Before you read today’s column, I urge you to read our story today by Brady Hess about how the town of Tazewell is in the process of raising money for a statue to Billy Wagner, the local high school star who later made it to the pros and who this weekend will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I have and while reading it was struck by an inspiration: We have lots of statues of politicians — probably not enough, actually. I’m big on statues as public art. We don’t have many statues of sports figures, though. The Arthur Ashe statue in Richmond is the most famous. Virginia Tech has a statue of former football coach Frank Beamer outside Lane Stadium. There could well be more at other sports facilities around the state — educate me! — but the Ashe statue and the coming Wagner statue are the only ones I’m aware of that are (or will be) in non-sports locations.
This seems to be a shortcoming we should address. Sometimes sports are about more than just a game; sports are part of our culture. The invention of the curveball in baseball or the forward pass in football may not have changed society, but Jackie Robinson breaking the color line in 1947 sure did.
Both the Ashe statue and the future Wagner statue stand for more than just excellence at their chosen sport; Ashe was also a barrier-breaker, while the Wagner statue is intended to send a message that just because you’re from a small town doesn’t mean you can’t achieve big things.
That made me wonder about what other sports figures, or sports events, in Virginia merit statues? (Or, at least historical markers.) Here’s my list, which is weighted toward those that have some historical significance beyond the sports world.
This was not my intent, but as the list worked out, most have a civil rights angle.
Bob Bowman
Lee County
Bowman was a longtime star in Black baseball leagues across the South, most famously with a barnstorming team known as the Ethiopian Clowns. He was said to have had a “devastating” sidearm delivery. By 1951, he was 45, well past his prime, but still had more zip on the ball than most. That spring, the Middlesboro Athletics, a minor-league team in Middlesboro, Kentucky, just over the mountain from the Cumberland Gap, was hurting for pitching, so much so that the team resorted to what amounted to desperation: They signed Bowman. Bowman was a hometown guy — he was born in Lee County, Virginia, but had grown up in Middlesboro. That meant he was “well-known to local white fans,” according to a historical account by Gary Joseph Cleradkowksi, which might have been a significant factor. On May 8, 1951, Middlesboro signed him just two hours before game time and sent him to the mound that night in relief against the Big Stone Gap Rebels. Word spread quickly, and attendance that night was triple the usual gate. Bowman was greeted with “a nice round of applause” each time he struck out a batter. It no doubt helped that Bowman preserved a small lead, with Middlesboro going on to win the game 10-8. With those two innings, Bowman became the first Black player to play in a professional league in the South — assuming you consider Kentucky to be part of the South. Kentucky certainly did. Kentucky can claim the event, but Virginia can claim Bowman’s birthplace.
Robert Walter ‘Whirlwind’ Johnson
Lynchburg
Without Whirlwind Johnson, there would have been no Arthur Ashe, and no Althea Gibson, either. Johnson was a Lynchburg physician — and a sports enthusiast who had his own clay tennis court at his home. Aspiring Black tennis players often had trouble finding courts that would allow them to play; that wasn’t a problem at Johnson’s house. That’s where Ashe and Gibson trained before they made their way to Wimbledon. Johnson’s home also doubled as a place where other Black figures visiting Lynchburg could find a place to stay when hotels weren’t so welcoming. Some of those came from the sports world, such as Jackie Robinson, but others from the entertainment realm, such as Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton.
Johnson’s home is on the National Register of Historic Places, and there’s a historical marker. How about a statue?
Norvel Lee
Botetourt County
Lee was a college student from the rural northern part of Botetourt who took up boxing at Howard University and became so good at it that he won a gold medal in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. He did so in dramatic fashion, shedding 15 pounds in just two weeks to drop down to a lower weight class where the U.S. team had an unexpected vacancy. For the last 24 hours before the weigh-in, he got by on only water in a desperate bid to make the cut. He did, then was still in good enough shape that he proceeded to punch his way onto the winner’s platform.
Lee also figured in the fight for civil rights in Virginia. Lee was on the U.S. boxing team for two Olympics, although he didn’t medal the first time. In 1948, just home from the London games, the Olympic athlete was told to give up his seat on a train at Covington to make way for a white passenger. He refused and was arrested. This was seven years before Rosa Parks. Lee was convicted, of course, and fined $5. He appealed and was turned down. He appealed yet again, this time to the Virginia Supreme Court — and the court, to the surprise of many, overturned his conviction. The ruling may have come on what might seem technical grounds — the court ruled that the state could not enforce local segregation ordinances on an interstate train — but it turned out to be one of many blows that undermined the legal foundations of segregation in the years leading up to Brown v. Board of Education. Lee didn’t just knock out opponents in the ring, he helped knock down American apartheid.
A historical marker to Lee was erected in 2022 near his boyhood home in Botetourt, and his boxing gloves are on display in the county’s historical museum. Why stop there, though? How about a statue, as well? For more on Norvel Lee, see the book “Norvel” by Ken Conklin.
Norton Little League
Norton
Norton fielded its first Little League teams in 1951. What was historic is that they were integrated teams — the first integrated Little League in the South, four years before an Orlando team that mistakenly claims the honor. Later that summer, the Norton all-star team (which included two Black players) was set to play Charlottesville for the state championship. The game was supposed to be in Charlottesville, but Charlottesville refused to host an integrated team. The game got shifted to Norton instead, where the new home team trounced the visitors 12-3. A local historical marker to Norton’s landmark status was erected in 2022, but there’s still nothing like an official state historical marker. Or, even better, a statue! How many statues are there that depict children doing historic things? Not many.
Percy Miller Jr.
Danville
In August 1951, the Danville Leafs of the Carolina League were losing both games and spectators. If the team couldn’t win, it at least needed to balance the books. It tried beauty pageants and raffles as attractions. None of those seemed to work. Tobacco was still a big cash crop then, and this was harvest time. Work was more important than entertainment. That’s when the team relented and agreed to a suggestion by Black community leaders in Danville: The Leafs signed a Black player.
Percy Miller Jr. was a former local high school star — in those days, at segregated schools — who was playing with the local Black team in the summers. He was 20. Miller wasn’t keen on the idea of signing with the Leafs, but his father, a former Negro League pitcher, pushed him. The father wanted the son to have an opportunity he never had. When Percy Miller Jr. trotted out to take the field on the night of Aug. 9, 1951, he became the first Black player in the Carolina League — the league in which the Salem Red Sox and Lynchburg Hillcats play today.
The team had been right: Attendance soared. In his first game, Miller knocked in two runs. After that, he didn’t do so well as the season wound down. He went back to the Black leagues and did well enough that the Pittsburgh Pirates offered him a contract. The U.S. Army had other ideas; Miller was drafted, hurt his knee and never played baseball again. The history he made, though, lasts forever.
Wendell Scott
Danville
He was the first Black driver and team owner to compete — and win — in NASCAR’s highest levels. Do we need to say more? Like many early NASCAR drivers, Scott earned his auto racing chops by running moonshine — and outrunning police. And like Miller in baseball, Scott got his official start as a promotional gimmick. The Dixie Circuit thought it would be an attention-getter to include a Black driver in a race at the Danville Speedway. Scott, who ran an auto repair shop in Danville, got his first race. It would not be his last.
He encountered racism, but he also won respect from some fellow drivers, who served as his bodyguards against hostile fans. He racked up a long list of wins and honors before being forced by injuries to retire. Scott died in 1990; a historical marker about him in Danville reads, “Persevering over prejudice and discrimination, Scott broke racial barriers in NASCAR, with a 13-year career that included 20 top five and 147 top ten finishes.”
Curtis Turner
Floyd County
Turner grew up running moonshine, then took his driving skills to the track. Turner didn’t invent auto racing, but he did help found NASCAR. This was back in 1947. From then until the late 1960s, he was one of the sport’s top drivers. He was in victory lane 38 times and became the first auto racer to make the cover of Sports Illustrated. He tried to unionize drivers and, as a result, was banned from the sport for a time. He was instrumental in founding the Charlotte Motor Speedway but was forced out by his partners. He also died young — at age 46, in a plane crash in Pennsylvania.
There aren’t many sports figures who were so involved in turning their sport into a business — even fewer from Virginia.
Victory Stadium
Roanoke
In 1961, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Colts played a preseason game in Roanoke’s Victory Stadium (at a time when there were no National Football League teams between Washington and Dallas, so the league often played preseason games in the South). Virginia law at the time required that seating be segregated. The Roanoke NAACP, represented by Roanoke attorney Reuben Lawson, filed suit, but it sat in court, unheard. With the game approaching, the NAACP tried another tack: It sent telegrams to all the Black players and asked them to boycott the game if Victory Stadium wasn’t integrated. That precipitated a crisis that went all the way to the NFL’s new commissioner, Pete Rozelle. The short version: Roanoke agreed to look the other way and ignore state law, and the NFL never again played before a segregated crowd.
Alex Long, a University of Tennessee law professor who grew up in Roanoke County and has been researching the incident for a possible book, says what happened at Victory Stadium may have been historic in another way. “For the first time, you had players engaging in collective action to force change,” he says. The controversy may also have forced Washington’s NFL team, the last all-white team in the league, to integrate.
Victory Stadium is gone — demolished in 2006 — but the legacy of what happened there lives on.
Are there other sports figures in Virginia who you think deserve a statue? Or any non-sports figures, for that matter? Let us know by filling out this very short questionnaire.
Want more political news and analysis? Sign up for our weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out on Friday afternoons:
