The NFL owner of the Dallas Cowboys was only 14 but he was there, with a group of white students blocking the doorway and shouting slurs at six Black students as they tried to enter the school.
November 25, 2022

Well, this is not a good look for any NFL owner, is it? Jones emphasized his primary motivation was curiosity.

Source: Sports Illustrated

Ahead of his team’s Thanksgiving matchup with the Giants, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was in the news Wednesday after a photo surfaced from his past showing his connection to one of the first instances of public school integration in his home state of Arkansas.

The photo—taken on Sept. 9, 1957, at North Little Rock High when Jones was 14 years old—shows a group of white students blocking the doorway and shouting slurs at six Black students as they tried to enter.

Jones said he went there as a “curious thing,” with no intention of harassing the Black students. He also said that he didn’t realize at the time how significant a moment it was.

“I don’t know that I or anybody anticipated or had a background of knowing … what was involved,” Jones said, per Dave Maraniss and Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post. “It was more a curious thing.”

It was actually at North Little Rock High School, as corrected by Clark Davis, in the same month as the Little Rock Nine entered school.

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