Documentarian urges DSU to rename arena for Lusia Harris-Stewart

Ben Proudfoot immortalized former Delta State University star basketball player Lusia "Lucy" Harris-Stewart with an Academy Award winning documentary in 2021 named the Queen of Basketball.

Mrs. Stewart died in January of 2022 just before the Academy Award presentations.

All along, Proudfoot has been urging officials with the university to rename its basketball arena in her name to replace the name of segregationist politician Walter Sillers. The office building of the governor of Mississippi on High Street in Jackson is also named for the longtime legislator.

On Thursday, Proudfoot published an op-ed in the New York Times that lays out how the university has rebuffed all of his attempts to help in the process.

Harris-Stewart led the Lady Statesmen to three consecutive national championships in the 1970s and went on to win a silver medal in the 1976 Montreal Olympics where she has the distinction of scoring first points in the history of Olympic women's basketball.

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She is still generally considered one of the best three or four best athletes ever to play women's basketball in the United States, and she is a member of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as well as the Delta State Hall of Fame and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. She also was drafted by the NBA's New Orleans Jazz. However, she declined the opportunity to play with the franchise.

There is a statue of her coach, Margaret Wade, in front of the arena, and the court that is played on is named for another legendary coach at DSU, Lloyd Clark, who led DSU to another three women's national championships at the NCAA Division II level in the 1980s and 1990s.

Proudfoot has offered to have the Oscar, awarded him for the documentary, be permanently displayed in the Cleveland basketball arena if the facility is renamed for her.

However, the building is still named for Walter Sillers, from Rosedale, who as a Mississippi legislator, fought vehemently against integration in every form his entire career. Yet, as Proudfoot pointed out in his op-ed, it was Harris-Stewart, the 6-foot-3, Black, All America center from Minter City, that put the school and the arena on the map by leading the way to victories against LSU, Tennessee, UCLA, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, the Chinese National Team and any number of other schools that dared to take on the Lady Statesmen during that time frame.

During that three-season span, Delta State's women were 93-4 with Harris-Stewart averaging 26 points and 15 rebounds a game. She also happened to be voted the school's first Black homecoming queen in 1976.

"Perhaps a Black woman was simply too inconvenient and incongruous a hero to the white men who have led Delta State University for the last half-century," Proudfoot said in the op-ed.

After initial conversations with former DSU president William LaForge, according to Proudfoot, the president eventually declined any further conversations on the matter, "citing internal naming procedures that are the province of the university."

According to the op-ed, a month later, the university named a campus recreation area after a graduating senior who had been student government president.

However, since LaForge left the office of president during the summer of 2022, he has been publicly vocal and through Twitter that he is very much for the facility being renamed for Harris-Stewart.

"He never said that to me," Proudfoot said.

When contacted Thursday, interim president Butch Caston responded to the op-ed with a statement saying, "The position of the university for the remainder of my time as interim president is that Delta State will not actively involve itself in the naming or renaming of any facilities. Recent naming ceremonies held on campus were a result of formal decisions made by the previous President and University's Cabinet. It is my position that other naming or renaming matters will be addressed by the incoming permanent president."

In a conversation with Proudfoot Thursday, the documentarian said that he has done everything he can to help the process and believes that renaming the arena to Lusia Harris Coliseum is the right thing to do.

"Make the most of it," Proudfoot said in the interview. "Good leadership would capture this positive momentum of wanting to celebrate Delta State's most distinguished alumni and that positive energy and not that negative energy to the university. I want to lift up Delta State University. I want to lift up Lusia's story, but there needs to be cooperation and recognition that there has been an oversight and it needs to be corrected."

Proudfoot says his offer still stands to have the Oscar prominently displayed indefinitely in the arena if the facility is renamed.

Maybe the trophy can sit next to the Margaret Wade Trophy, awarded to the nation's best women's college basketball player every year, which is displayed in the center of the lobby area at Walter Sillers Coliseum.

"It's just time, you know?" Proudfoot said. "I think it could bring a lot of pride and positivity to the university, which is scrambling for enrollment and a story to tell. Delta State produced a global phenomenon in Lusia Harris. Its survival depends on its ability to inspire and attract students. What better thing could it do than lift up and celebrate one of its most distinguished alumni. There could not be a better marketing opportunity for the university."

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Should Delta State strip segregationist name from basketball arena