Prairie View Interscholastic League


Storm96

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Black High School Football Exhibit on Display at Prairie View Cultural Center

An exhibit focusing on football programs at Texas’ black high schools before integration has opened at the Prairie View A&M Cultural Center Gallery and will be available for viewing through Nov. 9.

The exhibit features memorabilia courtesy of the Prairie View Interscholastic League Coaches Association (pvilca.org), which is working to preserve and commemorate the history of the Prairie View Interscholastic League which governed athletic, academic, and music competitions for the state’s black high schools during segregation. The PVIL was organized in 1920 by Prairie View officials and existed until 1970 when its merger with the University Interscholastic League was completed.

“We’re proud to display this wonderful history which has, in many ways, been largely overlooked,” said Michael Hurd, director for Prairie View’s Texas Institute for the Preservation of History and Culture (pvamu.edu/tiphc) and a PVIL alumnus himself, from Houston’s Evan E. Worthing High School. “The PVIL schools, which peaked at about 500 statewide, produced some incredible students, many of who were also extraordinary athletes such as the players and coaches presented in this exhibit.”

The exhibit, “Remembering the Past With Pride,” includes vintage images, trophies, news clips, uniforms and equipment. Despite being woefully underfunded and lacking other basic resources, PVIL schools featured passionate rivalries, legendary coaches, and dozens of college All-Americans – most through historically black colleges such as Prairie View and Texas Southern University.

The UIL opened in 1910 at the University of Texas to govern competitions for “any white public school” in the state. It would be another 10 years before African American students in Texas would have the same guidance afforded them by the Texas Interscholastic League of Colored Schools, which would mirror the UIL’s operations and produce some of the finest football talent in the nation.

http://www.pvamu.edu/news/2015/10/1...t-on-display-at-prairie-view-cultural-center/
 
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IMHO, this is a must see for any youth of color born and reared in texas HS sports. There is a wealth of history/talent for all to learn about. The assimilation by the texas uil spelled doom and gloom for the PVIL and subsequently jump-started the negative spiraling trend of PVAMU sports as those former all-world student-athletes were no longer a mainstay for PVAMU as in years past.

Some of my maternal and paternal relatives are enshrined in the exhibit. For instance, former Livingston Dunbar HS's record during the late 1950s into early 1960s where they allowed only 2 TDs (yes, 2 lol) during an 8 year stretch and were undefeated for 8 straight seasons. smh Those country relatives KNEW how to ball, obviously. Those same folks found their way onto PVAMU's campus during the early 1960s, (recall those champ teams of the early-mid 1960s).
 
It would be awesome to have this exhibit as a permanent part of the new stadium. I cannot make it out there before 11/9 and I'm sure many others can't either. This is history! I've HEARD a lot about the PVIL.
 
'We were in our own world': Memories of Prairie View League tell story of segregation and high school sports in Texas

Bulldog Corner sits under a staircase off the central corridor of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. An imposing trophy case holds relics of a football history that unites those who cherish it still, decades after the landmark
facility ceased its sports program.

The crimson sweater shelved in the trophy case belonged to the late Clarence Salone. His widow, Myrtle, still giggles when she recalls how he wore it in honor of the Bulldogs' 1941 state
football championship. She was a Lincoln High cheerleader, indignant that the enemy player strolled her campus as he proudly wore the victory sweater.

"He was showing off," she says with a laugh steeped in love. "We started courting. Oh, some of the girls at Booker T. kind of resented it. But now it's important that the history of the schools
never dies."

It is up to Myrtle Salone, former coaches, players and fans to sustain the wealth of memories. Few records remain from the era when black schools were governed by the Prairie View Interscholastic League, established in 1939 and disbanded after school integration unified athletics under the University Interscholastic League in the late 1960s.

For Texas high school football, it was an era of pride.

And prejudice.

On paper, scant information chronicles the PVIL - a parallel universe that, for the most part, did not merge with the UIL until the 1967 season. Without statistical evidence, PVIL players have a hard time documenting high school careers that might have challenged state and perhaps even national records. But in the heads and hearts of the PVIL's veterans, a time of stimulating rivalries, fabulous football and binding traditions lives on.

http://sportsday.dallasnews.com/hig...ll-story-segregation-high-school-sports-texas
 
Fort Worth ISD’s last football state champs to be honored

Thousands of high school coaches, dozens of their college peers and hundreds of vendors will descend on Houston beginning Sunday for the 85th annual Texas High School Coaches Association Convention.

Before that, members of the 1962 and ’63 Fort Worth Kirkpatrick championship football teams get to rekindle the past as inductees Saturday in the Prairie View Interscholastic League Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

In the days of public-school segregation, the PVIL and UIL ran their own athletic organizations. The 1963 Wildcats, on Fort Worth’s north side, posted an 11-1-1 record and remain the last Fort Worth ISD school to win a football state title.

“I thank the PVIL for recognizing us,” said Lafayette Ross, 71, a member of both Kirkpatrick championship teams. “I think it was great that we did what we did with what we had.”

Kirkpatrick players had limited resources. They wore old uniforms from Fort Worth Paschal, since purple and white were their colors, too.



“We played our best, we played hard,” said 72-year-old Morris Franklin, a shutdown defensive halfback on the 1962 team. “We really got into it.”

In addition to Morris and Franklin, 1962 teammate Bennie Wayne Allen will be inducted posthumously.

“I think it’s a good thing long overdue,” Ross said. “I was surprised and shocked.

“We were kind of like family, brothers. We were all very close. Most of us started there in the first grade and finished in that same school — grades one through 12.”

Kirkpatrick High closed in 1971. Today, it’s Kirkpatrick Middle School.


Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/dfwvarsity/prep-football/article162811298.html#storylink=cpy


Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/sports/dfwvarsity/prep-football/article162811298.html#storylink=cpy
 
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