Manatee County’s Ed Dick will always be a Lincoln Legend

Ed Dick never carried a football and is not black. But without him, the story of the Lincoln High football program and Ray Bellamy’s crushing racial barriers could not be completely told. In fact, it might have never happened.

Now 87, Dick was instrumental in finding the person who the University of Miami wanted to break the color barrier for major college football players in the Southeast.

If Ray Bellamy is Jackie Robinson, then Dick is Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers executive who signed Robinson, paving the way for him to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947.

When University of Miami President Dr. Henry King Stanford decided his school was going to break the color barrier, he knew all the pieces had to be in place so this wouldn’t result in a setback.

Those associated with Miami said Dick was perfect. He was heavily involved in the civil rights movement in Manatee County in the early 1960s. He went into areas like the Rogers Projects where whites rarely entered to register minority voters, and he was credited with registering more than 2,000 voters. He also had a passion for football and was an avid fan of the University of Miami, where he graduated in 1952.

“People of color had been intimidated not to vote here in Manatee County, and me and a group of people were out on the streets going door to door registering them to vote. I believe we walked on every unpaved road in the county,” Dick told the Herald.

When Dick showed up at a Lincoln High practice one day, his presence shocked nearly everyone there, including head football coach Eddie Shannon.

“When I first met Ed Dick I was in high school, and to have a man speak as positive about blacks and giving opportunities to blacks kind of caught me off-guard,” Bellamy said. “I thought: ‘Is this man for real?’ I grew up a skeptic, but he proved himself. He fought the battle of racism, did it with deeds and angered a whole bunch of white folks.”

Dick said his parents taught him the difference between right and wrong. His father, Ed Dick Jr., was friends with Jesse Owens, the four-time gold medalist at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin who performed in front of Adolf Hitler and then experienced racial injustice when he returned home.

“My family brought me to respect everybody, and my dad saw the ridicule that Jesse Owens endured,” Dick said. “He could not sleep with the rest of the (Ohio State) track team when it went on road trips and they had to find a special home for him to stay at.”

Dick was also weary of all those good football players from the area heading up to northern colleges as none of the colleges in the South were offering scholarships despite the obvious talent they possessed.

“I was telling the coaches at Miami that these Midwestern and northern schools were cherry-picking the best players from this area, all of color, and we needed to do something about that,” Dick said.

Miami knew of Dick’s voter registration efforts here and had George McIntyre, the Hurricanes recruiting coordinator, contact Dick and tell him to get on it.

Dick told Miami he had found the right guy in Bellamy. McIntyre came to look at him and knew immediately this was the guy. He gave the thumbs-up to get him.

“It was my decision to pick Bellamy. His athletic ability, his grades and his demeanor made it easy,” Dick said. “He even went on to become student body president at Miami, though there were only 13 blacks in the school at the time. He ran on a platform: ‘It’s not a white thing. It’s not a black thing. It’s a people thing.’”

Fighting barriers

Dick didn’t get to see Bellamy play much in college because a lot of Miami games were on Friday nights when he was out scouting players. They became close friends as the years went on and still are today.

Dick continues to champion human rights. After the Vietnam War, Dick and his wife, Joanne, founded Refugee Inc., which was responsible for bringing more than 700 refugees from the war to Manatee and Sarasota counties.

It again made Dick the target of racists. Someone once burned a cross on the front lawn of his house, but he never backed down from what he has seen as a mission in his life.

“I received a letter that called me a ‘Chink lover’ because of the refugees who came here from Southeast Asia. Of all the things I did, I feel helping break the color barrier for college football was the most important. It changed our country,” Dick said.

Dick and his wife adopted eight children, and at one time had nine Vietnamese refugees living in their Bayshore Gardens home with eight other people.

“One night at the dinner table, there were eight different languages being spoken,” Dick recalled.

Dick has wanted to see more black head coaches hired in college football. He said the process has moved too slowly, but is proud of University of South Florida head coach Willie Taggart, an African-American and Manatee County’s only head coach of a major college sports team.

Taggart says he is cognizant of the path Bellamy paved for him and those who helped him and is forever grateful.

“They made it possible for me to be in the position that I am in today,” Taggart said. “Ray opened the door for me and so many of the guys from Manatee County who made a name for themselves through football, like Tommie Frazier and Peter Warrick, just to name a few.”

Bellamy puts Dick right on the same level of Dr. Stanford, noting both were insightful and had the ability to make things happen.

“Ed is a man who will deliver the mail every day,” Bellamy said. “He changed the demeanor of our community by standing up for equality, and his wife stood by him and did a lot of great things. He is a special person.”

This story was originally published July 30, 2016 at 3:51 PM with the headline "Manatee County’s Ed Dick will always be a Lincoln Legend."