My name is John Edward Blackshear Sr. I have a son that’s 25 years old... I live in Minneapolis, work here on campus at the University of Minnesota in the athletic department. I’m the head equipment managers, manager, for men’s track, cross country, softball, women’s soccer, and uh both men’s and women’s gymnastics. This is my 37th year on the campus, I am a graduate of the University of Minnesota, so I am actually working in the same room as I did as a student. I came here to go to school, ahhh I was originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Ummm… I went to a high school in St. Louis. It was called Charles Sumner High. It is actually the oldest all black high school west of the Mississippi, when college football coaches would come in and would recruit classmates of mine, we only had 3 coaches. One coached offense, one coached defense, and the other guy kinda helped both. So they didn’t have time to talk to college recruiters, so they would turn them over to me, cause I was the team student manager and student trainer. So, I got to meet college coaches and one… I was supposed to go to the University of Missouri as an athletic trainer umm that kinda fell through and as that was falling through I met a coach who at the time was at the University of Colorado, he asked me to come there to work for football, I said no. He was cleaning out his desk, as he had just taken a job here at the University of Minnesota and he said I’d give you another call just to see what’s going on, and I said yeah I’ll come there. I didn’t know… where it was located, what conference it played in, or anything like that, I just said yes. Cause I wanted to go to college.
“Being in a large family…”
...I have four brothers and four sisters. My parents were married, until my dad died, for 58 years. He had an 8th grade education, my mother had one year of community college I think. And they were very big on discipline and education, and holding us accountable. As you know I hold [you guys] accountable on a daily basis. So, that is a big thing that shaped me. You know, like I said they had 9 children, and none of us [had] any uhh criminal, legal issues. Most of us are teachers or working in education ourselves, or coaches, or whatnot. Brother whose a principle, had a sister who’s the dean of, the assistant to the dean of students at St. Louis University. So, ummm it was just the way I was raised, or not. We call it the family, when he got hired, I called it the family curse, I said ‘the family curse has bit your nephew, he’s working in education’. I just think it’s the fact when we were young, we were the neighborhood house. So, there was always somebody else’s kids at our house, either playing games or eating, or hanging out, watching t.v. or helping around the house. There’s, they were kids who walk up, and my mother died last October, my dad past 6 years ago, but they were, until the day my mother died, there was other kids who, who weren’t my brothers and sisters who would walk and call ‘em mom. And then call their parents by their first name, but they’d call my mother mom or mama just like we did, and umm I think it was just the fact that there was always kids around the house, and as you got older your youngest sibling’s friends were around the house so there was always young kids, and as you got even older then your nieces and nephews and their friends were around the house. There was just always youth and young people and people to ya know keep one, to always keep an eye on, keep safe, educate, whatnot. It was always apart of your life and ya know to this day, even you guys I try to give life lessons to. You don’t catch most of ‘em but I even try to give you guys life lessons ya know things that can carry you through and on. It was just, again, it was just the way we were raised and we don’t even think about we catch each other doing it every once in awhile and we’ll laugh about it. But we’ll never change, that’s how we are.
“They always knew I would do something in sports”
The clearest thing I remember, I growing up, my favorite team growing up, I had two, was the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals, and the St. Louis Blues, which is a St. Louis hockey team. And uhh… I remember the first time seeing hockey on t.v., fell in love with it, I was 6 years old. My dad was just happened to be watching it in the living room. I think he was just watching it ‘cause it was just something on. And I came in and I said ‘what’s that?’ and he said ‘hockey’ and I just sat down and was mesmerized by what I was, ya know. The guys skating back and forth, the flow. That Christmas I got a hockey stick, ‘cause I was always shooting tennis balls with a broom in the house, so my parents finally bought me a hockey stick. I didn’t know that I could ice skate until, I actually, until I came to school here. Because I never ice skated, I had played roller hockey which we played down there, but I didn’t know if I could ice-skate or not until the first time I put a pair of skates on, and I didn’t fall down so I said ‘huh, ok maybe I could do this’ but, umm... Yes, my family, all, always knew that I would do something in sports. They didn’t know what, they didn’t know if I’d be an athletic director in high school, or college, or if I’d be a trainer, or an equipment person, or be a coach, but they always knew that I would be doing something.
“I lived by the mantra: you can’t let the bastard win”
...little bit more history for you. I was the first black student trainer on campus. I was also the first black student manager on campus. I did both my first year here. I worked in athletic medicine… I didn’t think about it when I was going through it, but after I got through it, and you know a lot of my, some of my friends to this day are guys that worked in those areas and they talked about how ‘hey, you were the first black guy and we never…’ ya know they never treated me any differently. But, they they were like ‘wow’ this is ya know this is something different for them too. Now I did face things like…I also was the first black student on campus to win an intramural hockey champ, ice hockey championship umm that was like in ‘82 or ‘83 and the team that we played on was mostly students that worked in here or student trainers or worked in the building somewhere, and umm I came across a incident with a fraternity guy from, back then. I know you see some intermingling of races among fraternities and sororities of all colors now but back then they were pretty much ya know black fraternity, white fraternity and this kid called me a nigger, and position I play is goalie and you know one of the things goalies are very protective and have heavy equipment and I took what is called the blocker, the waffle pad, and dropped him, and kid looked at me and asked ‘why?’ and I just looked down at him said ‘you know why’ and went about playing, continued to play the game. Ya know, so… uh those things are there. I lived by the mantra: you can’t let the bastard win. Meaning you can’t let somebody’s ignorant attitude affect you to the point that it throws you off of what you’re here to accomplish and umm… I’ve even gone back and coached, I coached youth hockey and high school hockey for 15 years in Minneapolis and I’ve come across young African-American males and they’ve gone through the same thing, and they’ve asked me how did I handle it and I just told them the same mantra, don’t let the bastard win… Don’t uh ya know don’t get caught up in their mess, play your game, put the puck in the net, point at the scoreboard, sit right down and celebrate with your teammates ya know. You never let anybody take that away from you, ya know cause that’s all they’re trying to do to ya anyway is to take you off your course of whatever path you’re trying to achieve. Don’t allow, and I’ll tell that to anybody, don’t allow anybody take you off course, just keep going to where you’re going and get there.
“...because he was one of the first people to say ‘he’s one of us…”
...Roy Griak who just passed, had a profound affect on me. When I first came here I had I had a trunk that parents had just bought me, an army surplus duffel bag that had all my stuff in it, and… a few dollars that my parents had given me, and a pair of high top can-canvas converses that had holes on the side, and it’s not like the world you see now in athletics where all this stuff is here, umm… Yes, we did things for the athletes, but nothing like this and back then the football players only got shoes to play football in, so it be turf shoes or their grass shoes and that was it. They left it in turf shoes. Ya know, umm, so they really didn’t have anything to give me except for, well, one of the supervisors here at the time, a guy named Dick Madison, said ‘well when the track shoes, running shoes come in…’ and back then it was the old Nike Cortez's, I’ll never forget the name of em, was the running shoe of the- of the day, he said ‘when the running shoes come in we’ll ask Coach Griak if he could-if you could have a pair of shoes’. So, they finally, like 3, 4 weeks ya know I’m out at football practice with these holey shoes and ya know or maybe I’ve weared turf shoes out there or something, and shoes finally came in. Maddy as we called him, went to Harry, Harry was like one of the second in commands here, he head men’s track. Harry was an African-American man here, he was here for 35 years. When he finished he was the head equipment guy for hockey. And Harry said ‘let me talk to Roy, to see if I can if Roy would let him have a pair’. Well coach happened to just be coming down as the whole conversation was going on, and Harry asked him, and Harry- and uh Coach looked at everybody and said ‘It’s one of our kids right?’ and they said ‘yeah’ and he said ‘what the F you people are asking me for? take care of that kid! Let’s go, he’s one of ours’ and never forgot that. He didn’t know that, cause I never reminded him, but when it came time for staff to get there stuff I always made sure it was stuff for him… Because he was one of the first people to say ‘he’s one of us, let’s take care of em, let’s make sure, you know, that he’s okay’. So… ya know, what more can you say about somebody like him. He was a wonderful man….
“Just a plain simple fact that humans are by nature good or bad”
[Minnesota] made me see people as people. St. Louis is a very, very segregated city…. I mean very segregated, I was a little bit lucky that I grew up Catholic. So, I knew priests and nuns and what not, but umm… I had friends growing up who had no outside of maybe some authority figure at a school or something, had no interaction with people of other races. And umm, and even with mines, mines was pretty limited, but coming here umm meeting coaches, athletes, equipment people, trainers, other students, really taught me that people were people no matter what race, religion, whatever. Some were good, some were bad in each walk of life. You know some, there’s some good, some bad no matter what group you look into, because they’re human. Just a plain simple fact that humans are by nature good or bad.
Image Sources:
- Blackshear Sr., John. Family Photograph, a surprise for his 50th birthday at the University of Illinois for a Gopher game. Provided October 8, 2015.
- Blackshear Sr., John. His Championship Rings for Men’s gold and Women’s Soccer. Provided October 8, 2015.
Story Facilitators:
Azahar Mohamed, Precious Fondren, and Eric Walker
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