C.B. Claiborne tells the story with the coolness that comes with 40 years of separation. With his calm, matter-of-fact delivery, one would never suspect he is speaking of an incident that embodied the racism he endured as an agent of change.
In 1965, four years after Duke became racially integrated, Claiborne came to Durham as the first black athlete in the school's history. Per NCAA rules at the time, he spent his first year on the freshman team before joining the varsity squad as a sophomore.
The 1965-66 freshman team traveled to Salemburg, N.C., to take on Southwood College, which then featured an LSU-bound Pete Maravich. Claiborne said while he was guarding the future Hall-of-Famer "Pistol" Pete, a stocky forward on the opposing team continually threw elbows to Claiborne's face and neck when he was setting screens.
"For the whole first half, I told the refs, 'The guy is setting illegal picks, he is turning and hitting me,'" Claiborne said. "The ref wouldn't call anything, and it happened repeatedly. And so in the second half when this started to happen I kind of lost it and when he hit me, I turned around and swung at him and hit him."
Both teams' benches cleared and many fans left the stands to join in the melee that broke out. Claiborne said the game was stopped for fear of all the players' safety.
"I think that was a case of an individual player going beyond his role, motivated by something else... because I was the only black player, and there were no other black people even in the arena," said Claiborne, who now teaches marketing at Texas Southern University in Houston. "Also, the referees had an opportunity to step in and call it, but they weren't calling it. So there were times, some more hostile than others, when I think some liberties were taken because I was a black player or some means were not exercised because I was a black player."
Breaking Boundaries
Although Claiborne was a solid contributor his junior and senior seasons, the future professor was never a star for Duke. In his final year, he came off the bench to average 6.3 points and 2.3 rebounds per game on a team laden with talented sophomores that started over many of the seniors.
Claiborne said cultural differences sometimes strained his relationship with head coach Vic Bubas-the coach benched Claiborne for several games during his junior year for refusing to cut his hair-but the Danville, Va. native, said his respect for his coach never wavered.
"He was put in a very difficult situation because all of the things that I had to deal with, he had to deal with," Claiborne said. "I'm sure he was getting much more pressure from alumni and some of the more iconoclastic parts of the community than I was. He acted as kind of a buffer...
I had a lot of respect for Coach Bubas because of his role as coach but also because of who he was and how he tried to deal with those situations."
Claiborne played on Duke's freshman squad during the first year of the ACC's integration. Billy Jones, a Maryland transfer, is credited for being the first African-American player in the ACC, having been listed on the varsity roster during the 1965-66 season. Claiborne said, however, that Jones' playing time was limited, and that he and Maryland freshman Julius Johnson were the first players to actually compete in many ACC venues.
"I was the first person to walk out on the court and play in many of those arenas," Claiborne said. "I'm not trying to take anything away from [Jones], but in one sense he didn't get some of the pressure that we were facing because we were the first ones to walk out on the court in front of the crowd and have to play."
Although the Duke community was supportive of him, Claiborne said he was frequently subjected to verbal abuse from fans on road trips, particularly when the Blue Devils travelled to eastern North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama.
In addition to the hostile treatment, Claiborne said he put a lot of pressure on himself to represent his hometown and the black race. Despite these weighty burdens, Fred Lind, who played alongside Claiborne for four years and roomed with him on roadtrips, said Claiborne maintained a steely veneer.
"Nothing really got him down, or at least he didn't show it, but I'm sure there was a lot of pressure," Lind said. "Maybe he just didn't want to let on, but I always thought he was pretty rock solid considering the circumstances."
Insider's Perspective
Claiborne's experience gave him an interesting perspective on the integration movement. He looks back on his accomplishment with mixed feelings about its immediate impact-he noted that it took four years for a second black basketball player to graduate from Duke.
"There is a time for things to happen, and what I take from this is perhaps we were pushing the envelope a little too much," Claiborne said. "I built a house a few years ago, a timberframe house, and one of the sayings is, 'move no beam before its time,' because if you move it now and it's not time, you are going to have to move it again later. So part of that experience at Duke was: OK this was a great thing to do, but maybe it happened a little too soon."
Claiborne said he believes Duke did not have the same success as other ACC schools in rapidly attracting black athletes in part because of the academic standards. Claiborne himself was a National Achievement Scholar, and academically, he said he favored North Carolina A&T because of its architecture program. In the end, Claiborne chose to attend Duke because of the opportunity to play basketball.
Lind said Claiborne, an engineering major, was one of the most academically-minded players on the basketball team.
"The attitude was, 'you get no breaks because you were an athlete,'" Claiborne said. "So why was [the progress] slower at Duke? A lot of reasons, but it's wrapped up in what makes Duke a good place as well-there are these kinds of standards, and people believe in this idea of the student-athlete."
Head of the class
In 1980, Claiborne's academic pursuits eventually led him to North Carolina A&T as an assistant professor. He managed to stay involved with sports, developing the marketing plan for the school's athletic program.
He later taught at Virginia Tech, where he earned his Ph.D. in Marketing, after having already earned a Masters in Engineering from Dartmouth and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis. The father of four went on to teach at James Madison and California State University Channel Islands before taking his current post at Texas Southern this year.
"I come from a family of teachers, and actually I had said most of my life that the last thing I wanted to be was a teacher," Claiborne said. "It happened in an effort to try something different, sort of get my feet under me and figure out what I was going to do. It's been over 20 years now."
A profile written during his tenure at James Madison sums up Claiborne's teaching philosophy: "He urges his students to question authority, to question conventions, to break the mold of how things should be, to create a new world of their own."
It's not surprising he expects these lofty actions from his students-he has accomplished them himself.
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