Coach Dan Devine’s complicated legacy in Mizzou football’s integration
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
When a restaurant owner refused to serve two Black players on the University of Missouri football team, coach Dan Devine faced a decision.
The Tigers were returning from a game at the University of Kansas when they stopped for dinner in Missouri. Jerry Wallach, a tackle who played for the Tigers from 1959 to 1962, recalled watching some of his teammates leave the restaurant, followed by a woman.
“You don’t have to be Dick Tracy to figure out what was going on,” Wallach told ABC 17 News. “Some woman comes out and says, ‘Those boys aren’t coming in here.’ And she’s irate. Dan Devine bragged it was one of his finest moments and frankly it was.”
As the woman kept demanding to know who was going to cover the bill, Devine reached into his pocket, threw money down to cover the food that had already been ordered, and directed the team back onto the bus.
“He really has reason to be proud of his record on civil rights. But he would talk about that incident, and he said he reached in his pocket, pulled out a $100 bill,” Wallach recalled. “I would always follow him in the after-dinner speeches by saying, ‘I was there, I saw it happen.’ Which was basically true, except it wasn’t a $100 bill; it was a $50 bill. The guy had to up it to $100. It made a better story.”
If you attend a game at Memorial Stadium, you’ll find Dan Devine’s name along the visitors’ sideline. During his 13 seasons in Columbia, Devine transformed Missouri from a dormant program into a national contender, compiling a 93-37-7 record — the third-most wins in program history. He led the Tigers to four bowl victories, including the program’s first in the 1961 Orange Bowl, two conference titles, and its first No. 1 ranking.
In the 1960s, his teams never lost more than three games in a season, making Missouri the only team in the country to accomplish that feat.
But Devine is remembered for more than the Tigers’ dominance on the field. He also oversaw a pivotal period in program history: the integration of Missouri football.
That process was already underway when Devine arrived. Missouri became the last Big Eight Conference football program to integrate when Norris Stevenson joined the team in the winter of 1957. Mel West followed six months later, becoming the program’s second Black player. Both were recruited by Frank Broyles, who left for the University of Arkansas in 1958 before coaching either player.
Devine was coming off a perfect 10-0 season as Arizona State’s head coach when Missouri offered him the job in December 1957. His arrival in Columbia got off to a rocky start. Engine trouble delayed his flight by six hours, and he arrived at his interview in a suit covered in hot chocolate after a flight attendant accidentally spilled a drink on him.
When Devine took over in 1958, Stevenson and West faced discrimination that extended well beyond the football field.
“They were both really embraced by their teammates,” Steenbergen said. “But it was 1960. I think a lot of the players didn’t have a sense of what those guys were going through.”
Stevenson’s daughter, Jennifer, said her father grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood in St. Louis. Moving to Columbia, a town of roughly 30,000 people at the time, was a culture shock. At Missouri, he had to navigate an unfamiliar environment where he encountered racial barriers in ways he had not experienced before.
“He didn't really have a lot of opportunity to interact with white individuals and deal with discrimination and things like that. That was all new,” Jennifer Stevenson said. “When he went to Mizzou, it was something he had to learn.”
The University of Missouri had yet to hire any Black educators or administrators, and many downtown businesses allowed Black students inside only if they presented their university IDs.
“When he talked about it, even though the discriminatory things that happened to him were painful, what defined him was the fact that he overcame it,” Jennifer Stevenson said.
Those challenges followed the Tigers on the road.
“Those were rough days,” Wallach said. “It was not easy to go to a hotel and have somebody meet the team plane and take the Black players somewhere else because they couldn’t go to our hotel.”
Devine made an effort to support his players, challenging discrimination when it threatened the unity and well-being of his team.
“Dan definitely did a lot of things that helped Mel and Norris,” Brendon Steenbergen, author of "Respectable Roughnecks," told ABC 17 News. “When they played at Texas A&M, the hotel restaurant wouldn't allow the Black players, and so Dan Devine made sure that the whole team was not going to eat someplace that wouldn't allow two of his players to eat.”
Despite those acts of support, Stevenson’s relationship with Devine was not without tension.
Stevenson became a key contributor as Missouri rose to national prominence. In 1960, he rushed for 169 yards and two touchdowns in a 41-19 victory over Oklahoma, helping the Tigers earn their first win in Norman since 1936 and climb to No. 1 in the national rankings.
Despite that production, Stevenson was not always given a role that reflected his contributions. He finished his Missouri career with 1,184 rushing yards and seven touchdowns over three seasons but was considered the second-string halfback.
Following Stevenson’s death in 2012, Gerald Stevenson recounted a conversation his brother Norris had with a former assistant coach in 2009. According to Gerald, the assistant coach told Norris that influential boosters had prevented Devine from starting two Black running backs together.
Steenbergen also pointed to the Tigers’ 1961 Orange Bowl trip as a source of tension. Despite Missouri’s 21-14 victory in front of President-elect John F. Kennedy, the postgame banquet left a lasting impression on Stevenson, his daughter Jennifer said.
The banquet took place at Miami Beach Convention Hall, but due to the hotel’s segregated policies, Stevenson and West were escorted off the island, while Devine did nothing to intervene.
“He loved his coach. It was painful. There were some painful things that happened,” Jennifer Stevenson said. “It's like when you have a complicated relationship with anyone. Sometimes it's just you love them, but then there are those hard points in life.”
Still, Jennifer said, the relationship endured.
“When Dan Devine passed away, his son was given the instruction to go talk to Norris and see if he would be willing to speak at his service,” she said. “So it's like that pain was there, but that relationship was never broken.”
For Johnny Roland, who arrived at Missouri after Stevenson and West had already begun breaking barriers, Devine was first and foremost a demanding football coach.
Roland, a highly recruited halfback from Corpus Christi, Texas, initially committed to Oklahoma before a visit to Columbia helped change his mind. Devine played a key role in convincing him to choose Missouri.
“Coach Devine worked his magic on me,” Roland said. “He had a pretty good knack of schmoozing the mothers.”
Once Roland arrived, however, Devine did not give him special treatment.
“He’d treat me just like he would treat anybody else. He’d coach you up, he’d ball you out. He didn’t take mercy on me,” Roland said.
Wallach described Devine as “the biggest asshole in town”, but added that his coach was not always that way. When the two would go to postseason banquets after the season, he saw another side of Devine.
“I’m sitting next to him one night, and this is a guy we treated with reverence. He was like God or something. I’m sitting next to him, and I say, ‘Hey, can I call you Dan?'”
“Sure, of course,” Devine replied.
“I got a question, Dan? When I played for you, you were the biggest asshole in town. But coming to these banquets and talking to you, you’re really a pretty nice guy. How do you square that?”
“It’s not easy every day waking up the biggest asshole in town,” Devine responded. “But if you want to win major college football games, that’s what you got to do.”
But Roland said Devine’s intensity was also what made him such an effective leader.
“He scared the hell out of you,” Roland said. “He just built a culture that we’re all in this together. We’re either going to sink together or swim together.”
Roland became one of Missouri’s biggest stars, playing multiple positions before becoming the program’s first Black team captain in 1965.
“He was, in my opinion, the first real superstar from Mizzou," Steenbergen said. "Obviously, there were great players at Missouri before that, but in the television era, Johnny Roland was a real star and a great, great football player, and his opinion mattered. He was a player who recognized that his success and his popularity as an athlete could translate into making real change.”
According to Wallach and Steenbergen, that change included ending a long-standing tradition at Mizzou that had bothered many Black students.
“When Missouri would score a touchdown, the fans would wave big Confederate flags, huge Confederate flags, and the band would play 'Dixie,'” Wallach said. “There was a big Confederate rock right outside the law school with a big plaque dedicated to the heroes of the Confederacy. Boone County was called Little Dixie.”
Before the Tigers’ 1960 Orange Bowl matchup against Georgia, activists with the Congress of Racial Equality urged Missouri’s band not to play “Dixie.” The tradition ended before 1970. Although no single, definitive account establishes exactly when it ended, historical accounts place its demise around 1964, while Roland was attending school.
“The story goes that Johnny Roland told Dan Devine, ‘If you want me to score touchdowns at Missouri, you’re not going to have this music, which is an insult to my people,’ and that Dan Devine did listen, and he talked to the band director and athletic director at the time, and they got that stopped,” Steenbergen said. “Now, this is 60-some years later, and I have heard different accounts of it, but that’s kind of the version that I’ve heard from Johnny and from others.”
Wallach offered a similar account.
“John Roland went into Devine’s office, I’ve heard the story often, and I believe it, and said, ‘Coach, here’s what you can do. You can continue to play me, and I’ll continue to play, or you can have that Confederate rock and play 'Dixie' and wave the Confederate flag all you want, and I’m gone,’” Wallach said. “Devine always bragged he was a big civil rights guy, but it was John Roland who backed him down.”
When ABC 17 News asked Roland about the story, he downplayed having any role in ending the tradition.
“Yeah, they played 'Dixie.' It didn’t bother me,” Roland said. “I was singing 'Dixie' too if we scored a touchdown.”
Devine’s legacy at Missouri cannot be measured by wins and championships alone. He helped build a national contender while supporting Black players who faced discrimination on and off the field, but their experiences also revealed the limits of that support.
More than six decades later, the stories of Stevenson, West and Roland serve as a reminder that integrating a football program meant more than putting players on the field; it meant confronting the barriers that followed them there.
