LeVias will appear at the Hall of State in Fair Park next month for an event hosted by The News and the Dallas Historical Society.
Jerry LeVias, who was the first black scholarship football player at SMU and first in the Southwest Conference, poses at his home on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, in Houston.
By the time he finished his varsity career in 1968, LeVias would be named All-American on the field and Academic All-American off it. He led SMU to a conference championship in 1966, its first since Doak Walker did the same in 1948.Those words came from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a 1966 visit to the Hilltop.
His trials on the football field and on the SMU campus underscored King’s concern that America had a long way to go.Almost six decades after entering SMU, where many called him the Jackie Robinson of the Southwest Conference, LeVias said from his home in Houston he felt “complimented that I matter, that my life matters, and what I did in my life matters. And that I had an effect on race relations” in their often-grim history in the United States.
A collection of old photographs and newspaper clippings of Jerry LeVias at his home on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, in Houston.
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