Trailblazers: How Norris Stevenson and Johnny Roland changed Mizzou football
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
In November 1958, University of Missouri head coach Dan Devine stood before a dejected group of players in the visitors’ locker room at Owen Field and made a promise.
The Tigers had just been shut out 39-0 by the sixth-ranked Oklahoma Sooners in Norman, snapping their four-game winning streak. Owen Field had earned the nickname “The Snake Pit" and for good reason. The Sooners had gone 13 consecutive seasons without losing at home to a Big Eight opponent, part of a dominant stretch that included 47 straight victories from 1953 to 1957 — a record that still stands today.
Devine climbed onto a training table to address his team, vowing that the next time the Tigers left Norman, they would avenge the seniors who had endured the defeat but wouldn’t be around to see that promise fulfilled. Keeping that promise, however, would require a player capable of changing the course of Missouri football.
His name was Norris Stevenson.
On Nov. 12, 1960, the Tigers returned to Norman, and Stevenson carried the weight of unfinished business. He had unfairly shouldered the blame for Missouri’s loss to Oklahoma two years earlier.
Now, the Tigers had a chance at redemption, arriving at the Snake Pit with an unblemished 8-0 record and a No. 2 national ranking.
“One of the few African-American players on the team, and then you have to go on to Oklahoma, and you have to play this game, and it's a high-stakes game, under pressure,” Stevenson’s daughter Jennifer Stevenson told ABC 17 News. “That is always the game that kind of comes up as one of the special memories of his.”
Stevenson delivered when it mattered most.
In the second quarter, he took a sweep 77 yards down the left sideline for a touchdown, giving Mizzou a 24-12 lead heading into halftime. With the Tigers clinging to a 24-19 advantage in the second half, Stevenson broke free for a 60-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, helping Missouri pull away for a 41-19 victory, the program’s first win in Norman since 1936.
Stevenson’s 169 rushing yards that day set a record for the most an Oklahoma defense had ever allowed in Norman. By the time the Tigers returned to Columbia, they had a No. 1 ranking next to their name for the first time in program history.
“Maybe the highlight of the season was going to Norman, Oklahoma. Before the game, Devine stood up and said, ‘No one in this room was alive the last time Missouri won in this stadium,’” said Jerry Wallach, a tackle who played at Mizzou from 1959 to 1962. “We knew on the plane coming back we would be No. 1 in the country. We followed that stuff, and the press was on the plane, and said, ‘You guys are going to have it. You're going to be the number one ranked team in the country by the time you land.’”
A film clip in Corpus Christi
Hundreds of miles away in Corpus Christi, Texas, a teenage Johnny Roland was watching.
Five years later, Roland would become the program’s first Black team captain. At the time, he was an only child who spent much of his free time at the movie theater.
“I saw a film on Norris Stevenson when they played Oklahoma, and that’s when Missouri kicked the dog out of Oklahoma. I used to go to a lot of movies, because that was like a babysitter to me as an only child,” Roland told ABC 17 News. “They had the serials of the news, the sports news and all that. So I was watching that and saw Norris Stevenson take off on the Missouri sweep, and they had no way of catching him.”
The footage left an impression on Roland and helped sway his decision to attend Missouri. A highly recruited athlete, he had multiple college football offers on the table. When he arrived at baseball practice later that day, someone in the bleachers asked whether he had decided where he would go to school.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to Missouri.’ Shit, I didn’t know if I was going to Missouri or not. But I had just seen the film clip of Missouri playing Oklahoma and Norris Stevenson taking off on the Missouri sweep, and that just hit me. It swayed me,” Roland said.
A trailblazer’s influence
In 1958, the Tigers became the last team in the Big Eight Conference to integrate their football program. The University of Missouri had admitted its first Black student in 1950, and Stevenson broke another barrier in the winter of 1957, becoming the first Black player in program history.
Six months later, Mel West joined him as the second.
At the time, Stevenson didn’t fully grasp the significance of what he was accomplishing. He was keenly aware of the racial barriers he faced, but his focus remained on getting an education and playing football. Only with time did he begin to understand the lasting impact of his place in Mizzou history.
“He’s even said that he didn’t realize the significance of being there when he was just going to school,” Jennifer Stevenson said. “As he went through life and as Mizzou got bigger and other people started going, the impact of what he did just became more evident to him, I think, over time.
“You would think the further out we get from that time, from the 1960s, more people would forget, and it wouldn’t matter anymore. But it almost seems to be more significant the further away we get from that time.”
West and Stevenson helped pave the way for generations of Black athletes at the University of Missouri. But for Stevenson, navigating life in Columbia meant overcoming obstacles without a clear blueprint.
“Norris Stevenson and Mel West were very different guys. Stevenson grew up in St. Louis, in a predominantly Black neighborhood and attended a predominantly Black school, while Mel West grew up in Jefferson City and was surrounded by a lot of white students and white players,” said Brendon Steenbergen, who interviewed 18 former players for his book, "Respectable Roughnecks," about the 1960 season. “His experience was such that he was accustomed to being in an environment where he was maybe the only Black person in the room. Norris hadn’t had that experience nearly as much, and so Norris felt it more acutely.”
Columbia was a small town of roughly 30,000 people. The University of Missouri had yet to hire any Black educators or administrators, and many downtown businesses allowed African American students inside only if they presented their university IDs.
“It was different because he had grown up in a community that was predominantly African-American, and back then, segregation, Jim Crow, all of those things. So 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.”
Raised in a strict Baptist household in St. Louis, Stevenson was the son of a preacher and spent Sundays attending church with his mother. His faith and his parents’ support helped him navigate the challenges of his new environment.
“He kind of maintained his Christian presence there, even at the University of Missouri. Then, he settled down and married my mom,” Jennifer Stevenson said. “It was almost like all of this, all of the things that happened to him, kind of molded him into the man that he became.”
The transition was made more difficult by a change in coaching staff.
Stevenson had been recruited by Frank Broyles, a Decatur, Georgia, native who promised him immediate playing time. But Stevenson never got the chance to play for Broyles.
By the time he took the field for his first varsity season as a sophomore in 1958, Broyles had left for the University of Arkansas, and 34-year-old Dan Devine had taken over as head coach.
Devine played a pivotal role in bringing Roland to Missouri. After helping lead Corpus Christi to a 13-1 record and a state championship, making it the first integrated team in Texas to claim a state title, Roland had six offers on the table. His recruitment included visits to Cal Berkeley, Nebraska, Arizona, Indiana and Oklahoma.
Roland knew he wanted to play college football, but he also wanted to attend a school where his parents could watch him play. That meant looking beyond his home state.
“You gotta know what time of day it was,” Roland said. “Southwest Conference wasn’t recruiting minority athletes. So if I was going to play college football, I was going to have to leave the state anyway.”
Roland initially committed to Oklahoma, where he would have been just the second Black player in program history. But Devine had other plans.
“Coach Devine worked his magic on me,” Roland said. “Not that my mom had anything to do with me going to Missouri, but she was giving me the pros and cons and all those kinds of things that moms do. So I ended up making a decision to go to Missouri, and Dan kind of swayed her too. He had a pretty good knack of schmoozing the mothers.”
Ultimately, a visit to Columbia sealed the decision.
“When I came to my visit, pretty nice campus, people seemed to get along, and I just kind of fell in love with Missouri,” Roland said. “As it turns out, it probably ended up being the best decision I ever made.”
His decision, however, meant an uncomfortable conversation with Oklahoma’s coaching staff. The Sooners even sent a coach to Columbia in an attempt to persuade him to reconsider.
“My mom, she was bugging me, ‘Are you going to call those Oklahoma coaches?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll call them. I’m still trying to make up my mind.’ I knew when I made that visit, ’cause it was the last visit, that’s where I was going to lay my hat,” Roland said. “They wanted to kick my ass when we played Oklahoma.”
Unlike Stevenson, Roland had grown up playing football on an integrated team. He arrived at Missouri as an All-American after helping lead Corpus Christi to a state championship, but he still benefited from the support of the Black players who had come before him, including Stevenson and his brother Gerald, as well as his future roommate, George Seals.
“Going back to my high school days, because we were state champs in Texas at the time, to me race wasn’t nothing but a name. We had full integration in Texas high school football. I had been fortunate enough to be All-American coming to Missouri,” Roland said. “Mel was a good guy. Norris Stevenson was a real good guy. Norris had a brother, Gerald Stevenson, that had gone to Missouri and George Seals was a contemporary, so there were no more than maybe a handful of guys, maybe 10 guys that were there of minority descent.”
Seals also played a pivotal role in keeping Roland at Missouri. A native of Higginsville, Seals offered Roland a place to stay on his family’s farm, where he laid low while Oklahoma coaches visited campus in an attempt to persuade him to reconsider.
Navigating a segregated world
By the time Roland arrived, Stevenson and West had already learned the unwritten rules of being among the only Black players on the roster. Those barriers extended beyond the football field to the team's travel, lodging and meals.
“They were both really embraced by their teammates. But it was 1960. I think a lot of the players didn’t have a sense of what those guys were going through,” Steenbergen said.
Stevenson and West were roommates at Mizzou, but their transitions to college life appeared quite different. Steenbergen described West as a “happy-go-lucky guy” who made friends easily.
Stevenson, meanwhile, was popular on campus because of his prowess on the football field but more reserved and studious off the field.
“That specter of racism kind of impacted everybody. I don’t know if it was as big of an issue when they were all together as a team. I think it’s more when they went out, and they were traveling to games and things like that because they had to stop somewhere to eat and there was a division. They can’t come, but they can,” Jennifer Stevenson said. “I think that’s when it was felt the most.”
Devine did his best to support both players, but the number of incidents the team faced was hard to ignore. Wallach recalls stopping at restaurants and having to bring food back out to the Black players who were forced to wait on the team bus.
“Dan definitely did a lot of things that helped Mel and Norris. There were stories of like 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,” Steenbergen said.
The discrimination wasn't limited to road trips in the South.
Watch ABC 17 News after Monday Night Football and check back here for the full story on the men who broke Mizzou football's color barrier.
