If you're looking for explosive charges of racism levied against the NFL, a major university, and just about everyone else in America, you've come to the right place.
Well, his son, Dick Jr., was none too pleased. He wrote to us about his father's story last year, soon after
our piece was published. He wrote to us again this week, as you'll see below, and finally agreed to let us publish his letter. (We normally reserve the right to publish any correspondence sent to us, but because of Leftridge Jr.'s original wishes to not publish the letter, we sought permission.)
Essentially, Leftridge Jr. refutes our statement that his dad, as has been widely reported in many places, was forced out of the league because he couldn't keep himself in shape.
Instead, writes his son, Leftridge, who was black, was treated like a third-class citizen because of the color of his skin. The letter is not totally one-sided: it also touches on Leftridge's jail sentence following his time as "a fairly big drug dealer." So the guy apparently brought on some trouble.
In any case, not sure what to make of it all. Leftridge could be a guy who truly got a raw deal from society. Or he could be a guy who caused his own world of trouble. We don't know. But read the letter and decide for yourself. If our story was wrong, we at least owe the other side of the story.
The letter closes with references to a divine miracle.
Like we said, it's pretty interesting. Might even make for some sort of made-for-TV special. Everything from here on out is directly in the words of Leftridge Jr.
***
August 12, 2008
Cold and Hard,
My father, Dick Leftridge, is the first African American to receive a scholarship to play major college sports in the entire segregated (Jim Crow) south by attending West Virginia University on a football scholarship in 1962. WVU was in the Southern Conference at that time.
This also makes him the first African American to play major college sports below the Mason Dixon Line. He remains the highest NFL draft choice in WVU's history, drafted third overall (first running back) of the 1966 draft by the Steelers. However, these achievements are not acknowledged at WVU. He is not in the West Virginia University Hall of Fame, and wasn't officially considered until after his death February 27, 2004, and he lived right there in Morgantown for over 30 years.
My father grew up poor in southern West Virginia, where he was the seventh of nine children born to a railroader father and a numbers-running, bootlegging, pistol-carrying mother. He was in the street dating grown women, fighting, drinking and gambling with grown men by age 14. He was also being paid by local white sports boosters for his athletic abilities by this time as well.
My father's first choice was not West Virginia University, but Ohio State University. He was heavily recruited by legendary OSU football coach Woody Hayes who warned my father against going to WVU. However, due to pressure from area athletic boosters, coaches, and even the West Virginia governor at the time to attend WVU to break the color barrier there, he chose the Mountaineers.
The governor dubbed my father a West Virginia natural resource and West Virginia University, fully aware of his family's financial status, offered to pay him and take care of his every need, which they did. The local NAACP in West Virginia also expressed how they wanted my father, a black West Virginian, to be the one to break the color barrier at the state's main university.
My father attended West Virginia in the middle of the turbulent civil unrest of the 1960s. Just as he was entering college, 48 federal troops were needed to maintain order in Oxford, Mississippi, when James Meredith became the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi. The now infamous Bull Connor was hosing down black people in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and two years after that, in 1965, rioting in Watts left 35 dead and more than $200 hundred million in damages. Vietnam was in full swing too, with a disproportionate number of African Americans being sent off to war.
My father was not the type of person to organize a protest on the courthouse square, but he did have a huge presence in his own way. My father basically did whatever it was he wanted to do; which was no more than any one else was doing at the time, regardless of their race, creed or color.
He attended segregated bars, restaurants and movies and would accompany (escort) other blacks who wished to attend them as well. He would physically fight for any blacks on campus or in town that were racially mistreated in any way; blacks did not go out at night in downtown Morgantown before my father arrived. Also, and of the utmost importance, he openly dated white coeds by the score - some of whom the university would expel for their relationship with him.
The university would eventually, and illegally, expel my father from school too. They did so the Monday after his last football game that Saturday, in the middle of the semester his senior year; immediately after his football eligibility had expired.
As I previously stated, my father was the first choice of the Steelers in the 1966 NFL draft. He was taken to the Steelers office right before the draft by two of his boosters at WVU whom he trusted, one of which was his agent. In this meeting, the WVU boosters and a very high-ranking Steelers official lied to my father to sign him.
They falsely told him that the Steelers had drafted him in the 5th round and then signed him to a contract right there, cheating him out of thousands of dollars. One of the boosters with my father got a job in the NFL as a referee the same year. My father didn't know he had been a first-round choice until he read it in the newspaper the next day.
My father never recovered from this and subsequently lost a lot of interest in trying to excel at his craft. The Steelers coach at the time would privately tell my father on several occasions that he was not going to play him if he did not stop dating white women. My father would tell him that he was a football player and not a slave, and that he would date whomever he pleased. The coach never really played my father and spread a lie throughout the media and the NFL that it was due to my father being grossly overweight; a lie that still exists about my father to this day.
After leaving the NFL, my father went to Orlando to play semi-pro ball. He was invited there by the coach of the Orlando team who had been a scout for the Steelers. He stated that he knew how the Steelers never let him play. My father excelled in Florida and after practice one day he was called to the coach's office where the coach was on the phone with the same high ranking Steelers official.
The Orlando coach was telling the Pittsburgh official how the Steelers were crazy for letting my father go and how he was the best fullback he had ever seen. The Steelers official asked to speak with my father. He told my father how the Steelers were going to fire the coach and asked my father if he would return to Pittsburgh. Among other things, my father told him "hell no." My father explained to the official that he should have helped him when he was there. It has been said that this conversation resulted in my father being blacklisted from the NFL.
Upon his return home to West Virginia after football, my father was unable to obtain gainful employment anywhere in the state. Even with all the people he knew, and he knew people all the way up to the governor and even with all he had accomplished for and in the state, he couldn't get a decent job. He eventually went to Detroit, Michigan to work in the automobile industry (1969). He went to live with an uncle who turned out to be a drug dealer that would rival any seen on the "American Gangster" series.
My father started out working in the automobile industry but ended up working for his uncle in the drug business. He was from the streets and had always been attracted to the street and the action. This time in Detroit would have a significant affect on his life.
After three years in Detroit my father returned to West Virginia and unemployment again. He eventually became a fairly big drug dealer himself which resulted in a five-year federal prison sentence (1987). While my father was incarcerated, my mother was being harassed on her WVU job in the office of social justice of all places.
She was being administratively passed over for promotions and ordered to perform duties well below her job status. She was ostracized and they would secretly and routinely place Oreo Cookies and Peppermint Patties on her desk which had been moved to the very back of the office and much, much more. My mother would have a car accident and as a result three doctors deemed her physically unable to work – her WVU boss fired her anyway. My family sued WVU over this (1996).
Most of the jury worked at the same bank that WVU banked with. The WVU president at the time, who was named in our law suit, had been on the board of that bank, and his wife was on the board of that bank at the time of the trial. To make a long story short, it was a travesty – but thank God it is all on record.
We attempted to appeal this case and the Morgantown court house claimed to have lost the transcripts for two years. Then the lawyer (a new one) didn't file the appeal and simply let the statute of limitations run out on it. Meanwhile, my father's health continued to decline and his treatment and care at local hospitals (in Morgantown) was atrocious.
We attempted to sue the hospitals as well, but every lawyer we hired for anything in West Virginia would sell us out and not properly represent us, and it ended up being about seven lawyers in all. Judges, federal judges, would simply throw cases out. One had my father removed from the court room because he wore darkly tinted prescription glasses without which he could barely see.
My sister was severely beaten up by female federal street informants (1997). During this assault, one of their boyfriends kicked her in the head and as a result she has neurological problems even to this day (openly talks to herself - etc).
My brother was beaten up by black WVU football players. He was also targeted by federal street informants and jailed on drug charges. Sheriff Deputies illegally entered my parent's home twice in a 24-hour period. The first time they pointed a gun at my mother's head and dared my severely ill father to move and nothing could be done about any of this. In the middle of it all, God showed up in our defense in a way that thousands can attest to; I'm talking about a real-life, provable example of divine intervention, but even that didn't stop them. And there is so very, very much more.
Now, get my father off your list!!!
(The photo of Dick Leftridge at right comes 
