1966 Texas Western Basketball National Champions

🏛️The era

In the mid-1950s, despite federal law, segregation still ruled much of Southern life, including its universities and their sports teams. Many Southern schools refused to admit Black students, and even where the classrooms opened, athletic programs often stayed all-white. Some teams would not even play opponents with Black players.

Texas Western College in El Paso, now the University of Texas at El Paso, took a different path. In 1955 about a dozen African American students enrolled, making it the first institution of higher education in a Southern state to integrate. El Paso sits at the far western tip of Texas, on the border with Mexico, and its setting and history differed in many ways from the rest of the South.

The 1960s brought the civil rights movement to national attention through sit-ins, marches and landmark federal laws. Sports became part of that story, because the playing field was one of the most visible places where Americans could see integration succeed or fail.

👥People & events

The Miners' integration on the court began in the 1956-57 season, when Charles Brown became the team's first Black basketball player. Others followed under coaches George McCarty and Harold Davis. In 1961 a young coach named Don Haskins arrived for what would become 38 seasons, and he kept recruiting Black players.

In 1965-66 it all came together. Texas Western went 23-1 in the regular season and entered the NCAA tournament, where it survived some heart-stoppers: a win over Oklahoma City, a 78-76 overtime escape against Cincinnati, and an 81-80 double-overtime victory over Kansas. After beating Utah in the national semifinals at the University of Maryland, the Miners faced Kentucky, a four-time national champion, for the title.

It was a historic first. All five Texas Western starters were African American, and Kentucky's entire roster was white. Haskins later said he wasn't trying to make a larger statement about race; he was simply playing his best players. His team led 34-31 at halftime and won 72-65 with tough defense and a disciplined half-court offense at Cole Field House.

It was the only time in the twentieth century that a Texas team won the NCAA men's basketball championship. The story became so famous that it was later told in the Hollywood film "Glory Road."

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Few single games have mattered as much as this one. On a national stage, an integrated team led by five Black starters beat one of the sport's most storied all-white programs. That result undercut the prejudiced assumptions that had long been used to keep Black athletes off Southern teams.

Afterward, Southern universities began actively recruiting African American athletes. The integration of college sports across the South was a gradual process, but this championship is widely seen as a turning point in it.

The game also belongs to the wider story of the civil rights movement. The movement's best-known moments came in courtrooms, at lunch counters and on the march, but a basketball court in Maryland showed millions of Americans what equal opportunity could achieve.

🧭If you visit

You'll find the marker in El Paso, in the city that is home to the University of Texas at El Paso, the school that played as Texas Western in 1966. Standing here, keep in mind how far this team came. A college in a West Texas border city beat the powerhouse programs of the nation.

For sports fans this is a pilgrimage stop, and it can mean just as much to anyone interested in civil rights history. If you can, watch or re-watch "Glory Road" before or after your visit, and remember that the real story is what this marker records. Hollywood dramatized some of it.

El Paso makes a rewarding stop on any trip across West Texas, with mountain views, border culture and a deep history that runs from Spanish missions to the modern day. This marker adds a chapter that changed American sports.