This just out on the Detroit Free Press website July 30, 2023 on Dr. John Telford former All American at Wayne State University in Detroit. Written by Scott Talley.
You could win an event at the Penn Relays in 1956, but you still couldn't get served in some restaurants in Philly if you were not white. It wasn't just in the South that those things happened.
See comment from Dr. John Telford below this article.
Ex-Wayne State athlete is now radio host, poet-in-residence for Detroit schools
At the 1956 Penn Relays, John Telford felt the thrill of victory with his Wayne State team, and pain, when the team could not eat at a steakhouse afterwards. Telford turned pain into a life of action.
Scott TalleyIt had the makings of a glorious evening.
Representing Detroit and their school at the 1956 Penn Relays, members of the Wayne State University track team had a grand reason to celebrate after winning the College Class Mile Relays.
Organizers of the Penn Relays — the oldest and largest track and field competition in the United States — billed the event as "the College One-Mile Relay Championship of America." And to win the race, the quartet from Wayne State overcame muddy footing on the famous Franklin Field track.
But when Wayne State's coach attempted to honor his runners afterward with a meal befitting of champions, they experienced a delay that lasted much longer than 3 minutes and 19 seconds (3:19.9), which was all the time the relay team needed to register the win on the track.
"When we won the Penn Relays, our coach, David L. Holmes, a great man, was going to buy us all steak dinners," recalls John Telford, who, before earning a bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in education from Wayne State, was a standout on the university's track team. "He took us to one of the fanciest restaurants in Philadelphia and we sat, and we sat. They didn't kick us out. But we sat, and we sat — close to an hour — and we realized that no one was going to serve us."
If Holmes and Telford — both white men — had decided to have an intimate dinner for two, they would have most likely received a different reception. However, Telford ran the relay with three Black teammates, and when the teammates and the coach they revered attempted to celebrate in public together, a restaurant located in a city strongly associated with freedom and liberty had a problem.
It was a "problem" that Telford was accustomed to seeing.
"I saw my Black teammates getting discriminated against all over the place," said the now 87-year-old Telford, who ran the leadoff leg on the victorious 1-mile relay with Ralph Williams, a sprinter from St. Kitts; Ralph Carter, who starred on the Northern High School and the Marine Corps track teams before coming to Wayne State, and the late Cliff Hatcher, who was the Detroit Public Schools' 440-yard record holder during his celebrated track career at Central High School. "I was the only white on all of those (relay) teams at Northwestern (the first Detroit high school Telford attended before graduating from Denby with the January 1954 class) and Wayne State and the Detroit Track Club and the United States National Team; and I saw discrimination all of the time, in all of its forms."
Telford, who spoke Tuesday morning from the comfort of his home within the River House Co-Op, says the experiences that he and his teammates endured immediately following their Penn Relay success, as well as other similar events, along with the examples provided by his parents — the late Helen Telford, a 40-year kindergarten teacher in Detroit and John "Scotty" Telford, a miner and professional boxer — are why, after all of his races were done on the track, he chose the "activist" path. And he has carried out his activism in a variety of ways, including as a career educator; author of seven books; regular content contributor to community media outlets and publications, and through participation with community organizations, including the National Action Network Michigan.
"I was raised by a mother and father who believed in civil rights," said Telford, who also was proud to point out Tuesday that his aunt, Letty, was one of the founders of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. "My father was a civil rights fighter before there was even such a word. That's how I was raised, and that's why I am heavily involved with the activists in this city — always have been."
Telford explained Tuesday that before he could ever attempt to make a difference in the world, he first needed to arm himself with as much education as possible. And with a twinkle in his eye, he began to speak again in a most appreciative tone about his track days at Wayne State, where Telford began running collegiately on scholarship almost immediately after his graduation from Denby.
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“I owe my life to track and field,” said Telford, an English major as an undergraduate at Wayne, whose track talent was spotted at an early age when a Detroit gym teacher named Eddie Tolan — the same Tolan who won gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter dashes at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics — timed Telford at 5.8 seconds over 50 yards when he was an eighth grader at Estabrook School, which Telford attended while growing up on 16th Street near Linwood and McGraw. “Through track, I was able to get a college education. And at that time, once you reached junior status, you could sub in DPS. On Tuesdays and Thursdays when I didn’t have class, I would sub — I subbed in the kindergarten, and I subbed for 12th grade — I subbed all over the place. I also was helping my old coach, Ralph Green, do some coaching at Denby and I said to myself ‘I think I’m going to take a teaching certificate,’ which led to me doing my student teaching at Pershing and Denby.”
The decision that Telford made while making the rounds as a substitute at Detroit schools led to a career as an educator, coach, department head, school administrator and more over a timespan that has now touched seven decades. For an extended period during that journey, Telford worked outside of Detroit, which included being executive director of Secondary Education for the Plymouth/Canton Schools and deputy superintendent for the Rochester Community Schools. But even during that time, Telford says his heart remained in Detroit. And by making the hiring of Black educators a priority while in those positions, Telford said he stayed true to his activist roots. But perhaps the best indicator of Telford’s passion for Detroit and education is a more recent role he has taken on as poet-in-residence for the Detroit Public Schools Community District.
“There are some of us who are teaching junkies,” Telford, who also served as interim superintendent of Detroit Public Schools during parts of 2012 and 2013, when the district was under emergency management, said. “We can’t stay out of a classroom, and we can’t stay out of coaching. That’s just what we do. And teaching has always been far more important to me than being a superintendent or a principal. My real mission has always been to get into kids’ heads and try to steer them in the right direction. As the poet-in-residence, I go around to the high schools and recite my poetry and I get a big kick out of doing that because I use my poetry to educate.”
And anyone who has come across one of Telford’s billboards in Detroit through the years, or even listened to his phone voice message, knows that the former Wayne State track All-American also is known to “educate” through community media platforms, which is what Telford was up to on Wednesday morning as he hosted “The Dr. John Telford Detroit Show” on WJZZ COOL TV. Telford’s guest was Bill Hoover Jr., a Detroit Public School League basketball historian, who also has an appreciation for Telford’s long body of work.
“Dr. Telford is remarkable about the history of track in Detroit; his knowledge is encyclopedic,” said Hoover, whose PSL basketball research has included reading Michigan Chronicle sports articles from 1936 into the 1970s, and numerous articles covering parts of the same period and beyond in the old Detroit Tribune, along with the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News. “Dr. Telford also has a champion’s heart for causes in Detroit. He’s both a legend and lightning rod, as we heard today; but always a great, great advocate for the city and people in general.”
Like Telford, Rodger Penzabene, president and CEO of WJZZ Detroit Jazz Radio Entertainment, is a crusader of sorts, who revived the call letters of the popular jazz radio station which was once heard at 105.9 FM. On Wednesday, down the hall from the studio where Telford broadcast his show within a building at 5000 Chene, Penzabene said that his vision for his “full service, global media company” transcends music and entertainment.
“WJZZ was known for educating and entertaining and that’s what we’re doing; we’re educating and edifying our listeners,” said Penzabene, whose radio station can be listened to at wjzzdetroitradio.com. His television offering, WJZZ COOL TV, can be accessed through multiple social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Twitter. Programs also are uploaded on Instagram. The 58-year-old Penzabene, who grew up in the Boston-Edison Historic District and also is the president and CEO of the Highland Park Chamber of Commerce, says today’s WJZZ is operating in a “different world,” but he believes there is definitely a place for Telford within what WJZZ wants to accomplish.
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“Dr. Telford is a pillar of Detroit, who at 87 years old has been on the front line,” Penzabene, who describes himself as a ‘hardcore’ Detroiter, said. “I know that he has had a life of fighting for education, mostly. I know — and I have verified — that is the truth about him, even to the point where he is a nuisance or an irritation to some people, and I think he enjoys being that way. To be honest, I like him being around because we practice free speech journalism, fully. Just as we allow artists to come in here and be who they are, we appreciate that Dr. Telford is outspoken while being committed to helping people.”
Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and lifelong lover of Detroit culture in all of its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at: stalley@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott's stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/.
I sent John a letter asking if he wanted to be on the mailing list for this blog.
Also mentioned that I had found an article about a meet he ran in 1961 in my hometown Dayton, Ohio. I also ran the 6 mile same day. George
Sure--put me on it, George. I recall racing three times in Dayton, but on reflection, my favorite race there isn't the one where I beat out Olympic champion Charley Jenkins for 2nd place in the NAAU after doing the same at the NCAA in Austin the week before--it's the one four years later in 1961 where after winning the 440 in slow time, I ran the second leg of the mile relay in significantly faster time to put the race out of reach for my teammates--three Detroit Public High School seniors I'd brought with me--and we beat all the collegiate and post-collegiate relay teams! I was teaching English and coaching track at Detroit Southeastern High School then for no money so I could remain amateur for a while and have a little fun still competing. - John
John Telford made the most intelligent observation of the 400 I have ever heard, comparing it to lighting a match. He said, in my words, "the first 100 is like striking a match and watching the flurry of activity. After that, the match, and the runner, fall into a steady state where they maintain their energy, preserving it rather than using it excessively." He divided the 400 into four phases: (100 #1) go out hard, use your energy, establish position, make up the stagger, (100 #2) glide the straightaway, maintain your momentum, save your energy (100 #3) get back to work because you have been relaxing for a while, put yourself in position, and (100 #4) relax, don't fight yourself, let the others tighten up, enjoy the victory.
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