UNC finally has a Black head coach in a major sport. Dean Smith would have been proud

Charles Scott, the first Black scholarship player to integrate the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team, recalled a New York Times reporter telling the story that summed up the impossible position he was in at UNC.

The reporter walked into a barbershop where one white patron spoke glowingly of Scott and upheld him as a basketball god one week when the Tar Heels beat Davidson. The next week, after losing to Purdue in the 1969 Final Four, the same person said, “it just shows (n-word) fold under pressure.”

Scott operated under such pressure to succeed as the first Black player that he told The News & Observer this past week that when he lettered at UNC from 1967-70, he didn’t so much enjoy the wins as he was thankful they didn’t lose. He knew who would get the blame for the losses.

“I was always relieved with the wins, but it was never enjoyment,” Scott said.

Now 72 and living in Atlanta, Scott is taking a lot of enjoyment out of what he considered to be a big win this week when UNC made history with the hiring of Hubert Davis as its men’s basketball coach. Davis is the first Black head coach in program history and just the fourth overall in any sport at the school.

Scott said during his recruitment, program patriarch Dean Smith wasn’t looking for the best Black player. He was looking for the best basketball player. Scott said the same rationale applied to Davis.

“Carolina didn’t get him because he was the best Black guy they could get,” Scott said. “He was the best coach for Carolina. That’s why he got the job. I think that’s very important to understand.”

Inspiration as being first

In 133 years of athletic competition, UNC has had four head coaches in any sport who are Black.

As of October 2020, 8.5% of the school’s undergraduate student population identifies as Black or African-American, and the Tar Heels host 26 varsity sports programs. Davis, however, is the school’s only active Black head coach.

That significance is not lost on his father, Hubert Davis Sr., who sat beside Roy Williams on Monday at the introductory news conference. He told the N&O that his son’s hiring was a sign that “you can accomplish anything you want to, if you put yourself in the right position.”

“I said Hubert, you’re making history,” his dad said. “And I said that a lot of people are going to be surprised at that but a lot of people are going to be so happy for you and he said, ‘I know that, dad. I know that.’”

But it takes someone being first.

Phil Ford’s legendary career as the Tar Heels’ definitive point guard may not have been possible had it not been for him seeing Scott play. Ford said watching Scott play for Smith was the reason he became a Carolina fan growing up in Rocky Mount east of Raleigh.

At the time, Ford said his elementary school still hadn’t been integrated, but seeing the first Black man excel for the Heels planted a seed in all of his sixth-grade peers.

“Everybody in my elementary school was going to play at North Carolina and be the next Charlie Scott,” Ford told the N&O. “So with Hubert being the first African-American coach here. I’m sure there are young kids that look up and recognize that and I’m sure they will be inspired by seeing the position that he has reached here.”

There have been only two other full-time Black head coaches at UNC, and both coached the track and field programs: Hubert West in 1982-83 and Harlis Meaders from 2012-2019. Everett Withers served as the interim head coach during the 2011 football season, taking over after Butch Davis was fired.

UNC has struggled in areas trying to reconcile racist elements of its past. The school covered up the dedication plaque at Kenan Stadium in 2018 because it was named after William Rand Kenan Sr., a white supremacist who helped lead a violent attack on Blacks in 1898 known as the Wilmington Massacre. The stadium was re-dedicated to honor his son William Rand Kenan Jr.

The university did not remove Silent Sam, a statue recognizing students who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, until it was toppled by protestors.

During last summer’s social justice movements across the country, UNC did vote to rename several buildings that had problematic ties including Klansmen and slaveholders.

That’s why Scott said, even though it’s no longer as rare to see a Black head coach in major college basketball as it was 30-40 years ago, there was something special about Davis being hired to lead the Tar Heels.

“It being the University of North Carolina and the state of North Carolina, I think that makes it significant,” Scott said. “It’s important when you realize that the state that is still in a metamorphosis of becoming the state that even coach Smith envisioned it to be.”

Dean Smith’s design?

Those that played under Smith are certain he would have been most pleased by seeing Davis succeed him, even if it was three coaches removed. Smith pushed for diversity and inclusion well before it ever became a job title. He was integral in helping to desegregate Chapel Hill neighborhoods and restaurants, just as his father once pushed for integration in Kansas.

Eddie Fogler and Mitch Kupchak, who were teammates of Scott in the early 1970s, were present during Davis’ inaugural news conference and said Smith would be “smiling” at the thought of him becoming the head coach.

“There’s no doubt,” Kupchak, who is the Charlotte Hornets general manager, told the N&O. “There are a lot of people that I would say, might be his (Smith’s) favorites. He never let on to who his favorite really was, but if I had to guess, Hubert would be very close to the top. So I know coach is happy.”

Walter Davis, Hubert’s uncle who starred at Carolina from 1973-77, said Roy Williams’ role in helping mold him from a studio analyst on ESPN’s College Gameday into becoming the head coach nine years later cannot be understated.

Hubert Davis had no prior college coaching experience when Williams asked him to join his staff and immediately began feeding him responsibilities.

“Coach Smith would co-sign that Roy Williams made it possible,” Walter Davis said. “He went after Hubert and when Hubert had a nice, cushy job with ESPN. He came down there and got some good tutelage under Roy Williams.”

Trailblazing

There aren’t too many coaches who know what Davis is going through. Tubby Smith and Mike Davis do, as the only other Black head coaches to lead ‘blue blood’ programs. Smith became the first black head coach at Kentucky when he took over for Rick Pitino in 1997. Mike Davis was in the unenviable position of being the first to follow legendary coach Bobby Knight at Indiana in 2000.

Some fans never embraced them even after Smith became the third Black coach to win a national title in 1998, and Davis had the Hoosiers in the title game in 2002. But they don’t believe Hubert Davis will face the same level of vitriol they once did.

“First of all, he’s family there,” Mike Davis, the head coach at Detroit Mercy, told the N&O. “It’s a different mindset when you played at a school, it means so much more to you.”

Smith, who is coaching his alma mater High Point University in North Carolina, called Hubert Davis the “perfect fit” for UNC. And is just glad he now has the chance to prove it.

“What has transpired over the years is athletic directors recognized that African-American coaches can coach,” Smith told the N&O. “We can lead, can recruit, can be fundraisers -- can do all those things if given the opportunity.”