s termination, and to chastise the board chair for engaging with his posts.

“(Stillions) said it was funny. He said he liked (the Facebook post) because it was funny,” Washington, the resource officer, nearly yelled in the meeting.

“You pointed (the paper) to us and said “Ain’t this a scary picture.” Washington continued.

“They are saying, this is what the coronavirus looks like, ‘She’s ugly. She’s nasty. She’s disgusting. She’s deadly.’ … I’m a district employee, and I had no intention to come and interrupt the board and say anything because I don’t want to lose my job.”

The photo of Waters was the first of many posts shared by Fullilove, the white facilities director. For example, he wrote “F. BLM. Terrorists” in a June 7 post. The original post has been deleted. Another picture Fullilove shared on his page featured a man holding up a Confederate battle flag with the words, “I wonder if I said, ‘God Bless Dixie!’ How many of y’all will say it back?”

The social media posts sparked outrage among students, parents, and community members on social media. Scott, the youth activist, called attention to it on his own page. Scott and his community group wanted Fullilove terminated immediately.

After multiple community members tagged me in social media posts, I emailed Joe Nelson, Jr., Clarksdale superintendent, Carlos Palmer, school board attorney, and the school board.

In the July 24 email, I attached four screenshots of posts Fullilove made and shared that were hateful and offensive to Black people. I asked the school administration if they were aware of Fullilove’s posts, if they had any comment, and how they determine if an employee speaks for themselves or on behalf of the district on social media. Nelson forwarded my email to the board and Palmer without a response.

In the district’s social media and personnel policies, it states that employees, faculty and staff should never use their personal accounts to speak on behalf of the district and are expected to conduct themselves in positive manners.

This was the center of heated debate at the school board meeting — was Fullilove just using freedom of speech, or hate speech?

“How do we expect children to show up to school everyday … If we don’t take care of them? If we don’t look out for them, then what are we doing?” Bishop Zedric Clayton, newly appointed board member, said at the meeting. “As a parent, I would not want my child pulling into a building where potentially they can run into somebody that sees them as a terrorist. My question is what do we do?”

Originally set to discuss student safety during the executive session, Scott, the 17-year-old passed folders to the district officials, including four of the five board members present (one attended the meeting via phone). This folder had copies of Fullilove’s posts and the district’s policies, among other things.

Scott reviewed his material to the board, reiterating that students don’t feel safe knowing employees spew degrading comments about Black people.

Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today

Marchellos Scott Jr., youth activist and Clarksdale High School senior, address board president H. Clay Stillions about racism in the district.

“Posts about political affiliations and his values, those are considered freedom of speech, but “F. Black Lives Matter, terrorists, that’s not freedom of speech—,” Scott said.

“No it’s not—,” Stillions, the board chair, interrupted.

“That is hate crime,” Scott said.

“No, it’s not. That is freedom of speech. That is not a hate crime. When you start saying people can’t express their opinion about any group or any church or any organization or any government, you’re controlling speech. That is not hate speech,” Stillions told the high school senior.

“He works at a predominately Black school district.”

“It still doesn’t make any difference. He got a right to express what he thinks.”

“… You indulge in racist comments,” Scott said, referencing the Waters meme.

Stillons, stopped him, “…wait a minute, you’re talking, let me talk. … Yeah, I saw that and I laughed about it. That’s a funny picture, not because she’s Black, but because of her expression.”

“Did you or did you not say it’s some scary stuff under this post?” Scott asked.

“I sure did. You look at that face and tell me that’s not scary,” Stillions responded.

Though multiple people, including board members, spoke up to say Fullilove’s actions on social media were offensive and made them or their children feel unsafe and disrespected in the district, neither the superintendent nor board members took any action regarding Fullilove.

In the end, Stillions thanked Scott for his presentation and said he admired him for speaking up.

In order to move this district, state, and country forward, citizen Ralph Simpson, stated you must “ensure Black lives matter.”

Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today

Ralph Simpson, community member, tells the board that Black lives do matter.

“When people falsely accuse us, when we can’t walk into neighborhoods where we’re working hard to spend the money to buy houses without getting shot down like dogs, when people put their foot on us ‘til we can’t breath and call our mamas, when we can’t ride in our car without profiling, and then we march in the streets,” Simpson said.

“They’re marching everywhere, Black and white hand in hand …to get the message and understanding to you Sandy Stillions, that Black lives do matter. You can have freedom of speech. But you can’t defringe the rights of others. When you say my life doesn’t matter, you defringe my rights.”

When I started writing this story, I knew I would be criticized for inserting my voice into this. If you go on Facebook and look at the comments on articles I’ve previously written pertaining to racism, you’ll see the critics. But I keep writing and reporting on these stories because it’s important. My job as a journalist is to report the facts, seek the truth, and hold officials accountable.

Part of my job is to speak for marginalized communities who don’t have the space or opportunity to do so and confront racism head-on. In the words of the late Mississippi civil rights activist, suffragist and journalism icon Ida B. Wells: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

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Shad White speaks at the Westin Jackson Tuesday, November 5, 2019.

For at least the sixth time since last spring, State Auditor Shad White has formally warned the Mississippi Department of Education about their enforcement of rules and administrative spending.

In this case, White sent a letter to Gov. Tate Reeves and legislative leaders voicing concern that MDE is forcing local school districts to buy their technology from only certain companies or risk losing reimbursement.

“I have concerns that the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) has ignored state law and made it more difficult for schools to purchase technology using the Coronavirus Relief Funds (CARES Act) appropriated by the Legislature,” White wrote in the Aug. 24 letter.

School districts are in the process of purchasing computers after the Mississippi Legislature this year passed a law enacting the “Equity in Distance Learning Act” as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many schools to pivot to online learning.

Rogelio V. Solis, AP

Carey Wright, State Superintendent of Education, answers questions about staffing during a legislative working group hearing centering on agencies personnel and their cost effectiveness, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, at the Capitol in Jackson.

State Superintendent Carey Wright called the letter “inaccurate and devoid of all context about the intent of this law,” in a statement released by the MDE responding to White’s accusations.

White’s letter explained that the department was to set up a list of approved vendors for school districts to purchase laptops and other technology needs in light of increased virtual learning caused by COVID-19. Districts could either buy off that list, or could also purchase items from vendors not on that list, as long as they meet certain criteria.

“The Office of the State Auditor has learned that MDE has decided that no school — regardless of whether they meet the criteria — may purchase technology outside of MDE’s preferred list and be reimbursed,” White’s letter reads.

It also says that, “robbing districts of this flexibility will slow down their ability to buy computers for students who may need to learn at home. Multiple districts have contacted my office about this issue. Two districts have informed us that buying from MDE’s favored vendors will cost tens of thousands of dollars more than they would otherwise have to spend.”

During an Aug. 6 State Board of Education meeting, Department of Education officials went into great detail about how they selected the vendors to supply the state with necessary technology.

It boiled down to three main categories: could the company deliver a large volume in a short timeframe, did the company have experience in dealing with a large, complex order such as this, and what the company’s strategy was for delivering thousands of computers all across the state.

In their responding press release, MDE on Tuesday disputed that it was not allowing districts to purchase devices from vendors outside of the ones that they chose.

To do that, local school districts have to demonstrate to MDE that those products have the “software, security and support features of products on the (preferred vendor list), meet or exceed the technological specification and functionality required by the MDE, and can be purchased at a price that is less than any of the prices listed on the (preferred vendor list),” the press release read.

“The intent of the legislation is for MDE to use the buying power of the state so individual school districts are not competing against each other to find a vendor who can guarantee delivery of computers by within the deadline set by the law,” said Jason Dean, chairman of the Mississippi State Board of Education. “School districts around the country are having their computer deliveries delayed because millions of people around the world are all trying to buy computers at the same time.”

Hours after the department released its statement, White shot back a response with documents attached in a press release, showing multiple documented instances where the department said districts could not buy from vendors outside of the ones MDE has approved.

One attachment was an internal MDE email that said the state department negotiated these contracts based on what local districts said they needed and that after the contracts are signed, “districts should not purchase items on the (MDE preferred vendor list) from other vendors.”

In his response, White said he was glad that MDE has reversed course.

“Today MDE wrote a press release finally acknowledging that schools do not have to buy from MDE’s preferred vendors. I’m glad they changed their position, even if it did take them being called on the carpet. I hope this will give school districts at least some flexibility to buy outside of MDE’s favored vendor list.”

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