Oregon State University Protest, 1969

1969 was a year that saw several racially driven protests across college football teams in America, but the loudest of them was started by Fred Milton of Oregon State University. Milton was suspended from the team in February of 1969 after he was seen with a mustache and goatee, which was a violation of a team policy against facial hair. After learning of his suspension, Milton went to speak with head coach Dee Andros, but after a forty-minute meeting neither side would budge on the issue. Milton claimed that the team policy against facial hair was a violation of his human rights and argued that the coach’s decision to suspend him from the team was racially driven. This was due to the fact that the suspension occurred during the off-season, when many of the white players on the team were known to sport long sideburns.

Oregon State University Black Student Union walkout, 1969. 

Image via Oregon State University Libraries

(Adapted from: The Oregon Encyclopedia).

            Coach Andro’s decision soon made national news and Oregon State was linked to the other racially charged incidents on college campuses across the country. Soon after, on March 5, 1969, Oregon State’s Black Student Union staged a protest, walking off campus. The students also boycotted classes and many even left the school. Of the 56 or 57 Black Student Union members enrolled for the winter semester, only 18 returned for Spring. And of the 5 black players on the football team in the fall, only 2 returned in the Spring. The university was stained with the image of being racially intolerant for years after this incident. As stated in a 1970 issue of Biweekly Daily Planet, a community publication that regularly discussed Oregon State, although not directly connected to the university, “Lily white Oregon State University is a racist institution from top to bottom, inside, outside, under, over, around and through”.

Milton would go on to continue playing football and graduate from Utah State University before playing in the Canadian Football League for a short time. If you would like to learn more about the life of Fred Milton, I encourage you to read the article about him, “Fred Milton (1948 – 2011)”, published by The Oregon Encyclopedia.

            Coincidentally, this incident took place only a few years after Gaudium et Spes was published, and I think that the protest orchestrated by Fred Milton and the Oregon State University Black Student Union is a perfect example of a peaceful protest which follows the principles outlined in Gaudium et Spes. “ But where citizens are oppressed by a public authority overstepping its competence, they should not protest against those things which are objectively required for the common good; but it is legitimate for them to defend their own rights and the rights of their fellow citizens against the abuse of this authority, while keeping within those limits drawn by the natural law and the Gospels”.

            In this case, the public authority overstepping its competence is the university, and more specifically the football program. Obviously, Milton wasn’t hurting anybody by having facial hair, so I don’t think that the protest was against something “objectively required for the common good”, he was protesting a violation of his rights and the rights of his fellow citizens on two levels. First, Milton believed that the team policy against facial hair was a violation of his human rights to begin with. On top of that though, the fact that the team policy was not enforced in the same, zero-tolerance way for white athletes as it was in this instance against Milton was a clear violation of his rights. In response to this violation, Milton and the members of the Black Student Union arranged a peaceful protest, clearly within “those limits drawn by the natural law and the Gospels”, and while no sweeping changes were made on campus in the short-term they certainly were part of the overall voice of the civil rights movement, helping to make a real difference.