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Some may find it hard to believe that Charles Bryant, a 190-pound guard from the 1950s, can be considered among the 50 greatest Nebraska football players of the 20th century.
Few fans from the past quarter-century may have heard of him.
But Bryant's place in the history of Nebraska football places him among the most significant - if not the most significant - ever to wear a Husker uniform of any kind.
Bryant, an all-stater from Omaha South, became the first black letterman in a Nebraska sport in 40 years in 1953. His place as a pioneer who opened the door for blacks to experience success in Lincoln is hard to overlook.
"I've never gotten any credit for it," Bryant said. "But if I hadn't gone there, it might have taken another 10 years or so for someone to go down and do well.
"I'm the first black guy to play. I opened the doors up for the rest of them."
Being a black football player at Nebraska in the early 1950s was no walk in the park - especially when you are the only one, as Bryant was in 1952.
Even though Jackie Robinson had broken baseball's color barrier in 1947, the grip of racism was strong around the country - even at dear old Nebraska U., where white teammates made Bryant feel like an outsider.
Things were worse when NU traveled for games, particularly to the South.
Among other indecencies, Bryant and black teammates Jon McWilliams and Sylvester Harris - who followed Bryant to Lincoln - were forced to stay at the "black YMCA" in Oklahoma City when the team played at Oklahoma in 1954. The three were asked to stay out of the lobby and out of the swimming pool of the Fountainbleau Hotel on Miami Beach while staying with the team for the 1955 Orange Bowl.
"This is the high point of my life," Bryant said of being No. 44 in fan voting for The World-Herald's All-Century Team for NU football. "And I hope this doesn't sound sarcastic, but I went through so much (expletive) down there to get it.
"The guys on the team treated me like a spaceman. It's amazing how things sort themselves out."
Bryant, who lives in semi-retirement as an artist and substitute teacher in Omaha, said he wasn't necessarily trying to break down any social barriers back then. He just wanted to follow former South star Tom Novak to Lincoln.
"I just wanted to play football," he said. "I never thought of it as a black thing or a white thing. I didn't realize I was just the second (black) there. I didn't think anything about it.
"I was from south Omaha, and we had (people of all races). South High was integrated. I never thought about it until I got there, and then I got a real dose of it."
Mike Babcock, a free-lance journalist and Nebraska football historian, said a rule prohibited blacks from competing for Nebraska for decades.
"I don't know whether that was written down or whether it was just an unwritten agreement like major-league baseball," Babcock said. "And it's not clear if it was ever rescinded or if it just ran its course."
Tom Carodine is believed to be the first black athlete at Nebraska since 1913. He was kicked off the team for skipping classes after playing the first three football games of the 1951 season.
Bryant - who later was a teacher and coach at Council Bluffs Thomas Jefferson and served as an assistant principal at Omaha Benson and Omaha Bryan - freely admits that he had a hand in his surprising finish in the voting.
He was his own campaign manager.
"If I hadn't been on the (ballot) that came out in the paper, I wouldn't have been disappointed," he said. "But once I was, I figured I deserved to be on the team. It's nothing, but it's important. I figured I belonged on it, so I campaigned for it."
Students for whom Bryant substitute teaches - as well as students and workers at Clair United Methodist Church, where he teaches a once-a-week art class - helped along the effort.
"I had an audience with the kids at school," he said. "People don't have that follow through, but I've always had it. I worked from the first day until the last day."
Bryant, who went to Lincoln as a 165-pounder in 1951, said he probably wouldn't be a guard in today's game, but doesn't doubt he could compete.
"I'd compare myself to any of these guys now," he said. "I would just be playing cornerback now."
It's been a long road into the record books for Bryant, who said he couldn't get a job in Omaha after earning his degree from UNL.
Bryant has become a successful artist, almost by accident.
When his wife, Mollie, earned a trip to Hawaii for being a top salesperson for a department store in 1987, Bryant spent time viewing art galleries on Wakiki Beach. When he returned to Omaha, he looked for the work of black artists but couldn't find any.
"So I sat down and started painting," he said. "I painted some stuff in high school, and I remember doing it, but what football player is going to say he's an artist? Especially back in those days."
Bryant has been involved in painting murals at Sacred Heart Catholic Church and at 24th and Spencer Streets. He's also begun sculpting, and said he recently sold his first piece - of a buffalo soldier - for $5,000.
Bryant, 66, is active in the local community. He wants young blacks to take advantage of the opportunities they have today, ones that weren't as readily available when he was young.
"They make it worse on themselves," he said. "When I was at South High, they didn't care if you could read or write because if you were black or poor white or Mexican, you were going to go to (work in) the packing house. But anybody with an education now can make it.
"When your grandfather and I graduated from high school together, he knew he was going to get a better job than me. That's not so any more."
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