Before there was No. 52 Michael Sam, there was No. 52 Jackie Walker
- Topics:
- Sports
- Gay Rights
Tennessee star, who came out as gay after 1971 season, on College Football Hall of Fame ballot
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Jackie Walker knew the routine of the dress rehearsal, as well as the routine of the football practice. He knew blousy shirts and an actor’s pose just as well as he knew how to hunch over in a linebacker’s menacing stance. He knew how to sing with grace in a tenor’s voice, and he knew how to make a less graceful noise — the “thwack!” of his pads against a ball carrier. Walker sailed comfortably in the two contrasting realms of entertainment — the theater and the gridiron — and into each endeavor he took those wide eyes, which were always ablaze with passion.
Walker was sleek and imperturbable onstage, and he was sleek like a missile on the football field and kept his poise over the taunts of opposing fans. Playing for the University of Tennessee from 1969 to 1971, he was among the early wave of black players when the Southeastern Conference was integrating. Jackie Walker was not quite Jackie Robinson, but like Robinson, Walker knew when to bow and when to bite.
At the University of Georgia, the fans threw oranges at Walker and his teammates before a game, and he let them bounce away. When the first half ended, and as the Vols were headed to the locker room at Sanford Stadium, a woman held up a sign with her son’s number and yelled at Walker, “Please don’t hurt my son,” because Walker, so restrained before the game, had become so destructive when it started.
When Jackie sang in the church choir in East Knoxville, he was almost as vibrant as he was on the football field, especially at his mother Violet’s rollicking Pentecostal service. Jackie’s eyes were as wide as a satellite dish as he sang and danced and praised with excitement. He carried the theatrics of Sunday afternoon to college, where he played Sasha in the UT production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in 1971.
Walker had the raw materials to be a splendid artist and remarkable athlete, but he was on the marquee more for football. Forty years ago people wanted to talk about that Jackie Walker, the star player.
They did not want to talk about the “other” Jackie Walker, as if he was something sinister.
The “other” Jackie Walker was gay.
Walker was an All-American linebacker in 1970 and 1971 for Tennessee — the first black All-American in Vols history. He was also the first black team captain in the Southeastern Conference, and he still shares the NCAA record for the most interceptions returned for a touchdown (five) in an era when the ball was not thrown as much as it is today.
Many of the 12,000 voters who received a ballot this week to decide on this year’s inductees to the College Football Hall of Fame do not know that No. 52 Jackie Walker came 45 years before No. 52 Michael Sam, the former Missouri linebacker who announced he was gay last month, with the NFL draft around the corner.
“I’m confident now with the news of Michael Sam and Jason Collins that my brother is going to get his just due,” said Marshall Walker, who is a social worker in Knoxville. “It’s time for him. There are still plenty of people around who remember what he did on the football field.”
Phillip Fulmer, an offensive lineman at Tennessee from 1968 to 1971 and national championship coach in 1998, is one of them.
“Certainly he should be considered because of his great play in college,” said Fulmer, who was part of Jackie Walker's freshman class and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2013.
Tim Priest, a defensive back who played with Walker and is now a Knoxville attorney and radio analyst on Tennessee football broadcasts, seconds the vote.
“He was too good not to make it to the College Football Hall of Fame,” Priest said. “He could just glide when he ran, and he could hit. He was an amazing player.”
Jackie Walker died of AIDS in 2002. His legacy is showing flecks of gray, and before it is shut away, his family, friends and teammates want him to have the final gift of sustained glory. They want him in the College Football Hall of Fame.
A typical Hall of Fame class includes about 20 players, meaning Walker will face some stiff competition this year. The ballot includes familiar names, including former Michigan State wide receiver turned baseball star and manager Kirk Gibson; TCU tailback LaDainian Tomlinson; Texas running back Ricky Williams; Miami defensive tackle Warren Sapp; Colorado tailback Rashaan Salaam; and Cal linebacker and now Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera.
Walker’s name on the ballot comes the same year as the planned August opening of the new $65 million College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. The new hall is 7 miles away from the Decatur hospital where Walker died on Dec. 5, 2002. In the weeks before he lapsed into a coma, Marshall Walker pledged to his brother that he would work to keep his story alive.
“There are plenty of great college players who did not succeed in the NFL,” Marshall said. “Who knows why he didn’t make it? The 49ers wanted him to move from linebacker to strong safety. Maybe they gave up on him too soon.
“Maybe the 49ers found out he was gay and didn’t want him around. That’s no reason to keep him out of the Hall of Fame.”
Priest, another teammate and a coach said they had no idea Walker was gay until after he finished playing football at Tennessee.
Priest said he started to hear from people who knew Jackie that his teammate was out of the closet in the spring of 1972. Lon Herzbrun, who coached Walker in high school and then in college, said it caught him by surprise when he found out, but ultimately decided it was no one’s business.
A few years after leaving school, Priest said he was talking to a teammate of his and Walker’s who dressed in the locker next to Walker.
“He said to me, ‘My goodness, all those years in the locker room. I had no idea,’” Priest said. “I saw him late in the spring of 1972 when we were playing paddleball one afternoon and I waved to him. He looked different, and I think by that time people knew he was out. Then he just disappeared from Knoxville.”
Marshall Walker said he discovered by accident early in 1972. Marshall was on the Tennessee campus, walking up to Jackie and Jackie’s then-girlfriend, Melanie, when she abruptly ran away in tears.
“I said, ‘Jackie, what’s wrong with Melanie?’” Marshall recalled. “Jackie said, ‘I told her I was gay.’”
“I didn’t think nothing of it,” Marshall said. “This was my brother. The thing about it is that Melanie has remained a friend of our family all these years.”
Walker left UT in the spring of 1972, a sixth-round draft pick of the 49ers. At 188 pounds, he was undersized to play linebacker in the NFL, and the 49ers wanted to move him farther from the line of scrimmage. He was the last cut in training camp, his brother said, and he then tried out for the Washington Redskins. He was cut again.
“I met him in 1976, and he wasn’t bitter then that he didn’t continue in football,” said Daw-U Smith, one of Walker’s closest friends in Atlanta. “He would tell me he was a ‘tweener’ — too small for linebacker and not quite good enough in coverage.
“But you should have seen him play tennis. What a forehand and overhead shot he had.”
Smith said Walker did not trumpet his All-American success at Tennessee, which might be one of the reasons his lore there faded. Many former players make triumphant returns to campus, but Walker just melted away. Perhaps he knew he would make people uneasy, because by the time he left UT in the spring of 1972 many knew of his sexuality.
“He loved UT,” Marshall Walker said. “He had a great time there, that’s what he told me. I have never heard people over there at UT say a bad word about him. I don’t know for sure that years ago they were blocking him from making the Hall of Fame because he was gay. But since 2006 the support from UT has been positive.”
At first, it was up to Marshall and then his sister Rosiland to make the case for their brother. With the help of teammates, Marshall flung open the doors for Jackie to the Greater Knoxville Hall of Fame in 2008, then the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2011.
There is still one hall to go.
“I coached Steve Kiner and Hacksaw Reynolds, and both of those linebackers are in the Hall of Fame,” said Herzbrun. “Jackie was as good as they were. Jackie is the only defensive player I ever saw stalemate Chip Kell, who was a great offensive lineman, and Chip is in the Hall of Fame.”
Jackie Walker, who would be 63 years old today, sang at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes convention. He sang the school song at the Fulton High School graduation at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium and Coliseum. He earned a degree from Georgia State University in public and urban affairs, which is another consideration for inclusion into the Hall of Fame — he finished college. He could talk about anything from politics and race to the X’s and O’s of football.
“We used to go out on my boat on Sundays, me and some of my players,” Herzbrun said. “Jackie went along. We talked about everything but football. He enjoyed talking about things other than football. This was your Renaissance man.”
Norman Walker, his father, was a janitor at the high school and was called the “Sunday School superintendent” for his devotion to Sunday services. Violet Walker, Jackie’s mother, was a seamstress who made sure her five children were “shining” when they went out the front door. Norman and Violet divorced when Jackie was 3. Norman and his parents raised Jackie, his brother and three sisters in a modest wood-frame house on South Elmwood Street in East Knoxville, but they visited with their mother often.
Even after neighbors and friends learned Jackie was gay, they would flock to that house when he came back to town. The porch would be filled with friends and neighbors, and they would share stories of the neighborhood and of Jackie as a star at Fulton High and Tennessee. They said that when Violet was killed in a car accident in 2002, and after Jackie sang at her funeral, he gave up his fight against the complications brought by AIDS and was ready to go. The church where they held his service was standing room only.
But before his life was cut short, Walker touched and inspired those around him.
Daw-U Smith was a struggling artist in 1976 when he met Walker at Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. They were working for the Atlanta Parks and Recreation Department as attendants at a tennis court, and Smith remembers showing Walker some of his pencil sketches and other work.
“He inspired me, he helped me get back into my art,” Smith said. “Jackie gave me confidence. I’m dyslexic, and Jackie helped me fill out applications and get some help. He was a strong man. My children still refer to him as Uncle Jackie.”
Rosiland and Marshall Walker said they are not sure how long their brother was walking a tightrope in college: playing the part of an exalted athlete by day, but a closeted gay man by night. They imagine he was still figuring out who he was for the first years of college. Rosiland suspected her brother was gay, but he had girlfriends and she was not about to pry.
She didn’t care one way or another but is thankful he was discreet.
“Oh, my goodness, they wanted to intimidate my brother when he played for Tennessee,” Rosiland said. “He was one of the first black players out there. Can you imagine how those Alabama boys would have tried to hurt him if they knew he was gay? Oh, my word!
“But after a while I stopped worrying about him, because he could run and they couldn’t catch him.”
Marshall has been knocking the dust off the legacy of his brother, making it shine just as their mother Violet Walker made her children shine.
He and Jackie’s teammates tell stories, mostly football stories, because this is all about football and recognizing achievement, gay or straight.
Jamie Rotella
Jackie Walker's teammate at Tennessee
Jamie Rotella, an All-American linebacker who played with Walker at Tennessee, recalled Walker was such a feared hitter that legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant designed a post-and-chop blocking scheme for Walker in 1971. Post-and-chop is common with two blockers, but Bryant used three blockers on some plays against Walker. It was diabolical, but necessary. One blocker would hit Walker head on to stand him up, two more would come — one from the left, one from the right — and neutralize him.
“We had designed a defense for Alabama for Jackie to run free and use his speed and then they came up with this illegal chop-blocking scheme and ran right at him,” Rotella said. “It was the first time I saw Jackie hurt. I knew he had a concussion, but he didn’t come out of the game. He was giving away 100 pounds to each blocker. He had a good game by anybody else’s standards, but not a Jackie game.
“He is the toughest man I ever knew.”
Herzbrun recalled Jackie’s intimidating presence.
“You could see the look of the offensive guys when Jackie was out there, they didn’t want to face him one-on-one,” he said. “Jackie had timing on his tackles. His power would come straight up through his legs into his hips and he would unlock those hips at just the right moment and just explode into a ball carrier.”
Walker was a hitter, but he also had some flamboyance on the field. Tim Priest still remembers Walker’s catcher’s mitt hands engulfing the laces of the leather football and gliding down the field with the ball outstretched from his body, practically daring an opposing player to swipe it away. But they never could because Walker was as fast as running backs and wide receivers in his day.
Regardless of whether the College Football Hall of Fame calls his name, Walker’s friends, family and teammates carry no bitterness on his behalf because he carried none himself.
Smith recalled that rather than have his family worry over him when Walker learned he was HIV positive, he started traveling. He went to France and Ghana in the late 1990s, wanting to spare his family the anguish of seeing a majestic body start to fail. He did not want them rushing to Atlanta every weekend.
“There are four or five people in your life you feel blessed you met and Jackie is one of them for me,” Smith said. “To him, his life wasn’t about being an All-American or being gay. It was about being human. Jackie was a good human.”
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