July 15, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before he was president, Gerald Ford was a rising football star at the University of Michigan. But in 1934, his loyalty was tested when Georgia Tech refused to play if his Black teammate, Willis Ward, took the field. Author and historian John U. Bacon shares this remarkable story of friendship, integrity, and a quiet act of defiance that helped shape Ford’s views on civil rights.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We search for the Our American Stories podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Gerald Ford is often overlooked as a president. He was
the thirty eighth.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
However, gerald Ford made an incredible impact on civil rights
during his time in Congress and as president, and all
because of his friendship with.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
A man named Willis Ward.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Buddy Moorhouse tells the story of gerald Ford, Willis Ward,
and a football game which forever changed both men's lives.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Gerald Ford and Willis Ward in the early nineteen thirties
where two of the best high school football players in
the state of Michigan.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Gerald Ford was going to Grand.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Rapid South High School and Willis Ward was attending Detroit
Northwestern High School, so they were on opposite sides of
the state. They were two of the best high school
football players in the state. So in the fall of
nineteen thirty one, they both came to the University of Michigan.
They met actually on their very first day of freshman orientation.
(01:22):
It was held in Waterman Gymnasium on the Michigan campus,
and they met that first day, and they had known
of each other by reputation because they had read the
newspaper clippings and knew how good the other guy was.
So immediately they introduced themselves to each other and really
became great friends. From that very first day at the
University of Michigan in the fall in nineteen thirty one,
(01:44):
they realized they had a lot in common beyond just football.
They both had an interest in the law, they kind
of had similar career goals, so they just they became
fast friends in Kyle and decided that they were going
to room together when they went on road trips. They
(02:06):
had formed this friendship that was outside of football, and
then it just kind of got strengthened on the football field.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
And then every time they went Michigan.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Football team would go on a road trip, the two
of them were roomed together, and then they basically remained
great friends, obviously throughout college and then through the.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Rest of their lives as well.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The athletic director at the time was a guy named
Fielding Yost, who had been Michigan's football coach for twenty
five years starting in the early nineteen hundreds and he
became really one of the greatest college football coaches of
all time, certainly one of the most influential coaches of
all time. But in nineteen twenty five he stepped down
from being a coach and he became the athletic director,
(02:44):
and then he burned through a couple of coaches after that,
and he eventually hired a guy named Harry Kipke to
be his head coach. And Harry Kipkey had been an
All American football player for him, he was one of
the greatest athletes that Michigan ever had. And when Harry
Kipke became the the coach, he wanted to kind of
beef up the roster, beef up recruiting. And everybody at
(03:07):
that time knew about Willis Ward. He was this phenomenal athlete,
not just in football, but especially in track in Detroit,
he was one of the fastest people in the country.
He knew he was an incredible athlete, and he really
wanted him to come to Michigan not just to run track,
but also to play football. The problem with that is
(03:27):
that Fielding Yost was dead set against having any African
American football player on the football team. He didn't mind
if there were African Americans on other teams. There were
some that played on the baseball team, but the football
team was kind of his baby and fielding. Yost was
a fairly unrelenting racist. He'd grown up in West Virginia.
(03:49):
He was the son of a Confederate soldier, and he
was really dead set on keeping his football team all white.
So when Harry Kipke came to him and said that
he wanted to Willis Ward to play on his team,
it caused a huge rift between the two of them.
Yost was against it, Kipke really wanted it. There were
(04:09):
even some rumors that the two of them actually came
to blows when they were discussing whether or.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Not Willis Ward would be allowed to join the team.
But eventually Kipke went out.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And Yost was yos back down and Willis Ward was
able to join the team.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
And then Willis Ward when he joined the team, he
became the.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
First African American football player in about forty years to
play at the University of Michigan. The way things worked
back in college football back then, the schedules were not
set many years in advance.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
They were really only set like a year or so
in advance.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Only today, you know, right now, Michigan knows five years
from now who they're going to be playing. But back
in those days, they set the schedule like the year before,
and Michigan had always only ever played teams from the North,
teams from either the Midwest or maybe the East. They'd
never played a team from the South. For whatever reason,
Fielding Yost wanted to get a Southern team on the schedule.
(05:09):
His brother in law was a guy named Dan mcgogan
who had worked in He'd been an athlete at Michigan
and then he was working at Vanderbilt in Tennessee at
the time, and Dan macgogan was really good friends with
the people at Georgia Tech. So Yost worked through Dan
macgogan to contact the people at Georgia Tech. In nineteen
(05:30):
thirty three, he started contacting them to see if they
would be interested in coming up to Ann Arbor to
play a game. In nineteen thirty four, Soost and the
people at Georgia Tech started trading telegrams back then saying
would you be interested in coming up to play a
football game that season. Now Yost knew very well that
(05:53):
the policy the Jim Crow policy among the Southern States
at that time was that they would refuse to play
again against any team that had an African American player.
So when he scheduled the Georgia Tech game, he knew
for a fact that Georgia Tech was going to refuse
to play the game if willis Ward played, So he
knew it was going to be a problem, but he
(06:13):
still went ahead and scheduled the game. So in nineteen
thirty three, he scheduled this game, and once everybody started
to get the news that this was coming out, they
quickly started to realize that.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
You know, oh boy, we're going to have a problem here.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Because they're not going to play the game if we
have willis Ward on our team. And it didn't really
become an issue until nineteen thirty four when the schedule
was officially announced, and then everybody started asking Yost, what
are you going to do? Are you going to bench
willis Ward for this game?
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Are you going to play it? Or what are you
going to do?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And you've been listening to Buddy Morehouse, who happens to
teach at Hillsdale College, and it was also a documentarian
who made a documentary on this very story and By
the way, this goes to show that racism was not
a Southern phenomenon, but a national one and a national play.
An athletic director at a top Big ten school, and
it probably wasn't the Big ten men was vehemently against
(07:14):
having an African American athlete and a terrific one play
on his team for no other.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Reason than he was black.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
When we come back, more of this remarkable story, a
love story of sorts.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Here on our American Story.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Leehabib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe
to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,
or wherever you get our podcasts.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Any story you missed or want.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
To hear again can be found there daily again, Please
subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we
(08:09):
returned to our American Stories. We were just listening to
the story of Gerald Ford and Willis Ward becoming fast
friends at the University of Michigan. By the way, when
two guys decide to room on the road, this is.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
More than a friendship.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
We rejoin events as word spreads of the approaching Michigan
Georgia Tech football game and the crisis were impending. Crisis
of will Willis Ward e bench Buddy Moorhouse continues as
a story.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
The way it worked back in college football then is
that freshmen weren't allowed to play in the varsity, so
Willis Ward and Gerald Ford could play all. When they
were freshmen, they were just on the practice squad. When
they were sophomores, they were able to play. And because
Willis Ward was pretty much he was definitely the fastest
player on the team and one of the best players
on the team, he moved into the starting lineup right away.
(09:02):
He was one of the best players starting when he
was a sophomore, and Michigan won the national championship both
his sophomore and junior years. So Willis Ward is one
of the best players on the best team in the country.
Gerald Ford was he was He played center and linebacker,
and he was backing up a guy named Chuck Bernard
who was an All American center. So Gerald Ford didn't
(09:24):
play much at all when he was a sophomore and junior,
but when he was a senior, Chuck Bernard was graduating.
So for the first time.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Both of these.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Guys that these best friends, Gerald Ford and Willis Ward
were both going to be moving into the starting lineup,
And they were so excited heading into that season, going
into the nineteen thirty four season because they were both
going to be starters for the first time, they were
coming off two national championships, and the excitement was just
sky high. But all that kind of came crashing down
(09:57):
in starting in the late summer and then the early
fall of nineteen thirty four when this Georgia Tech situation
came up and everybody started asking them, you know what,
It started asking Fielding Yost and Harry Kipke, you know,
what are you going to do about this game? You know,
Georgia Tech is not going to play the game.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
If Willis Ward plays in the game, what are you
going to do about it?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And it caused this incredibly contentious situation once word got out,
both on the team and in the Michigan community and
then really nationally, and it became a firestorm in the
Michigan campus. College football back then didn't start in late
August or early September like it does now. The games
(10:41):
didn't start until early October that.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Was the one.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
The first game of the season was the Georgia Tech
game was going to be the third game of the season,
and it wasn't until October twentieth that the game was played.
So this really started to explode in late September and
early October of nineteen thirty four. And when we're got
out when Georgia Tech said no, we're not going to
play the game. If Willis Ward plays fielding the house wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Say anything publicly. He would not come out and say
it publicly.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
He was definitely speaking in the meetings that they had,
but he wouldn't say anything, wouldn't make any press announcements,
wouldn't answer any of their questions about it.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Leading up to the game.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
As I said, it was creating this firestorm on the campus,
and there were really two sides that were forming. On
the one side, you had most all of the faculty
and almost all the students at Michigan who were saying,
there's no way that we should play this game. If
Willis Ward's not allowed to play, either he plays the
(11:40):
game or we cancel it, but we should not play
the game and bench Willis Ward. That's just not an option.
On the other side were some of the more blue bloods,
some of the fraternity boys on Michigan's campus, who were
taking the approach that, you know what, these are our
guests from the South. We need to be considered of
what their feelings are, and we need to give in
(12:04):
and bench willis Woard because that's what they want us
to do, and there are guests. So created a huge
rift on the Michigan campus. The night before the game,
there was this huge rally that had about fifteen hundred
or two thousand people attending it, where it was everybody
came to the microphone and they were giving angry speeches
on both sides of it. There were also hundreds of
(12:25):
telegrams that were received by the Michigan.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Athletic office, most all of them.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Saying that it's a disgrace that a school like Michigan
would even be thinking of benching willis Ward in a
situation like this, and you know, demanding that they cancel
the game if they're insisting that willis Ward be benched. Really,
the people in the middle of this were not only
(12:50):
willis Ward but also Gerald Ford. He was, for the
first time in his life, as I said, a starter
on the Michigan football team, but he was watching what
was happening his best friend. So gerald Ford felt so
strongly about it that he actually wrote to his father
and then got the word to Harry Kipke that he
wanted to quit the team if they were going to
(13:12):
do this to his friend Willis Ward, he didn't want
to have any part of that. So he told his
father that he was going to quit the team. And
if you think about it, that's an extraordinary thing for
a twenty year old college kid.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
To be doing. He was living his dream of being.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
A Michigan football player, and on the eve of the
only season where he was going to be a starter
his senior year, he was willing to quit the team
as a show of support for his best friend, Willis Ward.
That's how strongly he felt about it. And that's a
test of character that a lot of people don't know
about gerald Ford. That really stayed with him for the
(13:49):
rest of his life. But after he said that and
he told willis Ward what he wanted to do, willis
Ward went to gerald Ford and he told him. He said, no,
I don't want you to quit the team.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I want you to play. I want you to go
out to play, and I want you to pound them.
So that's what Ford did. He said, if you want
me to play, I'll play.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
If you want me to pound him, I'll pound them.
The weather was miserable. It was October twentieth. The weather
was it was cold and rainy. Michigan had started this
season terribly and it was all because of the Willis
Ward incident. This was just ripping the team up inside.
They just came off two back to back national championships
(14:30):
and then they started the nineteen thirty four season with
two losses.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
So coming in the Georgia.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Tech game, they already lost two games and the morale
of the team was destroyed.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
But they had.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
A special mission, I think in their hearts for the
Georgia Tech game that they needed to go out there
and they needed to stand up for their friend Willis Ward.
So the game was played in these terrible conditions, but
Michigan actually won the game nine to two.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Georgia Tech's only points came out of safety.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Michigan scored also scored a safety, and they scored a
touchdown in the game.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
And Gerald Ford had probably the best game of his
life that year.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
He was absolutely devastating the players on the Georgia Tech team.
And the one play that really illustrates that is there
was a player on the Georgia Tech team, a sophomore
named Charlie Preston who was from Atlanta, and there was
trash talk throughout the entire game, but Charlie Preston was
just really really going.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Over the top with it.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
He was he kept talking about Willis Ward in the
game and using the worst racial slurs that you can
imagine to to describe him, and he was directing that
at the Michigan players. When gerald Ford heard that, he snapped.
And there was this one play where gerald Ford and
another player named Bill Borgman, they went after Charlie Preston
(15:57):
during that play and they put them on devastating block
on him that ended up breaking some of Charlie Preston's ribs.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
They had to haul.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Him out of the game after that. That's how hard
they hit Charlie Preston. And that got in the newspaper
that you know, he had been knocked out of the game.
And on Monday morning, after the game, Gerald Ford and
Bill Borkman they came to Willis Ward and they said
that was for you. That ended up being the only
game that Michigan won that season. Record wise, it was
(16:31):
the worst season in Michigan history. And it was all
because their morale had been totally destroyed because of the
Willis Ward situation. So this was not a team that
was historically in trouble. They just came off to had
come off two national championship seasons, and then they end
up having a one and seven season.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Which is the worst season in Michigan football history.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Now, what a story you're hearing about how racism drove
the great University of Michigan championship team to a tragic
and terrible season, and all over one single claim that
from an athletic director who deliberately did this.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
There's almost no question he did.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Just listening to the story, why schedule a southern team
but for this kind of conflict and showdown?
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Why else would a man do it? And that's how
deep the roots of racism can go in a human being.
But what a thing young Gerald Ford did. He doesn't play.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
If my pal doesn't play, I quit, and his pal says, no,
go pound them. And the one win they have in
this tragic season, well they pounded Georgia Tech and.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Broke some ribs while they were at it.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
On general principle, when we come back more of this
remarkable story, a love story in the end between Gerald
Ford and Willis ward Here on our American stories. And
(18:08):
we returned to our American stories. We were just listening
to Buddy Moorhouse describe what happened on that faithful day
in nineteen thirty four when Michigan hounded Georgia Tech in
their only win of the season. But what happened to
the relationship between Gerald Ford and Willis ward Let's pick
up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That game had a profound impact on both of them
in every respect. What it did to Willis ward at
first was he was, as I said, as great as
he was in football, he was even better in track.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
He was one of the best football players in the country.
He was one of the best.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Track people in the entire world. Back then, the fastest
man in the world was Jesse Owens, who was from
Ohio State, and he's the one who went on in
won four gold medals in the in the nineteen thirty
six Olympics.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Well, Willis Warden.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
And Jesse Owens were in college at the same time
and Willis Ward raced against Jesse Owens five times, and
he actually beat Jesse Owens twice. There are people that
don't think Jesse Owens ever lost a race in college,
or ever lost a race.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
During that time. Well, one of the only people who
ever beat him was Willis Ward.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
So you have a Willis Ward who is is just
as fast as Jesse Owens, the fastest man in the world.
And going into the nineteen thirty six Olympics, everybody was thinking,
the United States is going to have the greatest track
team of all time. We've got Jesse Owens on our team,
we got Willis Ward on our team. We're going to
just do nothing but win gold medals. But the Olympics
(19:44):
that year, of course, were held in Berlin, Adolf Hitler's Berlin,
and there was a lot of speculation as to what
Hitler might do in terms of discriminating against the athletes
who were.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Who were not white from other countries.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So Willis Ward had been so devastated by what happened
to him in the Georgia Tech situation, then what came
to the Olympics. He just said, you know what, I
don't want to put myself through possibly having the same
thing happened to me as happened to me with the
Georgia Tech game. So he essentially retired from athletics after
the nineteen thirty five track season at Michigan and never
(20:24):
ran another race or played in another football game. He
decided instead that he was going to go into.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
The corporate world.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
He was hired by Henry Ford to work at the
Ford Motor Company as kind of a liaison between.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
The black and white workers.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Henry Ford loved Willis Ward. He absolutely loved Willis Ward,
and he was trying to integrate his auto factories at
the time, and he knew he needed someone to kind
of be the go between. So when Willis Ward was
in his early twenties, he was probably one of the
highest ranking African American business executives in the country for
(21:00):
the Ford Motor Company. Gerald Ford went on to law
school at Yale and then became an attorney in Grand Rapids,
and a few years after that decided to run for Congress.
But throughout the entire time, the Willis Ward and Gerald
Ford kept in touch with each other, visited each other
all the time, saw each other all the time. Ford
became a congressman willis Ward eventually left Ford Motor Company
(21:22):
went to law school because he wanted to become an attorney,
specifically working on civil rights cases. And then in nineteen
fifty six, willis Ward decided he was going to run
for Congress too, and like Gerald Ford, willis Ward was
also a Republican. So willis Ward was going to run
for Congress in a seat in Detroit as a Republican,
(21:43):
and Gerald Ford came to Detroit and campaigned for his
friend after that. So that was twenty years after their
football days at Michigan and the two of them are
walking through Detroit knocking on Doris together to try to
get willis Ward elected. He ended up not winning that race,
not getting elected, but just showed their friendship kind of
(22:05):
kept going on after that. When Gerald Ford became one
of the leading people in the House of Representatives in
the nineteen sixties when the civil rights legislation was going
through the Congress, Ford was one of the main Republican
supporters of the civil rights legislation, and he always told
people that the thing that was strongest in his mind
(22:27):
when he voted in favor of that was what had
happened to willis Ward and how unfair that was. So
when he voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act
and the Civil Rights Act, it was the Willis Ward
story in his friendship with Willis ward was strongly in
his mind, and it continued when he moved into the
White House when Richard Nixon resigned, and then his Ford,
(22:50):
of course, had become vice president when spirou Agnew resigned,
and then he became president when Nixon resigned, and that
whole his whole friendship and everything with Willis ward was
still was still one of the driving factors in his
mind anytime it came to any legislation or anything else
that was going on related to race, his relationship with
(23:14):
Willis Warden was still there. Gerald Ford was the president
who signed Black History Month into law, and Willis ward
would come to the White House and visit with Jerry
at that time. There's some great photos from nineteen seventy
six of the two of them in the Oval Office
just having.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
A private conversation.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
It had been forty years since their time in ann Arbor,
and they were together at the White House.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
And by that time Willis.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Ward was a judge in Detroit, So you have the
judge in Detroit and the President of the United States.
These two old Michigan football teammates just having a great
conversation in the Oval Office. So their friendship continued through
the rest of their lives, and then even after willis
Ward passed away in nineteen eighty three. It even continued
after that willis Word passed away in nineteen eighty three.
(24:03):
Gerald Ford then became kind of an elder statesman in
the Republican Party. And in one of the most remarkable
things that happened is in nineteen ninety nine, Michigan, the
University of Michigan's they had an affirmative actions policy that
was in place, and it had come under fire and
was being legally challenged, and it went all the way
(24:24):
to the Supreme Court. The president of Michigan at that
time was man named Lee Bolinger, and he was desperately
trying to keep some semblance of this program in place
because he wanted to have a diverse student body, and
he knew this was a politically charged issue, but he
was desperately looking for someone. He was looking for a
Republican who would be willing to say that it's important
(24:48):
that we have this policy at the university of Michigan
and at other universities.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
So Gerald Ford was actually.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
The one who came forward in nineteen ninety nine, and
he stepped forward and said I will help. Gerald Ford
wrote an op ed in The New York Times basically
talking about the importance of fairness, the importance of being
able to have diversity and the university, and he based
(25:17):
his entire argument around the story of Willis Ward. And
that's interesting in several levels.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Number One, it's interesting because Ford never talked about the
Willis Ward story throughout very rarely.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
He was on TV one time in the nineties on
The Larry King Show, where he was on there with
his son Steve, and Stevid kind of prompted him to
tell the story. It's the only time we can ever
find of Gerald Ford telling the story on camera. But
he it wasn't like he was exploiting it for political
purposes or anything. He never told the Willis Ward story
to anyone, but he decided when his Alma Maters admissions
(25:54):
policy was under fire, he decided that that was the
right time to tell it. So he wrote an op
ed in The New York Times where he basically told
the story of Willis Ward and for a lot of
the country, it was the first time that they'd ever
heard that story, and it was a very, very powerful
op ed and the Supreme Court voted soon after that
to uphold part of Michigan's policy, and the swing vote
(26:16):
on that was Sandradale O'Connor, and there are a lot
of observers who said that it was most likely gerald
Ford's op ed that helped sway Sandradale O'Connor's mind on
how to vote on that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And a terrific job on the production by Carter McNish,
and a special thanks to Buddy Moorhouse, who teaches at
Hillsdale College where Carter happens to be a student, and
who has also produced a documentary Black and Blue, the
story of Gerald Ford Willis Ward in the nineteen thirty
four Georgia Tech football game. He did it along with
(26:55):
Brian Krueger, and that's available at Walmart dot com, Amazon
dot com for.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
The usual suspects.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
A terrific story about friendship, about how love can transcend race,
and about so much more, including.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Courage and courage under fire.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Here on our American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We search for the Our American Stories podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Gerald Ford is often overlooked as a president. He was
the thirty eighth.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
However, gerald Ford made an incredible impact on civil rights
during his time in Congress and as president, and all
because of his friendship with.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
A man named Willis Ward.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Buddy Moorhouse tells the story of gerald Ford, Willis Ward,
and a football game which forever changed both men's lives.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Gerald Ford and Willis Ward in the early nineteen thirties
where two of the best high school football players in
the state of Michigan.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Gerald Ford was going to Grand.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Rapid South High School and Willis Ward was attending Detroit
Northwestern High School, so they were on opposite sides of
the state. They were two of the best high school
football players in the state. So in the fall of
nineteen thirty one, they both came to the University of Michigan.
They met actually on their very first day of freshman orientation.
(01:22):
It was held in Waterman Gymnasium on the Michigan campus,
and they met that first day, and they had known
of each other by reputation because they had read the
newspaper clippings and knew how good the other guy was.
So immediately they introduced themselves to each other and really
became great friends. From that very first day at the
University of Michigan in the fall in nineteen thirty one,
(01:44):
they realized they had a lot in common beyond just football.
They both had an interest in the law, they kind
of had similar career goals, so they just they became
fast friends in Kyle and decided that they were going
to room together when they went on road trips. They
(02:06):
had formed this friendship that was outside of football, and
then it just kind of got strengthened on the football field.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
And then every time they went Michigan.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Football team would go on a road trip, the two
of them were roomed together, and then they basically remained
great friends, obviously throughout college and then through the.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Rest of their lives as well.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
The athletic director at the time was a guy named
Fielding Yost, who had been Michigan's football coach for twenty
five years starting in the early nineteen hundreds and he
became really one of the greatest college football coaches of
all time, certainly one of the most influential coaches of
all time. But in nineteen twenty five he stepped down
from being a coach and he became the athletic director,
(02:44):
and then he burned through a couple of coaches after that,
and he eventually hired a guy named Harry Kipke to
be his head coach. And Harry Kipkey had been an
All American football player for him, he was one of
the greatest athletes that Michigan ever had. And when Harry
Kipke became the the coach, he wanted to kind of
beef up the roster, beef up recruiting. And everybody at
(03:07):
that time knew about Willis Ward. He was this phenomenal athlete,
not just in football, but especially in track in Detroit,
he was one of the fastest people in the country.
He knew he was an incredible athlete, and he really
wanted him to come to Michigan not just to run track,
but also to play football. The problem with that is
(03:27):
that Fielding Yost was dead set against having any African
American football player on the football team. He didn't mind
if there were African Americans on other teams. There were
some that played on the baseball team, but the football
team was kind of his baby and fielding. Yost was
a fairly unrelenting racist. He'd grown up in West Virginia.
(03:49):
He was the son of a Confederate soldier, and he
was really dead set on keeping his football team all white.
So when Harry Kipke came to him and said that
he wanted to Willis Ward to play on his team,
it caused a huge rift between the two of them.
Yost was against it, Kipke really wanted it. There were
(04:09):
even some rumors that the two of them actually came
to blows when they were discussing whether or.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Not Willis Ward would be allowed to join the team.
But eventually Kipke went out.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
And Yost was yos back down and Willis Ward was
able to join the team.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
And then Willis Ward when he joined the team, he
became the.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
First African American football player in about forty years to
play at the University of Michigan. The way things worked
back in college football back then, the schedules were not
set many years in advance.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
They were really only set like a year or so
in advance.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Only today, you know, right now, Michigan knows five years
from now who they're going to be playing. But back
in those days, they set the schedule like the year before,
and Michigan had always only ever played teams from the North,
teams from either the Midwest or maybe the East. They'd
never played a team from the South. For whatever reason,
Fielding Yost wanted to get a Southern team on the schedule.
(05:09):
His brother in law was a guy named Dan mcgogan
who had worked in He'd been an athlete at Michigan
and then he was working at Vanderbilt in Tennessee at
the time, and Dan macgogan was really good friends with
the people at Georgia Tech. So Yost worked through Dan
macgogan to contact the people at Georgia Tech. In nineteen
(05:30):
thirty three, he started contacting them to see if they
would be interested in coming up to Ann Arbor to
play a game. In nineteen thirty four, Soost and the
people at Georgia Tech started trading telegrams back then saying
would you be interested in coming up to play a
football game that season. Now Yost knew very well that
(05:53):
the policy the Jim Crow policy among the Southern States
at that time was that they would refuse to play
again against any team that had an African American player.
So when he scheduled the Georgia Tech game, he knew
for a fact that Georgia Tech was going to refuse
to play the game if willis Ward played, So he
knew it was going to be a problem, but he
(06:13):
still went ahead and scheduled the game. So in nineteen
thirty three, he scheduled this game, and once everybody started
to get the news that this was coming out, they
quickly started to realize that.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
You know, oh boy, we're going to have a problem here.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Because they're not going to play the game if we
have willis Ward on our team. And it didn't really
become an issue until nineteen thirty four when the schedule
was officially announced, and then everybody started asking Yost, what
are you going to do? Are you going to bench
willis Ward for this game?
Speaker 4 (06:43):
Are you going to play it? Or what are you
going to do?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And you've been listening to Buddy Morehouse, who happens to
teach at Hillsdale College, and it was also a documentarian
who made a documentary on this very story and By
the way, this goes to show that racism was not
a Southern phenomenon, but a national one and a national play.
An athletic director at a top Big ten school, and
it probably wasn't the Big ten men was vehemently against
(07:14):
having an African American athlete and a terrific one play
on his team for no other.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Reason than he was black.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
When we come back, more of this remarkable story, a
love story of sorts.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Here on our American Story.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Leehabib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe
to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify,
or wherever you get our podcasts.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Any story you missed or want.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
To hear again can be found there daily again, Please
subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It
helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we
(08:09):
returned to our American Stories. We were just listening to
the story of Gerald Ford and Willis Ward becoming fast
friends at the University of Michigan. By the way, when
two guys decide to room on the road, this is.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
More than a friendship.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
We rejoin events as word spreads of the approaching Michigan
Georgia Tech football game and the crisis were impending. Crisis
of will Willis Ward e bench Buddy Moorhouse continues as
a story.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
The way it worked back in college football then is
that freshmen weren't allowed to play in the varsity, so
Willis Ward and Gerald Ford could play all. When they
were freshmen, they were just on the practice squad. When
they were sophomores, they were able to play. And because
Willis Ward was pretty much he was definitely the fastest
player on the team and one of the best players
on the team, he moved into the starting lineup right away.
(09:02):
He was one of the best players starting when he
was a sophomore, and Michigan won the national championship both
his sophomore and junior years. So Willis Ward is one
of the best players on the best team in the country.
Gerald Ford was he was He played center and linebacker,
and he was backing up a guy named Chuck Bernard
who was an All American center. So Gerald Ford didn't
(09:24):
play much at all when he was a sophomore and junior,
but when he was a senior, Chuck Bernard was graduating.
So for the first time.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Both of these.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Guys that these best friends, Gerald Ford and Willis Ward
were both going to be moving into the starting lineup,
And they were so excited heading into that season, going
into the nineteen thirty four season because they were both
going to be starters for the first time, they were
coming off two national championships, and the excitement was just
sky high. But all that kind of came crashing down
(09:57):
in starting in the late summer and then the early
fall of nineteen thirty four when this Georgia Tech situation
came up and everybody started asking them, you know what,
It started asking Fielding Yost and Harry Kipke, you know,
what are you going to do about this game? You know,
Georgia Tech is not going to play the game.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
If Willis Ward plays in the game, what are you
going to do about it?
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And it caused this incredibly contentious situation once word got out,
both on the team and in the Michigan community and
then really nationally, and it became a firestorm in the
Michigan campus. College football back then didn't start in late
August or early September like it does now. The games
(10:41):
didn't start until early October that.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Was the one.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
The first game of the season was the Georgia Tech
game was going to be the third game of the season,
and it wasn't until October twentieth that the game was played.
So this really started to explode in late September and
early October of nineteen thirty four. And when we're got
out when Georgia Tech said no, we're not going to
play the game. If Willis Ward plays fielding the house wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
Say anything publicly. He would not come out and say
it publicly.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
He was definitely speaking in the meetings that they had,
but he wouldn't say anything, wouldn't make any press announcements,
wouldn't answer any of their questions about it.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Leading up to the game.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
As I said, it was creating this firestorm on the campus,
and there were really two sides that were forming. On
the one side, you had most all of the faculty
and almost all the students at Michigan who were saying,
there's no way that we should play this game. If
Willis Ward's not allowed to play, either he plays the
(11:40):
game or we cancel it, but we should not play
the game and bench Willis Ward. That's just not an option.
On the other side were some of the more blue bloods,
some of the fraternity boys on Michigan's campus, who were
taking the approach that, you know what, these are our
guests from the South. We need to be considered of
what their feelings are, and we need to give in
(12:04):
and bench willis Woard because that's what they want us
to do, and there are guests. So created a huge
rift on the Michigan campus. The night before the game,
there was this huge rally that had about fifteen hundred
or two thousand people attending it, where it was everybody
came to the microphone and they were giving angry speeches
on both sides of it. There were also hundreds of
(12:25):
telegrams that were received by the Michigan.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Athletic office, most all of them.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Saying that it's a disgrace that a school like Michigan
would even be thinking of benching willis Ward in a
situation like this, and you know, demanding that they cancel
the game if they're insisting that willis Ward be benched. Really,
the people in the middle of this were not only
(12:50):
willis Ward but also Gerald Ford. He was, for the
first time in his life, as I said, a starter
on the Michigan football team, but he was watching what
was happening his best friend. So gerald Ford felt so
strongly about it that he actually wrote to his father
and then got the word to Harry Kipke that he
wanted to quit the team if they were going to
(13:12):
do this to his friend Willis Ward, he didn't want
to have any part of that. So he told his
father that he was going to quit the team. And
if you think about it, that's an extraordinary thing for
a twenty year old college kid.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
To be doing. He was living his dream of being.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
A Michigan football player, and on the eve of the
only season where he was going to be a starter
his senior year, he was willing to quit the team
as a show of support for his best friend, Willis Ward.
That's how strongly he felt about it. And that's a
test of character that a lot of people don't know
about gerald Ford. That really stayed with him for the
(13:49):
rest of his life. But after he said that and
he told willis Ward what he wanted to do, willis
Ward went to gerald Ford and he told him. He said, no,
I don't want you to quit the team.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I want you to play. I want you to go
out to play, and I want you to pound them.
So that's what Ford did. He said, if you want
me to play, I'll play.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
If you want me to pound him, I'll pound them.
The weather was miserable. It was October twentieth. The weather
was it was cold and rainy. Michigan had started this
season terribly and it was all because of the Willis
Ward incident. This was just ripping the team up inside.
They just came off two back to back national championships
(14:30):
and then they started the nineteen thirty four season with
two losses.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
So coming in the Georgia.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Tech game, they already lost two games and the morale
of the team was destroyed.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
But they had.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
A special mission, I think in their hearts for the
Georgia Tech game that they needed to go out there
and they needed to stand up for their friend Willis Ward.
So the game was played in these terrible conditions, but
Michigan actually won the game nine to two.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Georgia Tech's only points came out of safety.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Michigan scored also scored a safety, and they scored a
touchdown in the game.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
And Gerald Ford had probably the best game of his
life that year.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
He was absolutely devastating the players on the Georgia Tech team.
And the one play that really illustrates that is there
was a player on the Georgia Tech team, a sophomore
named Charlie Preston who was from Atlanta, and there was
trash talk throughout the entire game, but Charlie Preston was
just really really going.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Over the top with it.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
He was he kept talking about Willis Ward in the
game and using the worst racial slurs that you can
imagine to to describe him, and he was directing that
at the Michigan players. When gerald Ford heard that, he snapped.
And there was this one play where gerald Ford and
another player named Bill Borgman, they went after Charlie Preston
(15:57):
during that play and they put them on devastating block
on him that ended up breaking some of Charlie Preston's ribs.
Speaker 4 (16:07):
They had to haul.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Him out of the game after that. That's how hard
they hit Charlie Preston. And that got in the newspaper
that you know, he had been knocked out of the game.
And on Monday morning, after the game, Gerald Ford and
Bill Borkman they came to Willis Ward and they said
that was for you. That ended up being the only
game that Michigan won that season. Record wise, it was
(16:31):
the worst season in Michigan history. And it was all
because their morale had been totally destroyed because of the
Willis Ward situation. So this was not a team that
was historically in trouble. They just came off to had
come off two national championship seasons, and then they end
up having a one and seven season.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Which is the worst season in Michigan football history.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Now, what a story you're hearing about how racism drove
the great University of Michigan championship team to a tragic
and terrible season, and all over one single claim that
from an athletic director who deliberately did this.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
There's almost no question he did.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Just listening to the story, why schedule a southern team
but for this kind of conflict and showdown?
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Why else would a man do it? And that's how
deep the roots of racism can go in a human being.
But what a thing young Gerald Ford did. He doesn't play.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
If my pal doesn't play, I quit, and his pal says, no,
go pound them. And the one win they have in
this tragic season, well they pounded Georgia Tech and.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Broke some ribs while they were at it.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
On general principle, when we come back more of this
remarkable story, a love story in the end between Gerald
Ford and Willis ward Here on our American stories. And
(18:08):
we returned to our American stories. We were just listening
to Buddy Moorhouse describe what happened on that faithful day
in nineteen thirty four when Michigan hounded Georgia Tech in
their only win of the season. But what happened to
the relationship between Gerald Ford and Willis ward Let's pick
up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That game had a profound impact on both of them
in every respect. What it did to Willis ward at
first was he was, as I said, as great as
he was in football, he was even better in track.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
He was one of the best football players in the country.
He was one of the best.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Track people in the entire world. Back then, the fastest
man in the world was Jesse Owens, who was from
Ohio State, and he's the one who went on in
won four gold medals in the in the nineteen thirty
six Olympics.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Well, Willis Warden.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
And Jesse Owens were in college at the same time
and Willis Ward raced against Jesse Owens five times, and
he actually beat Jesse Owens twice. There are people that
don't think Jesse Owens ever lost a race in college,
or ever lost a race.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
During that time. Well, one of the only people who
ever beat him was Willis Ward.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
So you have a Willis Ward who is is just
as fast as Jesse Owens, the fastest man in the world.
And going into the nineteen thirty six Olympics, everybody was thinking,
the United States is going to have the greatest track
team of all time. We've got Jesse Owens on our team,
we got Willis Ward on our team. We're going to
just do nothing but win gold medals. But the Olympics
(19:44):
that year, of course, were held in Berlin, Adolf Hitler's Berlin,
and there was a lot of speculation as to what
Hitler might do in terms of discriminating against the athletes
who were.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Who were not white from other countries.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So Willis Ward had been so devastated by what happened
to him in the Georgia Tech situation, then what came
to the Olympics. He just said, you know what, I
don't want to put myself through possibly having the same
thing happened to me as happened to me with the
Georgia Tech game. So he essentially retired from athletics after
the nineteen thirty five track season at Michigan and never
(20:24):
ran another race or played in another football game. He
decided instead that he was going to go into.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
The corporate world.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
He was hired by Henry Ford to work at the
Ford Motor Company as kind of a liaison between.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
The black and white workers.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Henry Ford loved Willis Ward. He absolutely loved Willis Ward,
and he was trying to integrate his auto factories at
the time, and he knew he needed someone to kind
of be the go between. So when Willis Ward was
in his early twenties, he was probably one of the
highest ranking African American business executives in the country for
(21:00):
the Ford Motor Company. Gerald Ford went on to law
school at Yale and then became an attorney in Grand Rapids,
and a few years after that decided to run for Congress.
But throughout the entire time, the Willis Ward and Gerald
Ford kept in touch with each other, visited each other
all the time, saw each other all the time. Ford
became a congressman willis Ward eventually left Ford Motor Company
(21:22):
went to law school because he wanted to become an attorney,
specifically working on civil rights cases. And then in nineteen
fifty six, willis Ward decided he was going to run
for Congress too, and like Gerald Ford, willis Ward was
also a Republican. So willis Ward was going to run
for Congress in a seat in Detroit as a Republican,
(21:43):
and Gerald Ford came to Detroit and campaigned for his
friend after that. So that was twenty years after their
football days at Michigan and the two of them are
walking through Detroit knocking on Doris together to try to
get willis Ward elected. He ended up not winning that race,
not getting elected, but just showed their friendship kind of
(22:05):
kept going on after that. When Gerald Ford became one
of the leading people in the House of Representatives in
the nineteen sixties when the civil rights legislation was going
through the Congress, Ford was one of the main Republican
supporters of the civil rights legislation, and he always told
people that the thing that was strongest in his mind
(22:27):
when he voted in favor of that was what had
happened to willis Ward and how unfair that was. So
when he voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act
and the Civil Rights Act, it was the Willis Ward
story in his friendship with Willis ward was strongly in
his mind, and it continued when he moved into the
White House when Richard Nixon resigned, and then his Ford,
(22:50):
of course, had become vice president when spirou Agnew resigned,
and then he became president when Nixon resigned, and that
whole his whole friendship and everything with Willis ward was
still was still one of the driving factors in his
mind anytime it came to any legislation or anything else
that was going on related to race, his relationship with
(23:14):
Willis Warden was still there. Gerald Ford was the president
who signed Black History Month into law, and Willis ward
would come to the White House and visit with Jerry
at that time. There's some great photos from nineteen seventy
six of the two of them in the Oval Office
just having.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
A private conversation.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
It had been forty years since their time in ann Arbor,
and they were together at the White House.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
And by that time Willis.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Ward was a judge in Detroit, So you have the
judge in Detroit and the President of the United States.
These two old Michigan football teammates just having a great
conversation in the Oval Office. So their friendship continued through
the rest of their lives, and then even after willis
Ward passed away in nineteen eighty three. It even continued
after that willis Word passed away in nineteen eighty three.
(24:03):
Gerald Ford then became kind of an elder statesman in
the Republican Party. And in one of the most remarkable
things that happened is in nineteen ninety nine, Michigan, the
University of Michigan's they had an affirmative actions policy that
was in place, and it had come under fire and
was being legally challenged, and it went all the way
(24:24):
to the Supreme Court. The president of Michigan at that
time was man named Lee Bolinger, and he was desperately
trying to keep some semblance of this program in place
because he wanted to have a diverse student body, and
he knew this was a politically charged issue, but he
was desperately looking for someone. He was looking for a
Republican who would be willing to say that it's important
(24:48):
that we have this policy at the university of Michigan
and at other universities.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
So Gerald Ford was actually.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
The one who came forward in nineteen ninety nine, and
he stepped forward and said I will help. Gerald Ford
wrote an op ed in The New York Times basically
talking about the importance of fairness, the importance of being
able to have diversity and the university, and he based
(25:17):
his entire argument around the story of Willis Ward. And
that's interesting in several levels.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Number One, it's interesting because Ford never talked about the
Willis Ward story throughout very rarely.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
He was on TV one time in the nineties on
The Larry King Show, where he was on there with
his son Steve, and Stevid kind of prompted him to
tell the story. It's the only time we can ever
find of Gerald Ford telling the story on camera. But
he it wasn't like he was exploiting it for political
purposes or anything. He never told the Willis Ward story
to anyone, but he decided when his Alma Maters admissions
(25:54):
policy was under fire, he decided that that was the
right time to tell it. So he wrote an op
ed in The New York Times where he basically told
the story of Willis Ward and for a lot of
the country, it was the first time that they'd ever
heard that story, and it was a very, very powerful
op ed and the Supreme Court voted soon after that
to uphold part of Michigan's policy, and the swing vote
(26:16):
on that was Sandradale O'Connor, and there are a lot
of observers who said that it was most likely gerald
Ford's op ed that helped sway Sandradale O'Connor's mind on
how to vote on that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And a terrific job on the production by Carter McNish,
and a special thanks to Buddy Moorhouse, who teaches at
Hillsdale College where Carter happens to be a student, and
who has also produced a documentary Black and Blue, the
story of Gerald Ford Willis Ward in the nineteen thirty
four Georgia Tech football game. He did it along with
(26:55):
Brian Krueger, and that's available at Walmart dot com, Amazon
dot com for.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
The usual suspects.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
A terrific story about friendship, about how love can transcend race,
and about so much more, including.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Courage and courage under fire.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.