Part 1: The Milltown

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

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. It's up to Earl Moral
now the other Beckgan quarterback, Earl Moral, Johnny Unitus and
a team of destiny. The report than 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 replaces a n injured
Unitus and led the Colts to their only Super Bowl
title in Baltimore. Well, where are they called block room again?

(01:48):
In the world champion Baltimore Colts, I should say, But
what about the other hero of that game? There is
a kick off a chart one, the leading kicker turner
in the entire NFL that year running. I finally ducting
a great gift offering during Earth at the thirty, a
lockdown defender who became a star of that Super Bowl,

(02:09):
right alongside Moral and United Us. 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 the 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 known around Lancaster, 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 just weeks

(03:16):
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.

(03:37):
So why does it seem like so 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 live and hash it out every time. I mean,
the story comes up all the time with my name
being moral and Ice clavering. So you know, telling my
oldest brother to play with the colts. He's deceased. You

(03:58):
know what happened? Las said it was apparent suicide 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, I 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
authority said it did, still it's almost no sense at all.
It involved 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. Anytime
you're walking around here singing week I'm overcome government, maybe
hatred on the streets of Charlotte'sville simmering for TWITEREFP dcor
Duncan was an NFL kicker turner Ducker will come out
whatever what if the toll football took on his body

(05:50):
is part of the answer. Look 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 give an unarmed black man.
But maybe it's not how to enjoy the U the
grand Famy deciding not to indict Officer Black. I grew

(06:11):
up not far from Lancaster and took a 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. The six What is clear is

(06:55):
that 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? In
the insurance 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 thou 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):
claim 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 and dine stops both auto. They've
been 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 Quilty, 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 went out for came
here six to three. It really was a higtown and

(08:46):
just lankster people associated black sometime associated 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,
a little trailer called like you said in the movie
and get head on it. No nigga na. Jim was

(09:11):
the oldest of Ellerie Clyburne'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 different, always
were bro It's not half brothers. Ellally is seventy one

(09:31):
now 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 sand lot football in Newtown and on lazy
afternoons they hiked a few miles down to a local

(09:53):
swimming hole one 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 of the devils snakes today. Money
was always tight. Jim and Elroy often took odd jobs

(10:15):
for pocket change and to lighten the financial burden on
their mother. We was pool, but we didn't know pool.
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 yea? Mama always broad. Yeah, but
we also had hustles like couldn't grass and just go

(10:40):
around and knock on doors and see it with the
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 feel quite a few of them

(11:04):
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 the
regulator and he had a hard blocks and ricks and

(11:25):
thank you even if how he waved the ball as
he ran drove his coach is crazy and you always
cured a ball and when it took it away. But
we always tried to 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 had strong hands, strong on he could go to

(11:46):
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 a true 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. Jim probably got his height from her,

(12:09):
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 specials
the outside then look it out, gazeoism, hulot a man too.

(12:40):
People play football, offstanding, basketball, baseball, and ran track. What
Jim found his true calling on the gridiron for the
Bar Street Golden Tigers, which in turn Elroy tried to emulate.
Becoming a star quarterback in his own right was like

(13:00):
full three, full two some days I could do on
my own because that was acupator, and I copied as
much as I could, but I couldn't copy the running
because I couldn't run at all. According to family lure,
Jim was such an athlete he beat opposing players on
the field, then went and took their money off it.

(13:20):
Coming up into town, it's about to block away from
Main Street. Wish used the hospital there. I'm done about
eight ball, nine ball, multiply nine ball again and turns
out Jim was also good 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.

(13:42):
And we didn't only just go there, We like weren't
to pay Macbee all a little small towns around and
uh did what you have like his own pool que
or if he just used the queues that were at there,
he was truly shark. Yeah, he used to shock all
around there. It wasn't it wasn't murder. We'll be back

(14:10):
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. It was a clear
improvement over the school's previous names, Lancaster Training School and
Lancaster Colored High School. But you know, doing that time,
he grew up in an area where certain things you

(14:32):
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, Thomas Howse, and
they carried on just like two people who have known
each other for seventy years. Restaurants, the movie theater. Certain there,
you did not go there at differly? What about that? Queen?

(15:00):
And Will said it was integrated, but then discriminated as well,
black and white? Was there? We had one as we
will go to. Yeah, it wasn't really the name of one,
deary queen Well, I forgotten the name across the top,
I don't queen. When Jim was growing up, all the

(15:21):
white students in town went to Lancaster Senior High. Public
bathrooms were segregated, and one of the water fountains behind
that 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

(15:43):
you're happy with the Communists and the negro running the
past or your country, then I'll say you sit back
down on your tail and let them 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 to like, I'm apologizing to the world right now.

(17:01):
In Lancaster, though just about everyone I spoke to said
that few people challenged segregation. The community was close. We
were a African vintage 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 he's
still active in bar Street's alumni foundation. Was a good

(17:22):
old days when if I something long, by the time
I got home, somebody had called my woman. I had
done something. I never had a key to my house.
The whole time I looked at Lantage, we never loved,
and if somebody had walked on our property while we
were not there, some neighbor would say, hey, come in Louisia.

(17:48):
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 Mangam 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,

(18:12):
where the one field in town was home to both
white and black players. We played uh okay, so you
played on their field ye for a football game. For
a baseball games, we played at down at the Marl
and allusion at Bar Street, Floyd White remembers Jim led
the Golden Tigers to an undefeated season and at least

(18:34):
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 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,

(18:57):
and baseball at a pair of black high schools in
the state, and he compiled a total record of two
wins and just twenty three losses. So Jim couldn't have
lost many 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 good in football, baseball,

(19:18):
and basketball. Could have won a little Yeah, most of
all of his brothers were about to play. Was he
famous in town, famous among white people? Yeah, we'll be
back after this. During Jim's lifetime, there was one other

(19:45):
place in Lancaster where African Americans regularly cross paths with whites,
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. Lasses of those days would look with
astonishment at King Cotton's empire. Today, it's been said that

(20:09):
if slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederate South cotton
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

(20:32):
like it, the largest cotton mill ever constructed under a
single rule. 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

(20:53):
spin and weaves put those that bleach and die and
finish the cloth as well. What has happened is hughes
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

(21:14):
Burton is a history professor at Clemson University and an
expert on milltowns in the South. He grew up in
one himself. These were proud folks on the build There
really was since the community almost family among people. And
there's no doubt the outside influence of the mill owners
are the mills on the community. When I was a boy,

(21:34):
he picked up people's laundry, Thanksgiving, Christmas, we delivered turkeys
and baskets. They had their own police boards. Even the
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

(21:58):
the policy of the stypafter the Civil War, and the
industry has set up these mills and they wanted to
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

(22:19):
our mills, and will have them like as a labor
supply right there contained if you lie, rather than them
being on the land. As the mill prospered, the Springs
family's control over Lancaster grew eu Roy 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

(22:42):
then built a massive park nearby for Mill families, complete
with 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

(23:04):
the place that shaped Jim's life and potentially events that
caused 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.

(23:26):
And then at least to the fourth grade, the meal
kids went to school on the mill and part of
that was inculcating them to believe that they're going to
be just meal workers. You know. It was very, very
contained society in many ways built to plunder the idea
of the old slave plantation. Supposedly Carolina where shaded most

(23:49):
hung highways carry the traveler into another era. Any comparison
to slavery will feel pretty loaded these days, but it
also feels particularly relevant here. I took a long on
the all day to wolve plantation roads on the great
plant pation houses mellowed by the passing of the year.

(24:11):
The institutionalized segregation African Americans faced in Lancaster 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 it into a
thick these on COVERA and these damnable proposals he has

(24:34):
recommended under the g 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 who from one part head better wake
up and a pouch your program. And if it does,
the next thing would be a crotalitatian state in the

(24:57):
United States. Prior to the Civil War, on six of
the population of South Carolina had been enslaved. Today, 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

(25:18):
for the next hundred years. Cotton mills 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 hospital job, Michael Bogan remembers, the mill became a

(25:40):
progressive force for integration, at least 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 that they would

(26:01):
lose their jobs. You stayed in place. In Vernon Burton,
the Clinton 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 league cleaning up, but
working with some of the unpleasant jobs. We used to

(26:21):
laugh because I've won bad things. I used it with
the black workers. You ever laughed about how we were
breaking the law. So I 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

(26:43):
understanding at all what they're doing in perpetuat. So that's
the culture you're dealing with, and it's not just insisted
they're clueless. Before every fall, there must be a rise,
and Jim Duncan's rise took into places no one else
from Lancashire has ever gone. M I'm part two of
Returned Man. My father would have said, which me have

(27:05):
represented one of the greatest athletes he has ever coached,
State public goals. Jim Duncan, you have such great speed quickness.
If he did nothing else, he can quite one of
a close game and you win the NFL. If you
can really play, you get instant credibility. He can flat
out play. We all have the same problem. They don't

(27:26):
hang you because you're a Baptist. They hang you god
you're black. There's a change in the environment. They have
the chance keep the right a side of the line
that all the negas out you said. I'm Brett McCormick.
Returned Man is a production of The Herald, Clatchy Studios
and I Heart Radio. It's produced by Matt Walsh, Karat

(27:46):
Tabor Cotta, Stevens, Rachel Wise, and Davin Goburn. The executive
producer for I Heeart Radio is Sean Titone. For lots
more on this story, 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

(28:08):
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 Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.