January 26, 2021 • 28 mins
Jim Duncan was one of eight children, growing up in a shotgun house on the poorest side of a small South Carolina milltown. There in Lancaster, the public facilities were segregated—but one of the few spots Blacks and whites both called home was the lone football field in town, shared by the Black and white high schools. There, Duncan began carving a path out of poverty for himself, and his family.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Long Shot. I'm executive producer Davin Coburn. This
is our first season of audio documentaries at the intersection
of sports and social change from mcclatchy's newsrooms around the country.
We're devoting this season to the story of Jim Duncan,
at one time the most feared kickoff returner in the NFL,
who helped lead the Baltimore Colts to their first Super
(00:22):
Bowl title. But these documentaries are about far more than sports,
much like Duncan's legacy. Nearly fifty years ago, Duncan, a
black man, died suspiciously inside his hometown police station in
the Deep South, and the questions surrounding his death and
the events that followed are still painfully relevant today. The
(00:43):
lead reporter for this season is Brett McCormick. He grew
up not far from the town where Duncan died, and
he spent three years investigating this story for The Herald
in rock Hill, South Carolina. He'll be your host for
all eight episodes. The Word of Warning. This story takes
place during the Civil Rights Movement. It contains adult language
and adult themes, and now from The Herald McClatchy Studios
(01:07):
and I Heart Radio. This is long shot season one
return man second down nine grows up the Earl Moral,
now the other Bedgan quarterback, Earl Moral, Johnny Unitus and
a team of destiny. The report of Johnny Unitus is
(01:28):
that he does have a very very slight hairline fracture
in the right rib cage, and it is very doultful
he will see anymore in action this afternoon. Legends of
the NFL's past, and men who shared a sideline during
the nineteen seventies season when Moral replaced the ninjured Unitas
and led the Colts to their only Super Bowl title
in Baltimore. Well, where are they, Colt Sloper room again
(01:48):
in the world champion Baltimore Colts, I should say, But
what about the other hero of that game. There's a
kid bof a dart one, the leading kicker returner in
the entire NFL that year, running up finally in a
great gift offer jo on Earth of the thirty, a
lockdown defender who became a star of that Super Bowl
(02:09):
right alongside Moral and United. And it was Jim Duncas
and we covered that tumble. Yeah, those are some of
the names that I heard growing up. You know because
we had a team picture. This is Moral United, Clyburn.
And with every day that passes, it seems fewer people
remember the name of his oldest brother, Jim Duncan. For
(02:31):
everybody that knew my brother, my family held their arms
out for me. Never had anyone say anything either ordinary
of slide or anything, you know, derogatory towards my brother,
my family, or anything like that towards me. But I
didn't know him as a child. I basically met him
through you know, my brothers and sisters and my aunts
(02:54):
and uncles who told me stories about him. There's stories
of a man I known around Lancashire, South Carolina is
Butch the most feared kick returner in the NFL, who
made this old milltown proud of their very own Super
Bowl champion, the world champion. That nineteen seventy title came
(03:15):
just weeks before Moral was born. He was twenty four
years younger than Jim, even grew up in the house
Jim bought with football money. Moral has the name his
oldest brother helped choose for him, commemorating the greatest season
of Jim's life, a life you think would be celebrated
here in Lancaster. So why does it seem like so
(03:39):
few people want to talk about Jim Duncan. The people
that were old enough to remember it don't want to
talk about it, and we're living hash it out every time.
I mean, the story comes up all the time with
my name mean Moral and I was clamorant, so you know,
telling my oldest brother played with the Colts. He's deceased.
You know what happened? MS said it was apparent suicide
(04:02):
and the police station anything possible. But again, at the
end of the day, the entire time I was growing up,
through high school through college, never has this been something
that anybody remotely seeing interested in talking about. One thing
(04:23):
I've learned in the past few years some questions don't
have easy answers, or maybe any answers at all. The
story was that my brother went into the police station,
took a gun off of the police officer, and shot
himself in ahead. Most people don't believe that. I'm Brett McCormick,
and I've spent the past three years in South Carolina
(04:45):
investigating the life and death of Jim Duncan. I can
tell you this story is full of questions like that,
and then in many ways. Duncan's death even nearly half
a century later, even if it happened exactly the way
authorities said it did, still it's almost no sense at all.
It involves rates the mental state of the person and
a town that was scared to death to say anything.
(05:08):
A Super Bowl champion dead less than two years later,
no autopsy performed, no fingerprint tests conducted, and no independent
investigation done. An entire community left searching for answers. How
did Jim Duncan end up dead on the floor of
its local police station. He lived during the Civil rights movement,
(05:29):
and maybe that time is part of the answer. Any
time you're walking around here thing and we shall overcome,
maybe hatred on the streets of Charlotte'sville, simmering foot hit
the beef foot Duncan. Duncan was an NFL kicker, turner
ducker will come out with it. What if the total
football took on his body is part of the answer?
(05:51):
Walk out. Duncan died in South Carolina, and maybe the
place as a factor. In South Carolina, white former police
officer was sentenced today to twenty years in the fatal
shooting given unarmed black man. But maybe it's not see
that enjoying the grand jury deciding not to indict officer.
I grew up not far from Lancaster and took a
(06:13):
job as sports editor at the Herald newspaper in rock Hill,
South Carolina. You'll hear some of the interviews in this podcast.
We're done over the phone. Hi, my name is Brett McCormick.
I work at a newspaper in South Carolina. When your
sports department of one, you don't have much of a
travel budget. Have you got some time to talk? But
I have tracked down some of Duncan's old teammates and coaches,
(06:33):
the loan surviving witness to his death, and the family
of the officer involved. What was your dad like just
as a person? And I've spent hours with Duncan's family
and his widow to understand more about an exceptional life
that ended too soon. Six What is clear is that
(06:55):
the question still surrounding Duncan's death are is relevant now
as they were fifty years ago. I don't think Layers
anything unusual about Lancaster. If you took away the date
and time, could you imagine that happening today? And the
injury is yes, you can from The Herald, McClatchy Studios
and I Heart Radio. This is return Man, Part one.
(07:18):
The milltown in some ways nine fifties and sixties, Lancaster
was a model of Southern tranquility. Ten thousand people lived here,
filling the restaurants and clothing stores on Main Street, depending
on which side of Main Street you lived on. Lancaster's
(07:39):
claimed to fame at the time could have been that
it was the birthplace of Maurice Williams. He and his
group the Zodiacs met down the road at segregated Bar
Street High School. Okay, engine stop, both autos. They've been
in command over right off for others. Lancaster was known
for a hometown astronaut. And we got to get down Eagle.
(08:01):
That's Charlie Duke, the voice of Houston's mission control for
the Apollo eleven moon landing. He later walked on the
moon himself. Frank quiality. We got the on the ground.
You got a bunch of guys about the turn blue.
We're breathing again, thank a lot. Duke was a few
years older than Duncan and went to the all white
Lancaster High School across town from Bar Street. Main Street
(08:23):
has long been the racial dividing line in Lancaster. Whites
lived on the west side of Maine, African Americans on
the east side. And if you were especially poor, like
Duncan's family, you lived in a shotgun house east of Maine,
in a neighborhood called Newtown. Well WoT came here six
to three? It really was a hicktown and just the
(08:46):
lankster people associate black sometime assoc treated with. Floyd White
is eighty six now and still living here in Lancaster.
He was an assistant coach on Jim's high school football team.
Now Here on the corner a little restaurant like one
little trol called like you said in the movie and
get head on it. No nigga six, No nigga. Jim
(09:11):
was the oldest of Ellerie Cleburne's eight children. He had
his father's last name, but no other relationship with the man.
Two years after Jim was born, Ellerie was pregnant with
her second child, Elroy. Even though it was difficult, always
were brother not half brothers. Elroy is seventy one now
(09:32):
and lives about an hour north on Interstate seventy seven
in Charlotte. There was no, your dad and your dad
and my dad and my dad. You know, it was
just that's where we live. You know. Elroy was the
closest to Jim, and not just an age. Growing up,
they played sandlot football in Newtown and on lazy afternoons
they hiked a few miles down to a local swimming
(09:53):
hole on the fall and that was snaking all the
way to the mill and go down to the bottom
of the pond. Whatever they got into. Elroy wanted to
be as fearless as his older brother. Quite a few snakes,
you know, I'm scared the devil snakes today. Money was
always tight. Jim and Elroy often took odd jobs for
(10:16):
pocket change and to lighten the financial burden on their mother.
We was pool, but we didn't know pol. During one
of my visits to Elroy's home in the past few years,
I asked him about that. You didn't think about it
or Mama always yeah. But we also had hustles, like
(10:38):
couldn't grass and just go around and knock on the
doors and see it. We're gonna ricks and lees. You know,
we made out a little change. Elroway's biological father also
left the picture early on, and that made the brothers
even closer. We had a step He used to be
a brick contractor, so we old houses and just to
(11:02):
feel quite a few of them in rock Heel. Yeah,
Jim's mose enduring father figure was that new man. Elroy
mentioned a bricklayer named William McGriff. Jim used to help
McGriff on construction sites, which not only earned him spending money,
Floyd White remembers it paid off on the field too.
If he worked with some regulator and he had a
(11:23):
hard blocks and ricks and thank you, even if how
he waved the ball as he ran drove his coach
is crazy and he always carried a ball and he
wouldn't like tuck it away, but we always tried to.
Did you do you know? In practice? You know, and
then when you get on the field come back to him,
you know. Yeah, at least he had strong hands. He
(11:43):
had strong hands, strong on he could throw that ball
end zone end. Neighbors say Jim's mother was a quiet
but imposing matriarch. Her formal education stopped after the seventh grade,
but they say she had enough hard earned wisdom for
two lifetimes. The main acture painted of her is of
a tall woman in glasses with her hair parted in
the middle and an unfiltered camel cigarette between her fingers.
(12:08):
Jim probably got his height from her, and by the
time he got to high school he was well on
his way to six ft two. She's probably where he
got his athleticism to All eight of Ellerie's children were
offered some type of college sports scholarship, but Floyd White
remembers that Jim's talent was something special. That's the outside
(12:30):
would look it out. He would out a man too.
People play football, offstanding, basketball, baseball, ran track, whatever. Jim
found his true calling on the gridiron for the bar
(12:51):
Street Golden Tigers, which in turn Elroy tried to emulate.
Becoming a star quarterback in his own right was like
full three full too. Some days I could do on
my own because that was acripastic, and I copied as
much as I could, But I couldn't copy running because
I couldn't run at all. According to family lure, Jim
(13:15):
was such an athlete he beat opposing players on the field,
then went and took their money off it. Coming up
into town, it's about to block away from main streets.
Used the hustle. Coming about eight ball, nine ball, multiply
nine balls again, And turns out Jim was also good
(13:36):
at shooting pool. And it really says it was an
easy way for his brother to make a little more
money in and around Lancaster. And we didn't only just
go there, We like went to pay macbee all a
little small towns around and uh, did what'd you have
like his own pool que or did he just used
the queues that were at there? So he was truly short. Yeah,
(14:01):
he used to shock all around there. It wasn't it
wasn't murder. We'll be back after the break. Our Street
High School was named by its students after a major
road on the side of town where most black people lived.
(14:22):
It was a clear improvement over the school's previous names,
Lancaster Training School and Lancaster Colored High School. But you know,
during that time, he grew up in an area where
swertain things you didn't do, certain places you didn't go,
and vice versa for the white race. Glenn Crawford grew
up down the street from Duncan's family. I sat down
in Lancaster with Crawford and another of Duncan's childhood friends,
(14:44):
Thomas Howse, and they carried on just like two people
who have known each other for seventy years. Restaurants, the
movie theater, certain areage. You did not go there at difically.
What about that queen? It was? You will said it
was integrated, but then discriminated as well. Again black and white?
(15:05):
Was there? We had one as we will go to. Yeah,
it wasn't really the name of it wasn't deary queen. Well,
I forgotten the name across the top. I don't know
what queen. When Jim was growing up, all the white
students in town went to Lancaster Senior High. Public bathrooms
were segregated, and one of the water fountains behind that
(15:27):
ice cream shop was labeled colored. Jim could have been
tossed in jail for using the wrong one by one. Nearby,
rock Hill was experiencing a fiery civil rights transition. If
you're happy with the Communists and the Negro running the
path or your country, then I'll say you sit back
(15:49):
down on your tail and let him run it, because
that's what you want. They're a group of black college
students set down in mccruary's lunch counter, but we're denied service.
They refused to leave and were arrested, later becoming known
as the Friendship nine. Even Chuck Berry acknowledged by passing
(16:12):
rock Hill in his song about a cross country bus
trip called Promised Land. At that rock Hill Greyhound station,
future Georgia Congressman John Lewis was beaten for trying to
enter the whites only waiting room. I didn't think i'd
elviously the day when I find out who beat up
(16:35):
at the bus station and rock Hill his attacker, Elwyn Wilson,
later repented to my colleague here at the Herald, Andrew Dice.
Wilson then apologized to Lewis and even appeared on CNN.
It all started off and the local newspaper and well
you got the like, I'm apologizing to the world all
(16:57):
right now. In Lancaster, though just about everyone I spoke
to said that few people challenged segregation. The community was close.
We were a African vinnage. Lancaster native Michael Bogan attended
Bar Street School a few years after Duncan. Today he
lives about an hour south in Columbia, South Carolina, but
(17:19):
he's still active in Bar Streets Alumni Foundation. Was good
old days when if I had something wrong by the
time I got home, somebody had called my woman I
had done. I never had a key to my house
the whole time I lived at Lantage. We never loved
and if somebody walked on our company while we were
(17:42):
not there, something neighbor would say, hey there. While there
was no fighting, there was no shooting, there were no jobs.
There was just people trying to survive. Ellarie Cleburne worked
as a housekeeper and nanny for Tom Bingham, who was
then a State Reppert senitive. Her daily interactions with the
(18:02):
Mingham family would have been one of the few times
in Lancaster when a black person entered a white home.
What El always said another time was for football, where
the one field in town was home to both white
and black players. We played uh okay, so you played
on their field for a football game. For baseball games,
(18:24):
we played at down at the Mergan Illusion at Bar Street,
Floyd White remembers Jim led the Golden Tigers to an
undefeated season and at least one appearance in a championship game.
High school records here from sixty five years ago, especially
from segregated schools, are nearly impossible to find, but we
(18:44):
know that for some of his Bar Street career. Jim's
head coach was Roosevelt Gilliam. He went by the nickname
Sandy and was an important South Carolina sports figure in
his own right. Gilliam coach football, basketball, and baseball at
a pair of black high schools in the state, and
he compiled a total record of two five wins and
just twenty three losses. So Jim couldn't have lost many
(19:06):
games under him in whatever sport he was playing, which
was an outstanding athlete from a little boy. He was
good Crawford and House again, he was doing it in football, baseball,
and basketball. Could have won at Yeah, most of all
of his brothers were about to play. Was he famous
(19:27):
in town? Famous among white people? Yeah, we'll be back
after this. During Jim's lifetime, there was one other place
in Lancaster where African Americans regularly cross paths with whites,
(19:50):
on the south side of town, where a giant cotton
mill looms large as a modern symbol of early American history.
When you mentioned the South, most people think of cotton
in South Carolina. Lasters of those days would look with
astonishment at King Cotton's empire. Today, it's been said that
if slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederate South. Cotton
(20:12):
was its foundation. If nineteen fifties, Lancaster was an industrial
powerhouse of South Carolina. Its foundation was a cotton mill
built in the late eighteen hundreds in the years following
the Civil War, in a time of extraordinary change in
the South. You'll see them wherever you drive and the
tech Bill Belt such giant mills as this one and
list the largest cotton mill ever constructed under a single room.
(20:37):
This documentary was created in the early nineteen fifties by
the Humble Oil and Refining Company. Here wonderful raw materials,
abundance of power, and skilled craftsmanship combined to build an
ever growing industry, not only in mills that spin and
weaves put those that bleach and die and finish the
(20:57):
cloth as well. What has happened is shoes, mass migration
off the farms, and so people are looking for the
best opportunities that they could get. So you have to
look at it both ways to understand. Vernon Burton is
a history professor at Clemson University and an expert on
milltowns in the South. He grew up in one himself.
(21:20):
These were proud folks on the build There really was
a sense of community, almost family among people. And there's
no doubt the outside influence of the meal owners are
the mills on the communities. When I was a boy,
he picked up people's laundry. Thanksgiving, Christmas, we delivered turkeys
and baskets. They had their own police force. Eason. The
(21:42):
factory in Lancaster was owned by Leroy Springs, and by
the time Jim Duncan was born, that Springs factory had
grown into one of the largest cotton mills in the state.
Around it, a mill village had been created where thousands
of workers lived with their families. The whole system reflected
the policy of the styropathter the Civil War, and the
industry is set up these mills and they wanted to
(22:04):
secure a ready supplied labor. Timothy mentioned is the author
of Hiring the Black Worker, a History of racial integration
in the textile industry of the American South. I think
he was but if we build these towns and provide
the housing, we can have them here and now working
our mills, and will have them like as a labor
supply right there contained if you life, rather than them
(22:25):
being on the land as the mill prospered, the Springs
family's control over Lancaster grew. Euroy Springs established the local bank,
He was the chief partner in the local railroad, and
when his son, Elliott took over the family business, the
Springs family built the hospital in town. Elliott Springs then
built a massive park nearby for Mill families, complete with
(22:46):
a pool and amphitheater that reportedly hosted Patsy Klein and
early Dolly Parton concerts, but not Johnny Cash. Elliott reportedly
associated him with marijuana use and didn't want that influence
in Lancaster. All of that is important context about the
place that shaped Jim's life and potentially events that caused
(23:08):
his death. When I grew up, now there was segregation,
of course, it was not integration. Burton remembers a similar
controlling dynamic in his childhood Milltown, and there were three
kinds of segregation. The black kids went to their school,
the rural kids, and the town kids went to our school.
And then at least to the fourth grade, the meal
(23:29):
kids went to school on the mill. And part of
that was inculcating them to believe that they're going to
be just real workers. You know. It was very very
contained society in many ways built upon the idea of
the old slave plantation, supposedly Caroline, where shaded moss hung
(23:49):
highways carry the traveler into another era. Any comparison to
slavery will feel pretty loaded these days, but it also
feels particularly relevant here. And I took on the all
day to old plantation roads and the great plantation houses
mellowed by the passing of the year. The institutionalized segregation
(24:13):
African Americans faced in Lancashire was a direct result of
Supreme Court decisions in the wake of the Civil War
that legalized Jim Crow laws to dominate the country by force.
And just put into a thick these on Cofa and
these damnable proposals he has recommended under the guy called
(24:36):
Civil Rights Convention. Speech by then South Carolina Senator strom
Thurman sums up what many people here thought of separate
but equal. And I'll tell you the American people from
one part had better wake up and a parafect your program.
And if they don't, then next thing would be a
cotalitatian state in these United States. Prior to the Civil War,
(24:59):
on six of the population of South Carolina had been enslaved.
Today of the black population of the United States can
trace its ancestry back through South Carolina. The loss of
the war and the loss of free slave labor destroyed
South Carolina's economy. The state was one of the poorest
in the nation for the next hundred years. Cotton mills
(25:21):
like Springs offered relief from the economic hardship for everyone.
By the time Jim Duncan was winning games at bar
Street High, Springs Mill was generating two million dollars a
year in revenue. Yeah the high school job, Michael Bogan remembers,
the mill became a progressive force for integration, at least
(25:42):
by South Carolina's standards. It seemed the only color of
spring Saw was green. Just so long as no one
stepped out of line control, mostos Okay did not go
to be they would lose their jobs, stayed in place.
(26:05):
In Vernon Burton, the Clemson historian, who worked at a
mill as a teenager, had a note of caution about
integration and the sort of work African Americans were doing
at mills in the sixties. There there on the weekend
with me cleaning up, but working with some of the
unpleasant jobs we used to laugh because I've one bathrooms.
I used it with the black workers and we laught
about how we were breaking the law. Right. So I
(26:27):
think not to take away from them that they're doing
a good thing by pushing for integration, but I think
you should never forget that there's no doubt in South
Carolina at that time period, very white supremaci, very dedicated
to white privilege and not understanding at all what they're
doing in perpetuation. So that's the culture you're dealing with,
(26:48):
and it's not just insistent, they're clueless. Before every fall,
there must be a rise, and Jim Duncans rise took
into places no one else from Lancashire has ever gone.
I'm part two of Returned Man. My father would have said,
which me have represented one of the greatest athlete teas
ever coached s Public Gold. Jim Duncan had such great speed.
(27:13):
If he did nothing else, he could quite one of
a close game, and you win the NFL. If you
can really play, you get instant credibility. He can flat
out playing. We all have the same problem. They don't
hang you because you're a Baptist, they hang you Gold,
you're black. There's a change in the environment, they have
the chance keep it right. Aside of the life that
(27:33):
all the niggas out you said. I'm Brett McCormick. Return
Man is the production of The Herald, Clatchy Studios and
I Heart Radio. It's produced by Matt Walsh, Karatt Tabor Cotta, Stevens,
Rachel Wise, and Davin Coburn. The executive producer for I
Heeart Radio is Sean Titone. For lots more on this story,
(27:55):
go to Harold online dot com Slash return Man. If
you have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,
email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.
To continue supporting this kind of work, visit Harold online
dot com slash Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And
for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(28:17):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Long Shot. I'm executive producer Davin Coburn. This
is our first season of audio documentaries at the intersection
of sports and social change from mcclatchy's newsrooms around the country.
We're devoting this season to the story of Jim Duncan,
at one time the most feared kickoff returner in the NFL,
who helped lead the Baltimore Colts to their first Super
(00:22):
Bowl title. But these documentaries are about far more than sports,
much like Duncan's legacy. Nearly fifty years ago, Duncan, a
black man, died suspiciously inside his hometown police station in
the Deep South, and the questions surrounding his death and
the events that followed are still painfully relevant today. The
(00:43):
lead reporter for this season is Brett McCormick. He grew
up not far from the town where Duncan died, and
he spent three years investigating this story for The Herald
in rock Hill, South Carolina. He'll be your host for
all eight episodes. The Word of Warning. This story takes
place during the Civil Rights Movement. It contains adult language
and adult themes, and now from The Herald McClatchy Studios
(01:07):
and I Heart Radio. This is long shot season one
return man second down nine grows up the Earl Moral,
now the other Bedgan quarterback, Earl Moral, Johnny Unitus and
a team of destiny. The report of Johnny Unitus is
(01:28):
that he does have a very very slight hairline fracture
in the right rib cage, and it is very doultful
he will see anymore in action this afternoon. Legends of
the NFL's past, and men who shared a sideline during
the nineteen seventies season when Moral replaced the ninjured Unitas
and led the Colts to their only Super Bowl title
in Baltimore. Well, where are they, Colt Sloper room again
(01:48):
in the world champion Baltimore Colts, I should say, But
what about the other hero of that game. There's a
kid bof a dart one, the leading kicker returner in
the entire NFL that year, running up finally in a
great gift offer jo on Earth of the thirty, a
lockdown defender who became a star of that Super Bowl
(02:09):
right alongside Moral and United. And it was Jim Duncas
and we covered that tumble. Yeah, those are some of
the names that I heard growing up. You know because
we had a team picture. This is Moral United, Clyburn.
And with every day that passes, it seems fewer people
remember the name of his oldest brother, Jim Duncan. For
(02:31):
everybody that knew my brother, my family held their arms
out for me. Never had anyone say anything either ordinary
of slide or anything, you know, derogatory towards my brother,
my family, or anything like that towards me. But I
didn't know him as a child. I basically met him
through you know, my brothers and sisters and my aunts
(02:54):
and uncles who told me stories about him. There's stories
of a man I known around Lancashire, South Carolina is
Butch the most feared kick returner in the NFL, who
made this old milltown proud of their very own Super
Bowl champion, the world champion. That nineteen seventy title came
(03:15):
just weeks before Moral was born. He was twenty four
years younger than Jim, even grew up in the house
Jim bought with football money. Moral has the name his
oldest brother helped choose for him, commemorating the greatest season
of Jim's life, a life you think would be celebrated
here in Lancaster. So why does it seem like so
(03:39):
few people want to talk about Jim Duncan. The people
that were old enough to remember it don't want to
talk about it, and we're living hash it out every time.
I mean, the story comes up all the time with
my name mean Moral and I was clamorant, so you know,
telling my oldest brother played with the Colts. He's deceased.
You know what happened? MS said it was apparent suicide
(04:02):
and the police station anything possible. But again, at the
end of the day, the entire time I was growing up,
through high school through college, never has this been something
that anybody remotely seeing interested in talking about. One thing
(04:23):
I've learned in the past few years some questions don't
have easy answers, or maybe any answers at all. The
story was that my brother went into the police station,
took a gun off of the police officer, and shot
himself in ahead. Most people don't believe that. I'm Brett McCormick,
and I've spent the past three years in South Carolina
(04:45):
investigating the life and death of Jim Duncan. I can
tell you this story is full of questions like that,
and then in many ways. Duncan's death even nearly half
a century later, even if it happened exactly the way
authorities said it did, still it's almost no sense at all.
It involves rates the mental state of the person and
a town that was scared to death to say anything.
(05:08):
A Super Bowl champion dead less than two years later,
no autopsy performed, no fingerprint tests conducted, and no independent
investigation done. An entire community left searching for answers. How
did Jim Duncan end up dead on the floor of
its local police station. He lived during the Civil rights movement,
(05:29):
and maybe that time is part of the answer. Any
time you're walking around here thing and we shall overcome,
maybe hatred on the streets of Charlotte'sville, simmering foot hit
the beef foot Duncan. Duncan was an NFL kicker, turner
ducker will come out with it. What if the total
football took on his body is part of the answer?
(05:51):
Walk out. Duncan died in South Carolina, and maybe the
place as a factor. In South Carolina, white former police
officer was sentenced today to twenty years in the fatal
shooting given unarmed black man. But maybe it's not see
that enjoying the grand jury deciding not to indict officer.
I grew up not far from Lancaster and took a
(06:13):
job as sports editor at the Herald newspaper in rock Hill,
South Carolina. You'll hear some of the interviews in this podcast.
We're done over the phone. Hi, my name is Brett McCormick.
I work at a newspaper in South Carolina. When your
sports department of one, you don't have much of a
travel budget. Have you got some time to talk? But
I have tracked down some of Duncan's old teammates and coaches,
(06:33):
the loan surviving witness to his death, and the family
of the officer involved. What was your dad like just
as a person? And I've spent hours with Duncan's family
and his widow to understand more about an exceptional life
that ended too soon. Six What is clear is that
(06:55):
the question still surrounding Duncan's death are is relevant now
as they were fifty years ago. I don't think Layers
anything unusual about Lancaster. If you took away the date
and time, could you imagine that happening today? And the
injury is yes, you can from The Herald, McClatchy Studios
and I Heart Radio. This is return Man, Part one.
(07:18):
The milltown in some ways nine fifties and sixties, Lancaster
was a model of Southern tranquility. Ten thousand people lived here,
filling the restaurants and clothing stores on Main Street, depending
on which side of Main Street you lived on. Lancaster's
(07:39):
claimed to fame at the time could have been that
it was the birthplace of Maurice Williams. He and his
group the Zodiacs met down the road at segregated Bar
Street High School. Okay, engine stop, both autos. They've been
in command over right off for others. Lancaster was known
for a hometown astronaut. And we got to get down Eagle.
(08:01):
That's Charlie Duke, the voice of Houston's mission control for
the Apollo eleven moon landing. He later walked on the
moon himself. Frank quiality. We got the on the ground.
You got a bunch of guys about the turn blue.
We're breathing again, thank a lot. Duke was a few
years older than Duncan and went to the all white
Lancaster High School across town from Bar Street. Main Street
(08:23):
has long been the racial dividing line in Lancaster. Whites
lived on the west side of Maine, African Americans on
the east side. And if you were especially poor, like
Duncan's family, you lived in a shotgun house east of Maine,
in a neighborhood called Newtown. Well WoT came here six
to three? It really was a hicktown and just the
(08:46):
lankster people associate black sometime assoc treated with. Floyd White
is eighty six now and still living here in Lancaster.
He was an assistant coach on Jim's high school football team.
Now Here on the corner a little restaurant like one
little trol called like you said in the movie and
get head on it. No nigga six, No nigga. Jim
(09:11):
was the oldest of Ellerie Cleburne's eight children. He had
his father's last name, but no other relationship with the man.
Two years after Jim was born, Ellerie was pregnant with
her second child, Elroy. Even though it was difficult, always
were brother not half brothers. Elroy is seventy one now
(09:32):
and lives about an hour north on Interstate seventy seven
in Charlotte. There was no, your dad and your dad
and my dad and my dad. You know, it was
just that's where we live. You know. Elroy was the
closest to Jim, and not just an age. Growing up,
they played sandlot football in Newtown and on lazy afternoons
they hiked a few miles down to a local swimming
(09:53):
hole on the fall and that was snaking all the
way to the mill and go down to the bottom
of the pond. Whatever they got into. Elroy wanted to
be as fearless as his older brother. Quite a few snakes,
you know, I'm scared the devil snakes today. Money was
always tight. Jim and Elroy often took odd jobs for
(10:16):
pocket change and to lighten the financial burden on their mother.
We was pool, but we didn't know pol. During one
of my visits to Elroy's home in the past few years,
I asked him about that. You didn't think about it
or Mama always yeah. But we also had hustles, like
(10:38):
couldn't grass and just go around and knock on the
doors and see it. We're gonna ricks and lees. You know,
we made out a little change. Elroway's biological father also
left the picture early on, and that made the brothers
even closer. We had a step He used to be
a brick contractor, so we old houses and just to
(11:02):
feel quite a few of them in rock Heel. Yeah,
Jim's mose enduring father figure was that new man. Elroy
mentioned a bricklayer named William McGriff. Jim used to help
McGriff on construction sites, which not only earned him spending money,
Floyd White remembers it paid off on the field too.
If he worked with some regulator and he had a
(11:23):
hard blocks and ricks and thank you, even if how
he waved the ball as he ran drove his coach
is crazy and he always carried a ball and he
wouldn't like tuck it away, but we always tried to.
Did you do you know? In practice? You know, and
then when you get on the field come back to him,
you know. Yeah, at least he had strong hands. He
(11:43):
had strong hands, strong on he could throw that ball
end zone end. Neighbors say Jim's mother was a quiet
but imposing matriarch. Her formal education stopped after the seventh grade,
but they say she had enough hard earned wisdom for
two lifetimes. The main acture painted of her is of
a tall woman in glasses with her hair parted in
the middle and an unfiltered camel cigarette between her fingers.
(12:08):
Jim probably got his height from her, and by the
time he got to high school he was well on
his way to six ft two. She's probably where he
got his athleticism to All eight of Ellerie's children were
offered some type of college sports scholarship, but Floyd White
remembers that Jim's talent was something special. That's the outside
(12:30):
would look it out. He would out a man too.
People play football, offstanding, basketball, baseball, ran track, whatever. Jim
found his true calling on the gridiron for the bar
(12:51):
Street Golden Tigers, which in turn Elroy tried to emulate.
Becoming a star quarterback in his own right was like
full three full too. Some days I could do on
my own because that was acripastic, and I copied as
much as I could, But I couldn't copy running because
I couldn't run at all. According to family lure, Jim
(13:15):
was such an athlete he beat opposing players on the field,
then went and took their money off it. Coming up
into town, it's about to block away from main streets.
Used the hustle. Coming about eight ball, nine ball, multiply
nine balls again, And turns out Jim was also good
(13:36):
at shooting pool. And it really says it was an
easy way for his brother to make a little more
money in and around Lancaster. And we didn't only just
go there, We like went to pay macbee all a
little small towns around and uh, did what'd you have
like his own pool que or did he just used
the queues that were at there? So he was truly short. Yeah,
(14:01):
he used to shock all around there. It wasn't it
wasn't murder. We'll be back after the break. Our Street
High School was named by its students after a major
road on the side of town where most black people lived.
(14:22):
It was a clear improvement over the school's previous names,
Lancaster Training School and Lancaster Colored High School. But you know,
during that time, he grew up in an area where
swertain things you didn't do, certain places you didn't go,
and vice versa for the white race. Glenn Crawford grew
up down the street from Duncan's family. I sat down
in Lancaster with Crawford and another of Duncan's childhood friends,
(14:44):
Thomas Howse, and they carried on just like two people
who have known each other for seventy years. Restaurants, the
movie theater, certain areage. You did not go there at difically.
What about that queen? It was? You will said it
was integrated, but then discriminated as well. Again black and white?
(15:05):
Was there? We had one as we will go to. Yeah,
it wasn't really the name of it wasn't deary queen. Well,
I forgotten the name across the top. I don't know
what queen. When Jim was growing up, all the white
students in town went to Lancaster Senior High. Public bathrooms
were segregated, and one of the water fountains behind that
(15:27):
ice cream shop was labeled colored. Jim could have been
tossed in jail for using the wrong one by one. Nearby,
rock Hill was experiencing a fiery civil rights transition. If
you're happy with the Communists and the Negro running the
path or your country, then I'll say you sit back
(15:49):
down on your tail and let him run it, because
that's what you want. They're a group of black college
students set down in mccruary's lunch counter, but we're denied service.
They refused to leave and were arrested, later becoming known
as the Friendship nine. Even Chuck Berry acknowledged by passing
(16:12):
rock Hill in his song about a cross country bus
trip called Promised Land. At that rock Hill Greyhound station,
future Georgia Congressman John Lewis was beaten for trying to
enter the whites only waiting room. I didn't think i'd
elviously the day when I find out who beat up
(16:35):
at the bus station and rock Hill his attacker, Elwyn Wilson,
later repented to my colleague here at the Herald, Andrew Dice.
Wilson then apologized to Lewis and even appeared on CNN.
It all started off and the local newspaper and well
you got the like, I'm apologizing to the world all
(16:57):
right now. In Lancaster, though just about everyone I spoke
to said that few people challenged segregation. The community was close.
We were a African vinnage. Lancaster native Michael Bogan attended
Bar Street School a few years after Duncan. Today he
lives about an hour south in Columbia, South Carolina, but
(17:19):
he's still active in Bar Streets Alumni Foundation. Was good
old days when if I had something wrong by the
time I got home, somebody had called my woman I
had done. I never had a key to my house
the whole time I lived at Lantage. We never loved
and if somebody walked on our company while we were
(17:42):
not there, something neighbor would say, hey there. While there
was no fighting, there was no shooting, there were no jobs.
There was just people trying to survive. Ellarie Cleburne worked
as a housekeeper and nanny for Tom Bingham, who was
then a State Reppert senitive. Her daily interactions with the
(18:02):
Mingham family would have been one of the few times
in Lancaster when a black person entered a white home.
What El always said another time was for football, where
the one field in town was home to both white
and black players. We played uh okay, so you played
on their field for a football game. For baseball games,
(18:24):
we played at down at the Mergan Illusion at Bar Street,
Floyd White remembers Jim led the Golden Tigers to an
undefeated season and at least one appearance in a championship game.
High school records here from sixty five years ago, especially
from segregated schools, are nearly impossible to find, but we
(18:44):
know that for some of his Bar Street career. Jim's
head coach was Roosevelt Gilliam. He went by the nickname
Sandy and was an important South Carolina sports figure in
his own right. Gilliam coach football, basketball, and baseball at
a pair of black high schools in the state, and
he compiled a total record of two five wins and
just twenty three losses. So Jim couldn't have lost many
(19:06):
games under him in whatever sport he was playing, which
was an outstanding athlete from a little boy. He was
good Crawford and House again, he was doing it in football, baseball,
and basketball. Could have won at Yeah, most of all
of his brothers were about to play. Was he famous
(19:27):
in town? Famous among white people? Yeah, we'll be back
after this. During Jim's lifetime, there was one other place
in Lancaster where African Americans regularly cross paths with whites,
(19:50):
on the south side of town, where a giant cotton
mill looms large as a modern symbol of early American history.
When you mentioned the South, most people think of cotton
in South Carolina. Lasters of those days would look with
astonishment at King Cotton's empire. Today, it's been said that
if slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederate South. Cotton
(20:12):
was its foundation. If nineteen fifties, Lancaster was an industrial
powerhouse of South Carolina. Its foundation was a cotton mill
built in the late eighteen hundreds in the years following
the Civil War, in a time of extraordinary change in
the South. You'll see them wherever you drive and the
tech Bill Belt such giant mills as this one and
list the largest cotton mill ever constructed under a single room.
(20:37):
This documentary was created in the early nineteen fifties by
the Humble Oil and Refining Company. Here wonderful raw materials,
abundance of power, and skilled craftsmanship combined to build an
ever growing industry, not only in mills that spin and
weaves put those that bleach and die and finish the
(20:57):
cloth as well. What has happened is shoes, mass migration
off the farms, and so people are looking for the
best opportunities that they could get. So you have to
look at it both ways to understand. Vernon Burton is
a history professor at Clemson University and an expert on
milltowns in the South. He grew up in one himself.
(21:20):
These were proud folks on the build There really was
a sense of community, almost family among people. And there's
no doubt the outside influence of the meal owners are
the mills on the communities. When I was a boy,
he picked up people's laundry. Thanksgiving, Christmas, we delivered turkeys
and baskets. They had their own police force. Eason. The
(21:42):
factory in Lancaster was owned by Leroy Springs, and by
the time Jim Duncan was born, that Springs factory had
grown into one of the largest cotton mills in the state.
Around it, a mill village had been created where thousands
of workers lived with their families. The whole system reflected
the policy of the styropathter the Civil War, and the
industry is set up these mills and they wanted to
(22:04):
secure a ready supplied labor. Timothy mentioned is the author
of Hiring the Black Worker, a History of racial integration
in the textile industry of the American South. I think
he was but if we build these towns and provide
the housing, we can have them here and now working
our mills, and will have them like as a labor
supply right there contained if you life, rather than them
(22:25):
being on the land as the mill prospered, the Springs
family's control over Lancaster grew. Euroy Springs established the local bank,
He was the chief partner in the local railroad, and
when his son, Elliott took over the family business, the
Springs family built the hospital in town. Elliott Springs then
built a massive park nearby for Mill families, complete with
(22:46):
a pool and amphitheater that reportedly hosted Patsy Klein and
early Dolly Parton concerts, but not Johnny Cash. Elliott reportedly
associated him with marijuana use and didn't want that influence
in Lancaster. All of that is important context about the
place that shaped Jim's life and potentially events that caused
(23:08):
his death. When I grew up, now there was segregation,
of course, it was not integration. Burton remembers a similar
controlling dynamic in his childhood Milltown, and there were three
kinds of segregation. The black kids went to their school,
the rural kids, and the town kids went to our school.
And then at least to the fourth grade, the meal
(23:29):
kids went to school on the mill. And part of
that was inculcating them to believe that they're going to
be just real workers. You know. It was very very
contained society in many ways built upon the idea of
the old slave plantation, supposedly Caroline, where shaded moss hung
(23:49):
highways carry the traveler into another era. Any comparison to
slavery will feel pretty loaded these days, but it also
feels particularly relevant here. And I took on the all
day to old plantation roads and the great plantation houses
mellowed by the passing of the year. The institutionalized segregation
(24:13):
African Americans faced in Lancashire was a direct result of
Supreme Court decisions in the wake of the Civil War
that legalized Jim Crow laws to dominate the country by force.
And just put into a thick these on Cofa and
these damnable proposals he has recommended under the guy called
(24:36):
Civil Rights Convention. Speech by then South Carolina Senator strom
Thurman sums up what many people here thought of separate
but equal. And I'll tell you the American people from
one part had better wake up and a parafect your program.
And if they don't, then next thing would be a
cotalitatian state in these United States. Prior to the Civil War,
(24:59):
on six of the population of South Carolina had been enslaved.
Today of the black population of the United States can
trace its ancestry back through South Carolina. The loss of
the war and the loss of free slave labor destroyed
South Carolina's economy. The state was one of the poorest
in the nation for the next hundred years. Cotton mills
(25:21):
like Springs offered relief from the economic hardship for everyone.
By the time Jim Duncan was winning games at bar
Street High, Springs Mill was generating two million dollars a
year in revenue. Yeah the high school job, Michael Bogan remembers,
the mill became a progressive force for integration, at least
(25:42):
by South Carolina's standards. It seemed the only color of
spring Saw was green. Just so long as no one
stepped out of line control, mostos Okay did not go
to be they would lose their jobs, stayed in place.
(26:05):
In Vernon Burton, the Clemson historian, who worked at a
mill as a teenager, had a note of caution about
integration and the sort of work African Americans were doing
at mills in the sixties. There there on the weekend
with me cleaning up, but working with some of the
unpleasant jobs we used to laugh because I've one bathrooms.
I used it with the black workers and we laught
about how we were breaking the law. Right. So I
(26:27):
think not to take away from them that they're doing
a good thing by pushing for integration, but I think
you should never forget that there's no doubt in South
Carolina at that time period, very white supremaci, very dedicated
to white privilege and not understanding at all what they're
doing in perpetuation. So that's the culture you're dealing with,
(26:48):
and it's not just insistent, they're clueless. Before every fall,
there must be a rise, and Jim Duncans rise took
into places no one else from Lancashire has ever gone.
I'm part two of Returned Man. My father would have said,
which me have represented one of the greatest athlete teas
ever coached s Public Gold. Jim Duncan had such great speed.
(27:13):
If he did nothing else, he could quite one of
a close game, and you win the NFL. If you
can really play, you get instant credibility. He can flat
out playing. We all have the same problem. They don't
hang you because you're a Baptist, they hang you Gold,
you're black. There's a change in the environment, they have
the chance keep it right. Aside of the life that
(27:33):
all the niggas out you said. I'm Brett McCormick. Return
Man is the production of The Herald, Clatchy Studios and
I Heart Radio. It's produced by Matt Walsh, Karatt Tabor Cotta, Stevens,
Rachel Wise, and Davin Coburn. The executive producer for I
Heeart Radio is Sean Titone. For lots more on this story,
(27:55):
go to Harold online dot com Slash return Man. If
you have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,
email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.
To continue supporting this kind of work, visit Harold online
dot com slash Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And
for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(28:17):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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