Mike McCarthy is no longer with the Dallas Cowboys, according to their owner, Jerral Jones.

 

 

 

 

 

On the first day of classes at North Little Rock High, Jerral Wayne Jones, a crew-cut sophomore, found himself in the middle of a group of white guys who had congregated at the front door and were blocking the path of six black students who were attempting to desegregate the school.

The Washington Post is exploring the NFL’s historical failure to appropriately promote black coaches to executive positions this football season, despite the fact that black players are the league’s main source of revenue.

A moment’s worth of photos captured Jones a few yards from the scene when the mob’s leaders were shooing the six black kids away and shoving them with roaring racist epithets. A black student named Richard Lindsey said that at one time he felt someone in the crowd touch the back of his neck. From behind him, he heard someone exclaim, “I want to experience how a nigger feels.” Potential prospective recruits were successfully turned off by the thuggish attitude.

The event occurred 65 years ago on September 9, 1957, the same month that a more prominent integration attempt was taking place at Little Rock Central High, a few miles distant in the capital city. The Little Rock Nine event, which is seen as a watershed in the history of the civil rights movement, happened when President Dwight D. Eisenhower dispatched federal soldiers to accompany black students who were creating new territory beyond the encroaching throng. It covered up the horrible events that were happening across the Arkansas River at Jones’s high school at the same time; most of them have been lost to history, but not entirely.

Photographed by William P. Straeter of the Associated Press, the image shows a youthful Jones wearing a striped shirt, squinting to get a closer look, and, as he admitted in a recent interview with The Washington Post, “looking like a little burrhead.” In one month, he would turn fifteen. In an effort to make the school’s football B-team, he had been lifting weights and working out twice a day since August. Jim Albright, the coach, had said he “didn’t want to see any of you knot-heads in front of that school tomorrow,” so there may have been issues.

Jones did not quit despite such advice. He was positioned on the top landing near the school’s double-leaf entry doors, close to the center of the conflict, a face in the rear row of the human barrier meant to block individuals from entering based only on the color of their skin.

Jones asserted that he was not participating, only watching. “I don’t believe that anyone, myself included, was aware of the details beforehand. He asserted that it was more of an anomaly.

But based on Straeter’s images, it looks like Jones had to circumvent the North Little Rock Six to reach the top of the steps before the black students had finished making their way to the schoolhouse door. While most people in the neighborhood were teenagers, Jones gave the conventional story of the event, which claimed that the six young black boys were the victims of older white supremacists.

Jerry Jones is one of the most recognizable faces in the country, even at eighty years old. The boy from North Little Rock owns the Dallas Cowboys. After buying the club in 1989, Jones proclaimed, “The Cowboys are America,” and there’s no denying that they’ve eclipsed the New York Yankees to become the most profitable and popular sports franchise in the country. The Cowboys are the team with the most fans, and NFL games are the highest-rated television shows.

Jones is the only star of Texas-sized glamour, each word delivered with a delicious bite thanks to her soft Arkansas drawl. The nickname “Jerry World,” which is used informally for his football palace, is not coincidental. A hands-on owner, he addresses the horde of media in the locker room after a game and serves as his own general manager. But he’s more than that. His charming demeanor plus the success of his team make him maybe the most influential individual in the NFL. He is an unstoppable entertainer, and his self-perception befits his $11 billion fortune. Even though Roger Goodell is the actual commissioner, he is sometimes described as a more powerful “shadow commissioner.” He hasn’t held back when it comes to further shaping the league to fit his vision by using his power as a financial and cultural master.

There are concerns over racism, power, and the status of black coaches in a game where the majority of players are not black and there are only three black full-time head coaches. Jones may become the norm for the NFL’s terrible hiring, advancement, and assistance of black coaches.

He has a bad history of missing significant appointments. In his thirty-three years as an owner, Jones has had eight White head coaches. During that period, the team has only had two Black offensive and defensive coordinators, and none since 2008. These roles are stepping stones to head coaching positions. Maurice Carthon, who served as Bill Parcells’ offensive coordinator in 2003 and 2004, claimed he had a good rapport with Jones despite the fact that they were both from Arkansas, but he never thought he had a real opportunity to be the head coach. or with any other entrepreneur. “I can’t claim that I was near at any moment,” said Carthon. “I think they’re all falling short.” Carthon left his position as a coach in 2012 after seven seasons.