As we celebrate Black History Month, who better to speak with than Angie Reed?
She is uniquely qualified to discuss two gentlemen who were game changers, on and off the football field.
Her late husband, Saskatchewan Roughriders icon George Reed, moved the yardsticks competitively and culturally. The same can be said of Angie’s brother.
In 1965, Jerry Levias became the first Black football player to receive a scholarship from a Southwest Conference school — in this case, Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“Jerry and I talk two or three times a week,” Angie said during a recent conversation at Mosaic Stadium. “We talk about the things we used to do or things like that. We’ll talk about things that Dad used to say.”
So does Georgette Reed, who is equally appreciative of the things her dad used to do — not only for the family, but for the benefit of the community and Black culture.
“When I look at everything he went through coming to Regina, he was a bit of a pioneer himself,” said Georgette, who grew up in Whitmore Park with her siblings, Keith and Vicki.
“He came to a place he had never been and it was a whole different environment where he was definitely a minority.
“When you’re at university or in Seattle or somewhere, there are a lot more people of colour. Then, when you come to Saskatchewan, you’re one of a few and you stand out everywhere you go.
“You really have to have the strength and the fortitude to just keep moving forward, no matter what.”
Strength and fortitude, two of Reed’s many attributes on the field, were also required before he first played a regular-season game with the Roughriders, having just graduated from Washington State University.
In the Aug. 4, 1963 edition of the Regina Leader-Post, sports columnist John Robertson detailed the issues that three Black running backs — Reed, Ed Buchanan and Billy Gray — were encountering while trying to find somewhere to live.
Robertson wrote that Buchanan was “turned down flat when he applied to rent a furnished apartment. Earlier, so was George Reed, for the same reason. I don’t know how you feel about it, but this makes me a little sick inside.”
Robertson implored fans to assist Reed, Buchanan and Gray in finding apartments, concluding that “I am embarrassed for a few of my bigoted fellow Reginans.”
Day by day, step by step, the situation would improve, with Reed at the forefront of progress.
“There are all the stories I heard with my dad where he would go into a place and would be denied X or Y, or he would not be able to get an apartment,” Georgette said.
“He wasn’t able to move his family here until he was completely sure that it was going to be safe enough.
“I am always in awe of how my mom and dad both handled the situations that were introduced to them and thrown at them. They had to rally from them and do whatever they could to keep moving forward.
“Part of that added to Dad’s tenacity on the football field, because he knew that if he did well on the football field, he would be able to do more for his family in terms of salary or in terms of being able to maintain his job or all those types of things.”
Because of his stature in the community, he was able to enjoy more benefits and exert greater influence than the average citizen.
Surely, there were advantages to being George Reed, but he used them for the greater good as opposed to extracting personal benefits.
“He would always say to me, ‘People will always give you a little bit more of an opportunity once they find out who you are, but it’s what you do with those opportunities that makes the difference,’ ” Georgette said.
“He knew that he had an opportunity. The better he played and the more he did in the community, he had an opportunity to do other things that a lot of his brothers never had an opportunity to do or a lot of people he knew didn’t get an opportunity to do.
“It wasn’t lost on him how important these opportunities were and that these opportunities came because he was really good at running the football.”
At the same time, he understood and was offended by the double standard.
“The first couple of years, I couldn’t get an apartment in Regina,” he said in a 2008 interview. “It was tempting at times to pack up and go back (to the Seattle area). Then something happened and all of a sudden I didn’t have a colour because I won the Schenley in ’65 (as the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player) and that was the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
But the celebration could not obscure the evident reality.
“It was difficult walking into certain places that everybody didn’t know who George Reed was,” he recalled during that 2008 interview. “I’d get treated one way and then, all of a sudden, somebody would recognize me and it was a total different way that I was treated.
“That probably was as hard to take as anything because I hadn’t changed colours. I just had become a pretty good football player. It bothered me, and it bothered me the way other ones were treated.”
That was a difficult notion for some people, with different life experiences, to digest.
“Because he was getting treated well, people thought, ‘Why are you complaining? Why are you saying something?’ ” Georgette said.
“It was because he wanted his teammates to be treated well. He wanted his family to be treated well. He wanted everybody that he knew who looked different to be treated better.
“I think that’s why he was so passionate about his involvement with Special Olympics — because he could understand that kind of discrimination and that kind of prejudice, just because of the way that you look or the way that you’re able to move or the things that you’re able to do.
“His passion really started coming about in trying to be able to support people who were always disadvantaged first or were never given a chance first.
“I think he felt sometimes that he ended up getting chances, but he was passed over on a lot of things because of what he looked like and where he came from.”
Given a chance to speak up for Special Olympics Athletes, Reed helped the entire organization make tremendous gains.
His friendship with Jesse Owens led to the legendary track athlete visiting Regina in 1968 to speak at a Special Olympics dinner.
Owens had won four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, shattering records and, more importantly, the myth of white supremacy that was promoted by Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.
“Jesse Owens came over to the house and we had a good time,” Angie Reed said with a smile. “The kids loved it.
“George just took care of everybody. He would be hurting, but you couldn’t make him stop.”
The start, in the case of Jerry Levias, is a crucial element of the story.
A first months before his first season of college football, in 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited SMU. He made it a priority to seek out and meet with Levias.
“We talked and he said, ‘I understand that you are a good football, a good student, and I understand you have a good Christian background,’ ” Levias recalled in a 2023 interview with the Dallas Morning News. “I said, ‘Yes, sir, I do.’
“So we talked for a while and he said, ‘One thing I want to be able to tell you: Always keep your emotions under control.’
“That was one of the things that I tried to live up to, because I never did get into any arguments with anybody or anything else, and I kept my emotions in control, even when they would spit on me or say nasty things to me.”
There was, however, one notable exception — when an opposing player tore off Levias’s helmet, pinned him to the ground and spit in his face late in his senior season at SMU.
“That was the first time I ever hated — and I never hated before like that in my entire life,” Levias told the Morning News. “So the touchdown I ran after that, I don’t get any joy out of it, because I ran it out of hate.
“When I went to the sidelines (after being spit upon), Coach (Hayden) Fry came over and talked to me, because he saw me sitting there with my head down. I threw my helmet against the bench and I told him, ‘I quit.’
“Coach Fry immediately came over to me and sat alongside me and forgot about the game. He called me Levi when he loved me and he said, ‘Levi, are you going to let some person like that destroy everything that you’ve done and make you quit?’
“He said, ‘We’re going to hold them for the next four downs and they’re going to punt to you. All you’ve got to do is run this one back and the game will be over. You don’t have to play anymore.’
“So I’m fired up. I run on to the field. Then, all of a sudden, Coach Fry kept calling at me to come back, come back. I thought he didn’t want me to play anymore, but he said, ‘You’re going to need this.’
“He threw me my helmet.”
Levias proceeded to run the punt back for what proved to be a decisive touchdown in an SMU victory.
“I can’t tell you all the moves I made and everything,” he told the Dallas newspaper, “but I dared anyone to touch me.”
It was a triumphant moment in many respects, but the emotions it evoked still resonate with Levias and detract from the memory.
As he told the Morning News: “Hate does not hurt the other person. It hurts you.”
In time, he would relate those experiences to his Regina-born niece.
“I didn’t know all the stuff he went through until I was in my 30s or 40s, but I have always been proud of him,” Georgette said.
“As a child, I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and he influenced me to keep writing and following my passion and to also have something to build on. Thus, my first degree in university was journalism. I loved learning those skills and the training has served me well.”
The same can be said of the wisdom imparted to this day by her uncle Jerry, who played professionally with the Houston Oilers (1969-70) and San Diego Chargers (1971-74) after an 80-catch, 1,131-yard senior season at SMU.
“He has taught me a lot about humour and that, no matter what, walk with your head high,” Georgette said.
She also takes considerable pride in being a Canadian, while recognizing that progress still needs to be made.
“I’ve always been very proud of being Canadian and being from Saskatchewan, but I also look at the reality that we don’t have a squeaky-clean civil-rights record, either,” Georgette said.
“Because we’re smaller, maybe we had fewer instances of (racism), but it just wasn’t as publicized as some of the other things that we’ve seen in history. I think that’s because we go, ‘We’re Canada. We’re great. We’re apologetic.’
“Yeah, but we all still need to understand a little bit of compassion and empathy. Just because people look different and come from different places doesn’t necessarily mean right off the bat that they’re evil or they have some nefarious type of desire.
“Most people just want a safe place to live and for their family to just be able to get ahead and live and do something positively in communities.
“I think more of the negative, nasty stuff gets promoted than the really good things that people have to offer and the really good things that they’re doing.”
Perspective and circumstances enable Georgette to assess the situation on both sides of the border.
Her siblings, for example, now reside in Las Vegas. Angie has remained in Regina. Most of her family, Jerry included, lives in Texas.
Georgette, for her part, is the Director of Athletics and Recreation at Capilano University in North Vancouver. But a big part of her heart is still here, where members of her family have accomplished — and, if necessary, overcome — so much.
“We love Regina. We love Saskatchewan,” she concluded. “I personally feel so fortunate to have been born and raised here and to have had my childhood here.
“A lot of landmark experiences have happened in Regina as well and I’ve got great friends here. We still get so much support from the community and it’s amazing.
“To me, this is still one of the best places in the world, and I know my dad felt the same. My mom probably would have loved to have been some place a little warmer overall but, as much as she’ll grumble and say little funny things, I think that she really does love it here and is very happy that we were able to come here and settle here.
“Regina is definitely the home of the Reeds and we’re super-proud of it.”
