Getting it Wright [This story is presented as an example of the fascinating connections that are being revealed by the ongoing work of the Reagan Research Project. Hopefully more such discoveries will be forthcoming.] William Howard Dee Wright (born c. 1906) grew up in Springfield, Illinois, during the early decades of the twentieth century. The son of Robert Sylvester and Minnie Ella Wright, “Willie” experienced the era of the Great Migration as thousands of African American families relocated from the world of sharecropping in the South to urban industrial centers of the Midwest and northern states. As a toddler at the time of the Springfield Race Riot of 1908, he would have come to understand the racially-charged atmosphere of the times. The family lived just a few blocks south of the so-called “Badlands” area of Springfield that was torched during the riot. In time, Willie Wright likely understood the full implications and complexities of race and class as his grandparents had been enslaved in Kentucky and Tennessee, and additionally, as his maternal great-grandfather had been a white Tennessean. Willie would eventually graduate from Springfield High School in 1924 where he was recognized for his abilities in varsity football, where he was the only African American player on the team. William Baird, the high school football coach, was willing to give Wright an opportunity to prove himself. In the impolitic language of the 1920s, it was reported that Baird supposedly “gives much of his time, and probably more, to a poor man than he does a good man, thus giving everybody a chance.” Perhaps the 1922 high school yearbook from Springfield High School tells us much if we read between the lines by noting that “Willie proved that speed counts most.” We can only surmise what the other unnamed factors might have been. One of Wright’s fellow teammates on the high school squad was Carol “Little” Hall (Eureka College, Class of 1927) whose later academic and athletic success at Eureka College might have inspired Wright to consider attending college in due time. Hall would later return to Springfield High School as a Chemistry teacher, and in time, he would become the co-founder of Horace Mann Insurance Company, headquartered in Springfield, a firm known as the largest insurer of teachers in the world. Others might have inspired Willie to consider higher education, and perhaps Eureka College in particular. Miss Mate H. Lewis, an alumnus of Eureka College, was teaching English at Springfield High School in the 1920s. It could be that stories of an abolitionist-founded college in the Midwest that educated all without regard to ethnicity or gender had a special appeal to Wright. Willie’s father worked as a janitor at the court house in Sangamon County, so the challenges of affording the cost of higher education in 1928 were difficult. Eureka College offered an academic scholarship to Willie that funded about half of his tuition costs for Fall Semester 1928. As a result, four years after he graduated from Springfield High School Willie Wright attended Eureka College during Fall Semester 1928 where he was a fellow classmate of Ronald Wilson Reagan (Class of 1932). As freshmen both men were members of the Red Devils football squad. Wright got playing time that season while Reagan did not play a varsity down. We know that Reagan in subsequent years kept up regular correspondence with many of his former classmates. More research will be needed to determine if Willie and Dutch kept up such a correspondence through the years. Willie did not chose to return to Eureka College in Spring Semester 1929. His decision was likely based more upon economic concerns than upon academic problems. Despite the onset of the Great Depression in October 1929, Willie seems to have found a series of jobs in the Springfield area that kept him employed during a time period when the unemployment rate for African American men was excessive. Portions of the remainder of Willie’s life have not yet been fully researched, but hopefully more of his story will be discovered and told in subsequent years.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 16:42:46 +0000
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