Clodfelter’s lasting legacy
Kim Clodfelter thumbs through a well-worn University of South Dakota yearbook from 1954, surrounded by a dozen similar titles stacked on a table in ID Weeks library. The 58-year-old Kim Clodfelter stops at the men’s basketball page. His finger circles the team photograph several times, then points directly at it.
“This was Dad’s first year as head coach,” Clodfelter says, referring to his father, Dwane Clodfelter. “Look at the team he had — there were no minority athletes.”
After briefly glimpsing through the ’55 and ’56 yearbooks, Clodfelter opens the 1957 yearbook and again searches for the basketball section. He finds the team picture for 1957, pointing to it. Unlike the previous team photos, there are two African-American basketball players — James and Cliff Daniels — included in the picture.
“This was when he really got going,” he says. “They were the first minority athletes he brought to the team. This is where it started.”
Though Dwane Clodfelter guided USD to the 1958 Division II national championship, Kim Clodfelter believes his father left a greater legacy at the University of South Dakota.
“My father was a pioneer for diversity at the university.”
The ripple effect
Though Dwane Clodfelter’s most notable coaching accomplishment is likely the Division II 1958 national title, his role as an ambassador for athletic diversity is perhaps his greatest achievement. Over the course of his coaching career, Dwane Clodfelter recruited a variety of minority athletes including African American, Hispanic and Native American basketball players.
Kim Clodfelter said while his father was ahead of his time in respect to his foresight to see minority, specifically African American, athletes as the future of basketball, he did not intend to spearhead a movement.
“My dad was a pioneer in offering minority athletes athletic scholarships but did not set out to do so,” he said. “However, he did take pride in the fact that he gave minority athletes the same opportunity as white athletes.”
Dwane Clodfelter’s ability to recruit diverse athletes was aided by winning a national title early in his career. Furthermore, it earned the trust of many in the high school coaching community.
“High school coaches would know if they had a Native American or African American or Hispanic athlete, this was a guy who would give them a chance. I think the experience of winning a national championship did wonders for him,” Kim Clodfelter said.
African American Student Organization president Taylor Moore said Clodfelter’s contribution is still relevant to diversity in South Dakota athletics.
“For a long time the NCAA was only shaped by individual white males,” Moore said. “For individuals such as Dwane Clodfelter to bring in African American athletes to the University of South Dakota is extremely significant for that particular time.”
Moore also said he is proud as a student to attend a university with a unique background in breaking segregation in athletics.
“I’m proud that such history was made here during that period of time,” he said. “I just hope we can continue to make similar steps towards making history at this university.”
The recruitment of the Daniels’ brothers
It was late 1954, during Dwane Clodfelter’s first season as head coach of the Coyotes, that a young Cliff Daniels contacted him about playing basketball for USD. Cliff and his brother Jimmie were currently enrolled in Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.
Jimmie Daniels said he and his brother experienced some racism in Missouri and wanted to find a better environment. The pair was initially unable to play for USD because of a tampering restriction at the time.
“My brother contacted Mr. Clodfelter and he indicated that he could not do anything for us at that particular time, being that we were enrolled at Lincoln University,” Daniels said. “He did say if we were to come to the university and once we arrived in Vermillion, he would be able to do something about (us playing).”
Jimmie Daniels said Clodfelter did not treat him or his brother differently than the other players when the two arrived on campus.
“Cloddy dealt with us basically the same as he dealt with any of our teammates,” Daniels said. “He did not go out of his way to make us exceptions. He in turn dealt with it very simply: We were teammates of the other guys and we had to live with them and they had to live with us. As a result of us playing together as a team we became very close.”
Experiencing racism
At the time of their arrival in Vermillion, the Daniels brothers made up two-thirds of the entire African American student population at USD; just one other African American student was enrolled during that time. However, Jimmie said the predominantly white student body and community members accepted him and his brother.
“We didn’t have a great deal of problems,” he said. “You have to bear in mind at that time there was a great deal of segregation taking place in the United States. We were black in an area that was not accustomed to having a great deal of contact with blacks. As far as the community and university students though, we had no problems as far as racial relations.”
The Daniels’ brothers were not welcomed so warmly on the road, specifically in segregated states such as Missouri and Kentucky. Daniels recalled an encounter at a restaurant in Missouri the evening before USD played the Tigers in Columbia.
“We went out to a restaurant and sat down at the counter and there were a total of five of us; two of my (white) teammates sat to the right of me two of my teammates sat to the left and I sat in the middle. After my teammates ordered, the waitress came out with food and I asked her if I could order something. And she looked at me and said ‘I’m sorry we don’t serve colored folks here.”
Daniels said he was accustomed to such racism during his time as a student at Lincoln in Missouri but believed it was the first such experience for his teammates. The unfamiliar territory led to a tense but brief standoff between his teammates and the waitress.
“The guys got very upset … that was likely the first time they had encountered that type of situation. So I said we will leave and I told them ‘All I can see is us going to jail’ because essentially if we would have made an issue, that would have happened,” Daniels said.
Taking a stand
Considering his position as a first-year head coach, Dwane Clodfelter’s decision to recruit the Daniels brothers was unprecedented considering the racial climate of the 1950s. Kim Clodfelter said he asked his father about the reasoning behind such a decision in 2005 after he was inducted into the Huron High School Hall of Fame.
“After the ceremony, there was food and drink and we were in a room and I asked him, ‘its 1954, you got your dream job as a college basketball coach, it’s your first year as head coach. Dad, you offered two African American athletes scholarships- that could have blown up in your face a number of ways; why did you do it?’”
“He didn’t hesitate, he said ‘I wanted to win,’” Kim Clodfelter said.
Daniels said both brothers were aware of the risk surrounding Dwane Clodfelter’s unprecedented decision.
“I equate it as this; we knocked on the door, my brother and I, and Cloddy opened the door to come in,” Daniels said. “And you have to think Cloddy was a new coach, he was not a well-established coach and so Cloddy took a chance on us.
“But that was the type of person he was and my brother and I are just thankful he did,” Daniels said.
Tracing his father’s footsteps
Kim Clodfelter closes the last yearbook and leans back in his chair. Over the past six months, he has begun to collect pieces of his father’s life for a biography he will write about his father.
He recalls a surreal moment when he first arrived on campus at the onslaught of his journey.
“It was emotional moment when I first came here at the beginning of the school year,” he says. “I was sitting in the MUC and I saw two students, likely freshmen, walking past each other. One was African American and one was white and as they passed each other, they high-fived and did a handshake.
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“To be there, thinking my father could have had something to do with that…”
His voice cracks and tears begin to well in his eyes. His focus drifts past the rows of bookshelves, beyond the confinements of the library. Kim Clodfelter, for a brief moment, is overcome with emotion in remembrance of his father.
