MINNEAPOLIS — A film seven years in the making, celebrating some of the first Black men to break college football's color barrier, is now available for everyone to watch.
"Through the Banks of the Red Cedar" is Maya Washington's love letter to her dad Gene Washington, an elite receiver that a generation of Vikings fans remember well. The title is a play on the Michigan State fight song, and pays tribute to Gene and his football teammates at Michigan State, especially Bubba Smith, laying out the story of a group of Black men in the 1960s and how they paved the way for the desegregation of college football.
Maya's film gives credit to Duffy Daughtery, the Michigan State coach who recruited Black football players from the South when segregation did not allow those players to stay home and play for schools like Texas or Alabama.
It's a practice that would be unheard of today, but that's how things were back then.
Washington, who was from Texas, ended up at Michigan State after legendary defensive lineman Bubba Smith recommended him to Daughtery. The rest is history.
"Sports really made a difference, because it really helped me a lot because we did not have the dollars to in a way to get through school," Gene Washington reflects. "My family did not have the income to put me to college. And so playing sports was really my way out."
Education was Gene's number-one goal. But the opportunity he was given on the football field led to much more.
Michigan State won back-to-back national titles in 1965 and 1966, showcase games played in front of national TV audiences who saw Black players featured in prominent roles, including quarterback.
The high-profile games and the men who starred in them led Southern schools to rethink their segregation policies.
It also resulted in Michigan State's Bubba Smith, Clinton Jones, George Webster and Gene Washington being chosen first, second, fourth and eighth overall in the 1967 NFL Draft.
Maya was born after Gene retired from professional football, but her determination to know her dad better led to this film. In the process, she created an opportunity for a wider audience to understand what these men went through in the 1960s, changing the world as we know it.
For Maya, it was more personal than that.
"My dad and I've certainly gotten a lot closer in a way that we probably wouldn't have if I hadn't put forth all this effort and hard work," she said.
You can see "Through the Banks of the Red Cedar" right now as it begins a five-year run on PBS stations nationwide, or you can find it on Amazon Prime. Maya has also written a book by the same title.
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