BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Editor's Note: Throughout February the Asbury Park Press
is chronicling some area residents' experiences and
reflections on race relations.
TEAM TACKLED THE COLOR LINE
To him, it didn't matter what color his teammates were. All Nalton
"Goodie" Goode wanted to do was play football.
In 1953, Goode, now 66, played for the Freehold High School football team,
a team
that had been racially integrated for only two years. Goode, who alternated
in the
running back position with Charles "Bird" Parhan, was a part of the first
entire-
ly black offensive backfield --- featuring the first black quarterback in
the high
school's history, Jackie Mayes.
"Looking back on it now, coach was ahead of his time," Goode said.
"At that time,
it was a strange thing to see a black on a football team." Goode said the
team was a
close-knit group of athletes who were unaware of the grief the community
gave
Harold Shank --- the white coach who chose to use black athletes on the team.
Goode, who last year attended the coach's funeral with his teammates of 1953,
said
Shank sacrificed a great deal in standing by his players regardless of their
color.
Shank taught his players to fight for what is right, regardless of the odds,
Goode
said.
"It doesn't matter what color a person is," said Goode. "He's a man, and
as long as
you do right with him, then he will do right with you."
---Rodney Point-Du-Jour
DID YOU KNOW?
Harriet Tubman, a conductor on the Underground Railroad --- a secret network
of
safe houses that runaway slaves used to flee north to freedom --- spent summers
in
Cape May. She spent the summers between 1849 and 1852 working in Cape May
hotels to finance trips back to Maryland to rescue more slaves. She was born
into
slavery in 1819 or 1820, in Dorchester County, Md. She eventually escaped
to Phila-
delphia in 1849. As a conductor on the underground railroad, she is credited
with
risking her own life in 19 trips into southern states to help more than 300
slaves
escape. |
