Minium: Former Basketball and Baseball Star Buttons Speakes was ODU’S Jackie Robinson

NORFOLK, Va. – When Arthur “Buttons” Speakes was a kid growing up in Huntington, West Virginia, Jackie Robinson came to town to speak to an NAACP meeting.
 
Buttons’ mother took him to meet Robinson, who integrated Major League Baseball in 1947 when he played for the Brooklyn, Dodgers and endured all kinds of racially charged taunts.
 
Brooklyn owner Branch Rickey had studied Robinson’s background and knew he had the self-control and baseball talent to survive the abuse that awaited him and win fans over with his playing skills.
 
A few years later, when Speakes enrolled at Old Dominion College, as the University was known in 1965, he said he didn’t think of himself as ODU’s Jackson Robinson.
 
Even 57 years later, he still doesn’t. “I just came to Old Dominion to play ball and get my education,” he said.

But his life story illustrates that he was ODU’s Jackie Robinson.

 

Speakes was the first African American basketball player to receive a scholarship to a predominantly white college or university in Virginia. When he enrolled at ODC in 1965, he was also the school’s first African American athlete.

 

He said students didn’t greet him with open arms, but said he rarely felt discriminated against. That’s significant given the times. State officials had ordered Norfolk’s schools to close rather than integrate just six years earlier. All of Hampton Roads was then largely segregated.

Buttons Speakes was ODU’s first black athlete.  

ODC was then a small college with two dormitories – Rogers and Gresham halls opened in 1964 – and just a handful of academic buildings. There were only a handful of Black students.

 

“I never had any confrontations on campus,” Buttons said. “Maybe it was the way I carried myself. But I didn’t have any issues.”

 

It didn’t hurt that he was a phenomenal basketball and baseball player, and when time allowed, he also did the high jump for Lou Plummer’s  track team. He quickly became a fan favorite.

 

Speakes was recruited by first-year basketball head coach Sonny Allen and like the Dodgers, Allen also chose well.

 

In an interview before his death, Sonny Allen said he signed Speakes because he got to know him while coaching the freshman team at Marshall University, also located in Huntington.

 

“I knew it would take someone with great character who was also a very good basketball player to be the first Black player at Old Dominion,” Allen said.

 

And Speakes was very good. Although he was a point guard, he scored 1,004 points in his three seasons, 49^th among all ODU players. He also dished out 370 assists, 15^th best in school history. Who knows where he would have finished had he been able to play as a freshman. At the time, freshmen were ineligible to play varsity athletics.

 

Dave Twardzik, who would become an All-American at ODU and would win an NBA title as point guard for the Portland Trailblazers, was a member of the freshman team when Speakes was a senior.

Bob Pritchett (second from left) and Buttons Speakes (third from right) were ODU’s first two Black basketball players. 

“On many occasions we would practice against the varsity,” Twardzik said. “He was one of the toughest guys I ever played against at any level.

 

“He was fearless. He was physical and he loved to play defense. And he gave it to you the entire time he was on the floor. He never took a day off. He was one tough SOB.”

 

His sophomore year he was joined by Bob Pritchett, a Black junior college transfer who would average 23.8 points per game in his two seasons. They were roommates and watched each other’s backs.

 

ODC’s 1967-68 team was among the highest scoring in the nation. The Monarchs averaged 98.2 points and crushed Richmond Professional Institute, as VCU was then known, 152-110, in the University’s highest-scoring game ever. Pritchett scored 67 points in that game, played at the old Norfolk Arena, the most in school history.

 

Old Dominion became a university in Speakes’ senior year, and by then, the athletic program and University were both growing. The Monarchs were playing Division I schools – they defeated East Carolina, Navy, VMI and William & Mary during Speakes’ three seasons – and went to their first NCAA Division II Tournament.

They led Georgia late in a game in Athens, Georgia, before succumbing in the late minutes. Speakes recalls the local media making fun of little-known Old Dominion, but the newspaper stories the day after acknowledged the Monarchs had given the Bulldogs a scare.

 

Road trips were often difficult. While playing on the freshman team, he was forced to sleep in the gym during a road game because the local hotels would not take Black players.

 

ODU’s first game against a Division I team – at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina – was among the most difficult. When Allen scheduled the game, he didn’t tell Citadel officials he had two Black players.

 

Once officials learned, they had state troopers surround the court and the gym to prevent any violence.

Speakes said that he and Pritchett heard every racial epitaph known to mankind from fans and the student body. Allen later called the 78-70 victory over The Citadel “one of the most satisfying of my career.”

 

When the Monarchs looked for restaurants on the road, Allen would walk in alone and ask if African Americans could eat there. If not, he turned around and the team looked for another place.

Buttons Speakes was safe stealing second base in this game against Hampden-Sydney at Larchmont School field.  

“Sonny always said that if we couldn’t go in, nobody could go in,” Pritchett said.

 

Speakes said he has a searing memory of a game at Mount St. Mary’s.

 

“We heard a slew of racial slurs,” Speakes said. “They really got on us. It was a tough night.”

 

The irony is that Freddy “Mad Dog” Carter played for the Mountaineers. Carter, who is Black, went on to a long NBA career.

 

As he was walking off the court following ODC’s 75-74 victory, Speakes recalls Carter coming over to apologize.

 

“You know, we didn’t let it bother us,” Speakes said. “We just played. Most of that stuff, we just kicked to the side. We were there to play.”

 

Allen was the only coach to offer Speakes a scholarship and says that was plenty of incentive to hold his temper.

 

“When I came to ODU, my first priority was to get an education,” he said. “I couldn’t mess it up. My family couldn’t afford to send me to college.

At a time when freshmen weren’t eligible, Buttons Speakes played on ODU’s freshman basketball team in 1966-67. 

 

“I was going to do whatever I had to do to get that degree.”

Speakes played baseball for Bud Metheny, who was also athletic director and had only recently relinquished coaching the basketball team. Metheny hired Allen, who took the job on one condition — that he could recruit Black players.

Old Dominion opened the spigot with Speakes and Pritchett and soon basketball around the commonwealth was integrated.

 

Speakes coached football at Norfolk Catholic briefly after graduating, and then returned to Huntington and later to Toledo, Ohio to coach and teach. 

 

He eventually began selling medical equipment for Pfizer, where he worked 25 years before going to Carmax, where he worked in finance for 18 more.  

 

Speakes, who is 75, lives in Woodstock, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb. Although he hasn’t been back to Norfolk in a while, he says he’s proud of the in the kind of university that ODU has become.

 

ODU is best known for its STEM-H programs – science, technology, engineering, math and health sciences. But it is also among the most diverse institutions in America and focuses on educating first-gen students, those from families with no college graduates.

 

“It’s great what ODU has become because when I was there, we didn’t have anything,” he said.

 

“We all said that one day this university is going to be all that and now it is.

 

“I had a good experience at Old Dominion. Coming in with Sonny and playing the ball we did, we wanted to put ourselves on the map.

 

“And we did.”

 

 Contact Minium at hminium@odu.edu or follow him  on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram