Bro. Martin
 

'60s 'a great learning experience' for ex-Pack DB
It wasn't easy, but Martin broke ground as first black player on
N.C. State football team

By CHIP ALEXANDER, Staff Writer


There are 92 faces in the black-and-white photo that now is 36 years
old.
Most are young and intense. All but one are white.

It's a shot of the 1967 N.C. State football squad, forever known by
Wolfpack fans as the "White Shoes" team. Seated in the first row is
No. 33, a senior linebacker from Pennsylvania. Chuck Amato, now the
NCSU coach.

At the right end of the seventh row, in stark contrast to all those
around him, is Marcus Martin, the first black member of a Wolfpack
varsity football team.

"I wasn't looking to be a pioneer. I just wanted to play football,"
said Martin, who grew up in Covington, Va., and since 1995 has been
professor and chairman of the department of emergency medicine at
the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville.

Today, the Wolfpack will face Virginia in an ACC game at Carter-
Finley Stadium. Martin, 55, a former member of the NCSU Board of
Visitors, won't be able to attend but said he hopes to see the ABC
telecast.

"My loyalties," he said, "will be with the Pack."

Today, the majority of the players on the Wolfpack team are black.
Fans cheer at Carter-Finley Stadium for Jerricho Cotchery and T.A.
McLendon, Pat Thomas and Mario Williams.

When Martin arrived at "State College," there were about 200 black
students at the university. "And it seemed only two or three were
women," he said this week, chuckling.

"Most social activities for African-Americans were at Shaw or St.
Augustine's," he said. "But it was a time of social consciousness,
with the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war protests. So much
was going on in the '60s. It was a great learning experience -- all
of it."

A walk-on at State

The son of a paper mill worker, Martin played quarterback and safety
at Watson High, an all-black school in Covington, a few miles west
of Lexington, Va. He starred on the basketball team and was the
class valedictorian. He also was a member of the band. "I'd play the
trumpet at halftime with my cleats on," he recalled.

In the fall of 1966, he enrolled at NCSU on an academic scholarship.
As a freshman, he spent time on the playing field at State's new
football home, then known as Carter Stadium, as a member of the
marching band. The next year, he asked to join the football team as
a walk-on. A 5-foot-10, 170-pound defensive back, he would play
little for the Pack, and always in a backup role.

"I remember him being a hard-working guy and a hard hitter," said
Greg Williams, a starting safety in 1967 and now the Pack's
cornerbacks coach.

Martin was on the travel squad for a few games in 1967 as the Pack
finished 9-2. He paid his own way to Memphis, Tenn., to see State
win the Liberty Bowl.

"He was a super kid and was accepted by everyone on the team," Amato
said. "There were never any problems, not on the team."

At State, Martin also worked with the campus radio station and was
in the Air Force ROTC program. He was a charter member of Alpha Phi
Alpha social fraternity.

Initially, he had a black roommate but later moved into Room 221-C
at Bragaw Dorm with Art Padilla, a Miami native who is now a
professor of business management at NCSU.

"I took some guff from some other students like, 'Why are you living
with a black?' " Padilla said. "Actually, the comments weren't that
elegant. It wasn't easy in those days.

"And it wasn't easy for Marcus trying to play football and be a
serious student. I'd come back to the room and see him lying in bed,
moaning. I'd say, 'Looks like you got beat up at practice again.'

"He'd just say, 'I'm licking my wounds like a lion.' Then he'd get
up and study late into the night."

'I got spit at'

In 1968, after Williams and others graduated, Martin hoped to get
more playing time. He was used on special teams and did see some
action at cornerback, playing in the Pack's 36-12 home victory over
South Carolina.

"I was on the bottom of the pile one time in that game," Martin
recalled. "I got spit at, kicked at. There were expletives.

"I never got an adverse comment from my teammates. Not one. I'm sure
there were some people, some alumni, who may have had a problem with
me integrating the team. But no one ever said, 'You don't belong' or
sent hate mail."

In 1969, he decided to leave the football team, and his departure
made the front page of The Technician, the student newspaper. He was
quoted as saying he was disappointed he was not listed on the first
or second team at cornerback. He said he left the team "quietly, and
with no fuss."

He doesn't regret the decision to give up football.

"In retrospect," he said, "it was the right thing to do. My grades
were high enough to get me into medical school. If I hadn't left ...
who knows?"

Following a pioneer

Times were changing at N.C. State -- and in the South. In another
edition of The Technician in 1969, an editorial called on the school
to recruit more black athletes.

It said, "We don't feel blacks should be recruited because they are
black, because the government says integrate or because of any
pressure. But we do feel the athletic program may be able to gain a
boost by offering aid to blacks instead of sitting back and waiting
for an athlete to step forth from the study body."

Another who stepped forth was Clyde Chesney, a defensive end from
Fayetteville. Chesney entered NCSU in the fall of 1967 but didn't go
out for football. He said an experience at an NCSU home game, during
he said some State fans yelled racial epithets at Maryland players,
was unsettling.

"I was wondering, 'Do I really want to play?' " he said.

But Martin and others urged him to join the team. Chesney would
letter for three years from 1969 to '71 and be chosen to the ACC All-
Academic team. He's now director of extension service at Tennessee
State.

As for Martin, he graduated from State with degrees in pulp and
paper and chemical engineering but chose to pursue another career.
He was a member of the charter class of Eastern Virginia Medical
School in Norfolk, Va., and graduated in 1976.

ACC runs in family

Martin's daughter, Jamela, graduated from NCSU in 2001 and is
enrolled in nursing school at Virginia. His son, Marcus Jr., who
said he was recruited by the Pack, played tight end at Virginia and
also was a walk-on on the Cavaliers' basketball team. He now is a
stockbroker in Manhattan.

"I tell friends my father was the first black football player at
N.C. State, and they can't believe it," Marcus Martin Jr. said "They
say he must be 70. I say, no, it was just 1967. I can't imagine what
it was like for him.

"He broke some ground then, and he broke ground in another field. He
was the first black at his medical school. He's a role model not
just for me but for the community in Charlottesville."

The elder Martin said he has a framed color photo of the 1968
Wolfpack team in his office at the medical school. At times, he
said, Virginia coaches will bring by recruits for a chat. Many are
black, and Martin has much he can tell them.

"Sometimes I say I'm going to test their powers of observation," he
said, laughing. "I show them the photo and tell them they have five
seconds to find me.

"Of course, that's never a problem."



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