Billy Jones reflects on breaking ACC's color barrier in basketball
On occasion, Billy Jones' granddaughter reminds him of what he'd as soon forget.
"Pop-Pop, you are old," Cleo Pounds will say. That's Jones' cue to dig out his scrapbooks, curl up on the sofa and regale the 8-year-old with sporting tales of yore — from the time he led Towson High to a state basketball championship in 1963 to his college days at Maryland to his run as men's basketball coach at UMBC.
"Because I'm a senior, my grandchildren struggle imagining me to be very active," said Jones, 67, who lives in Orlando, Fla. "They love hearing stories, and I love sharing them. It's important that they know their history."
Grandpa wasn't just any player. When he signed with the Terps 50 years ago Monday, Jones became the first African-American to earn a basketball scholarship in the Atlantic Coast Conference. A year later, on Dec. 1, 1965, he broke the league's color barrier by playing in a game at Penn State. Three days after that, the 6-foot-1 Jones scored his first basket on a running layup in a victory over Wake Forest as 11,300 fans in Cole Field House — then the largest crowd ever for a Maryland home opener — saw history made.
Off the court, he faced blatant racism on trips down Tobacco Road. More than once, the Terps walked out of hotels and restaurants that refused Jones service.
"One night we were to take a late train home from Durham, [N.C.], after a game at Duke," teammate Gary Williams remembered. "At the station, we all piled into the snack bar to eat before boarding. But when they wouldn't serve Billy, we all left."
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