Stewart “Stew” Johnson was unsure how he would react to seeing his jersey join the ranks of other Murray State basketball greats in the rafters of the CFSB Center. It had been nearly 60 years since he had attended an MSU basketball game.
Surrounded by family members, friends and former teammates at center court during halftime of the Racers’ Wednesday night game against the Bradley Braves, Johnson’s eyes welled up as his numerous accomplishments at Murray State and beyond were read out to the crowd.
His feelings as #40 joined the ranks of retired basketball jerseys?
“I’m just overwhelmed.”
Johnson became the first African-American scholarship basketball player at the university in 1963 – when the college’s sports teams officially competed as Thoroughbreds, not the Racers.
Playing in Kentucky during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Johnson was among the first Black men’s basketball scholarship players to take the court at the predominantly white institutions of the South. His integration of the Racers men’s basketball team came a few years before Perry Wallace became the first Black basketball player in the Southeastern Conference in 1968.
Johnson’s parents both moved from the South and raised their children in Clairton, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh. There, Johnson said he always played on integrated teams and attended integrated schools.
His parents, both political activists, were split on his decision to play collegiate basketball in the South.
“My father didn't want me to go back down south. He said ‘no, you can't go back down south. That's why we came up north.’ But my mother prevailed and said, ‘This is his journey,’” Johnson said.
The move to Kentucky — and traveling to arenas around the, at the time, largely segregated Southeast — was a culture shock for the teenage Johnson.
“I had no idea what I was gonna get into,” he said. “Some places we went, even the janitors were white. You know, no Black people – just me – in the whole building. [I thought], ‘Whoa, this is intimidating.”
Richard Hurt and Johnson were both freshmen basketball players at Murray State in 1962, before the NCAA allowed freshmen to play at the varsity level. Hurt, a part of the group that successfully lobbied to get his former teammate’s jersey retired, said he didn’t realize the challenges Stewart dealt with during their time at Murray State.
“He was really a pioneer. But as a young 18-year-old, I was pretty naive. And, to me, Stewart was just a really good friend, and a teammate. The color part of this was not a real big, big deal to me. It was just he was my friend, and we were teammates, we played basketball together,” Hurt said. “I didn't really comprehend what he was doing and the difficulties he was going to have just because of his race.”
The scrutiny Johnson faced — and the criticisms he said his coach Cal Luther faced for recruiting him to the Racers — only pushed Johnson to play harder.
“All those that said, ‘You shouldn't have him, he can't do this, you can't do that,’ I used it as a motivation to prove them wrong,” he said.
Those efforts paid off for the 6’8” forward. During his time at Murray State, he was a two-time all-Ohio Valley Conference(OVC) team member. He was also a part of the 1963-64 team that captured the OVC regular season championship and represented MSU for the first time in the NCAA Tournament. Johnson ranks fourth all-time at Murray State in career rebounds with 981.
After college, Johnson played in the American Basketball Association, a league that would later merge with the National Basketball Association. He took the court for nine franchises from 1967 to 1976, and played in the ABA All-Star game three times. He also played internationally, including as a player-coach with the Icelandic Division-I club Ármann and in Argentina.
For Hurt, Johnson’s jersey retirement is a representation of not only his on-the-court accomplishments, but his off-the-court role in the desegregation of collegiate basketball.
“There are Black players that have come after Stewart. And it's on his shoulders that the other players came. But there's only one first, and he was it,” Hurt said.
For Johnson – now 79 and living overseas in Sweden – returning to the campus where his basketball career took off, reuniting with former teammates and sharing memories with his family brought a sense of closure.
“When I think about it now, it was a high point. It was the beginning of my basketball life,” he said. “I think [Coach Cal Luther] was a visionary. Other coaches were afraid to take a chance [on me]. You don’t succeed if you don't take chances, you know, and he took a chance and it worked out well.”
