The following will be a few paragraphs from my forthcoming book. Hugh Murray
Unbeknownst to me, there was another revolution going on beneath the surface that year, 1955-56, occurring in Baton Rouge. Most educators, university and high school coaches in all sports knew various truisms. One was obvious: those who built up large muscles became muscle bound, restricted by their bulk. They were slower than others, less agile, more of a klutz. Keeping up to date with trends in health, in Physical Education classes, instructors discouraged use of weights because the results were loss of steadiness, loss of control. Coaches were aware of these truths also, so don't look for weights around locker rooms. True, some like Charles Atlas advertised weight training and body building as the way for the weakling on the beach to retaliate against the bully who kicked sand on him. But who paid attention to the back page of comic books for tips on health? And those muscles were more for show, or worse, a pose; they did not help the natural athlete. And sports was basically for the natural athlete, the one born with the right body. You either had it or you didn't. Not much an individual could do to change his fate in sports.
One man who had believed this, Alvin Roy, had had some strange experiences after WWII. An officer in the US Army, he was ordered to get some soldiers into shape to partake in the first post-war weightlifting championships in France. He was amazed to see men weightlifting, who were faster than most, extremely agile, and they were stronger too. This was contrary to everything he had ever learned. But now Roy sought to learn from those who were doing this so successfully. In 1952 Roy was the lead trainer for the successful American weightlifting team at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki. He opened a weight training studio in his native Baton Rouge, and though the coach of his alma mater, Istrouma High was not initially interested in experimenting with such outrageous changes, after a less successful season, he hired Roy for training the team. Weights, studying what muscles could be imporved and how, and some of the young athletes on the football team also went to Roy's gym. Istrouma High School in Baton Rouge took the new ideas seriously, and the Istrouma Indian football team, began using weights in training. Among the high schoolers learning these new techniques was Billy Cannon. He was soon breaking school and even state records in track, excelling in basketball, and leading the Indians to a state championship in football in 1955. Istrouma would be Louisiana champs again in 1956, 1957, 1959, 1961, and 1962. Meanwhile, Cannon who graduated, studied at LSU, and worked wonders on the field. LSU would be chosen national champion college team in 1958. In the 1960s Cannon would play in the NFL and AFL, winning many awards. The use of weights in sports training would spread far beyond Istrouma and LSU, as Billy Cannon burst on the scene and shattered the old disdain for such training. It was a revolution in football. And not just football, but the training spread to basketball, tennis, swimming, even golf. It was a revolution in sports that in many ways began in Louisiana in the mid-1950s, but is now so ubiquitous, so universal that we do not even notice what has happend.(See Henry Ball, “Sport's Big Gamechanger,” The Southern Voice, July 13, 2022) Ponder, how we speak of a Civil Rights Revolution of this era, but not of the contemporaneous Sports Revolution. It was a revolution so successful it is forgotten.
In high school I had friends in the debate and speech class, and in other classes too. One was a larger guy, Tex Sanders. Quite friendly, with a number of brothers and sisters and an outgoing mom. Sometimes he and I bowled together. One weekend we doubled-dated to see a film at the Saenger, “Rebel without a Cause” with James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo. When it ended, the large, crowded theater seemed to release a collective breath of relief. Tex's date that night was a sweet student at Easton, Mary Jane. In the various informal conversations, Mary Jane began to worry about me. Talk of race-mixing, changing the schools, the society, this was communist talk. She urged me to speak with her father, who knew a lot about the problem. Her dad was Guy Banister. I did not know it until later, but he had been an FBI official in Chicago, came to NO as acting Superintendent of Police, and then had a detective agency. Many alleged he was connected to the intelligence community. I did not know till later, he also paid young people to keep tabs on young radicals. I did not want to meet him, and suspect he had no interest in meeting with me, but to satisfy Mary Jane, I went to their home, and walked up to him inside as he was sorting mail. I gave a brief introduction, and he barely grunted, as he kept sorting. With no real conversation, I walked away. We both had “formally” filled our obligation to Mary Jane.
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