BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Forty years ago, Alabama football fans watched Southern California and a Black running back named Sam Cunningham trounce coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s Crimson Tide in a game widely credited with helping start the integration of Southern football.
Fans weren’t the only ones watching Alabama football back then. The FBI, apparently with the approval of then-director J. Edgar Hoover, was secretly keeping an eye on a civil rights lawsuit filed by Blacks against the legendary coach during the same period.
Documents released to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act show that for almost two years, agents tracked the suit filed by a prominent Black lawyer against Bryant, the University of Alabama and others to make Bryant recruit Black football players. Building a file, agents followed the court docket and snipped stories from newspapers about the case, sending the findings to the agency’s office responsible for investigating civil rights crimes.
The FBI won’t explain why it was interested in a civil lawsuit by a Black student organization against a prominent White football coach. The agency kept track of possible civil rights violations and often monitored public figures and civil rights leaders under Hoover.
But one of the FBI forms in the Bryant file is marked twice with a handwritten capital “H’” – a clear indication that Hoover both saw the document and approved of the snooping, said author Curt Gentry, who wrote J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, a definitive biography on Hoover and the FBI under his leadership.
“He was the only one in the bureau allowed to use the ‘H’ initial,” Gentry said. “It means he saw it, and he obviously approved it if he didn’t do anything to stop it. He didn’t personally approve everything, but something like that he certainly would have known about.”
Bryant, one of America’s best-known sports figures at the time, already had won three national championships with the Crimson Tide. The Black lawyer who sued him, U.W. Clemon, had made a name for himself by taking on Alabama’s all-White establishment in numerous court fights over desegregation and police brutality. He later would become the state’s first Black federal judge.
