Interview
Everything has to work together: A conversation with Cliff Harris and Drew Pearson

Cliff Harris isn’t naive enough to suggest there was no racial tension. The Cowboys of his day would get upset with each other. But it rarely had anything to do with the color of the teammate’s skin. It had to do with whether he was doing his job. “There was no Black or white issue, man,’’ receiver Drew Pearson echoed. “It was about winning.’’

Coaches frequently refer to sports as one of the purest examples of meritocracy, where performance determines an athlete’s power and status within the team. The mental and physical sacrifice required for success, along with a shared vision, forges relationships.

Those are factors that can break down racial divides.

The Dallas Morning News in collaboration with The Catalyst explored this premise in a conversation with Pearson and Harris. Two of the more iconic players in Cowboys history, both members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, spoke about their experiences on the Super Bowl teams of the 1970s in the early days of the post-civil rights era.

Pearson grew up in South River, N.J., in an area nicknamed Little Poland. He was the only Black athlete on the football team his junior and senior year in high school and was known as “Drewski.’’

The star receiver found a more racially charged atmosphere at the University of Tulsa. Harris had no Black teammates in his Arkansas high schools. He had only a handful in his time at Ouachita Baptist University. But he lived in Panama for three years while his father pursued a master’s degree and had a feel for what it was like to be in the minority.

The workplace these two found with the Cowboys was more diverse than any they had known. Harris said he and Pearson “are like brothers.’’

The two sat side-by-side on the couch at Harris’ home for more than an hour recently and reflected on their time together with the Cowboys. The following has been edited for clarity and length.

Do you believe the meritocracy aspect of sports aids in creating a more positive, diverse workplace?

Pearson: Corporate America can be a lot more cutthroat with people competing for the same job, trying to get that promotion over the next person. In the pro football locker room, there’s not that.

There’s competition, yeah. Butch Johnson played behind me for eight years. But it’s all for the same thing. We’re still trying to reach the same team goal.

So you feel there are less political games played, fewer instances of a player going behind a teammate’s back in a locker room because everyone can see who the best players are at each position?

Harris: No question.

Pearson: And everything is predicated on everyone working together. I can’t have success on the field if Rayfield Wright ain’t blocking Carl Eller for five minutes so I can get downfield and catch a Hail Mary. Everything has to work together.

Harris: The common goal, the detail of the work, that’s what players on both sides of the ball do and appreciate.

I remember a statement Patrick Mahomes issued in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback said in part, “All I can think about is how I grew up in a locker room where people of every race, every background, and every community came together and became brothers to accomplish a single goal.’’

Is that what you mean?

Pearson: The commonality of the goal was the most important thing. We all dressed different. We liked different things. After practice, we went different ways. But once you got in that locker room, it was all the same. The culture was the same. We were all competing for the same goal. We were all pretty much the same.

Still, issues had to arise from time to time, right?

Harris: There was some controversy. Drew, you may remember what happened. I think Thomas Henderson or someone started ranting.

Pearson: Randy White took care of that.

Harris: There you go.

Pearson: Thomas came in Thomas Henderson and evolved into “Hollywood.” In the process he became really a jerk.

Harris: He really did. To everybody.

Pearson: And [Cowboys head coach Tom] Landry couldn’t police him, so we had to handle it. And Randy White.

Harris: Randy dumped him in the trash can.

Pearson: It was two hits. Randy hitting him and him hitting the ground.

Henderson is Black. White is white. That didn’t create any tension or hard feelings in the locker room?

Harris: The guys didn’t care. They knew there was no color involved in that incident.

Pearson: Don’t come in here messing up what we’re trying to accomplish. We’ve got goals. We’re sacrificing. That’s what that was about. Not race.

If the players in the Cowboys locker room hadn’t built relationships while pursuing their shared goals, do you feel that incident would have been viewed differently by the Black and white players on the team?

Harris: There you go. Exactly. There were no Black players on the team upset. We were all agreeing. This was about Henderson getting his stuff together. If we didn’t have all of that in place, we weren’t going to turn those close games into wins. We were going to lose.

In laying out some of the reasons for our racial divide, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had this quote: “People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.

Do you believe the confines of a locker room help break down those barriers? It’s hard not to communicate with someone when you’re with each other all day in close quarters and meetings. Seems like the military would be another example.

Pearson: And maybe police officers and the fire department. Any group that works together in an environment that requires a physical commitment to carry out that particular job. That builds a certain camaraderie. There’s that discipline of doing things you didn’t want to do, that you don’t like to do, but you did it. And everyone had to do it.

The Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964. Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. Cliff, you joined the Cowboys two years later. Drew, you followed in 1973. Those were tumultuous times. Did you find attitudes were changing?

Harris: In the earlier years, before Drew came, I felt it, a little more sensitivity in the Black-white relationship. And I heard some stories about the years before I joined the team. Some of the older guys, you could tell there was something that was not right. The comments. There were some guys on the extreme ends of the team that were more polarized. But most of the team was really accepting and all they really cared about was doing their job and winning. I think the leadership of coach Tom Landry had a lot to do with that. A Christian. He was an accepting guy who didn’t see Black or white or any color. It was all performance-driven.

Do you feel the locker room was an escape from what was going on in America at that time, or did the Cowboys simply create a culture and environment that didn’t allow room for racism?

Harris: That’s a real interesting question. No doubt it created a different environment completely. We really lived in our own world and everyone else, whatever their rules were, they could live with them, but we had our own. It was dictated from Tom Landry down. That guided us. We blended as a team. There really weren’t any Black-white issues.

Pearson: We wouldn’t let any of that filter into the locker room. That created dissension. The last thing you needed in a team atmosphere was dissension. Now, players had their own beliefs. When they left that locker room, they still had their opinions about those things. But once you got into that locker room, I don’t even remember talking about controversial issues and things of that nature.

But weren’t Duane Thomas, Rodrigo Barnes, and a few other players outspoken about race?

Pearson: We were focused on winning. If you were into that, you were part of the team. If you weren’t into that, you weren’t going to be there very long. It was very simple.

Was everyone comfortable enough with each other to joke about race from time to time?

Pearson: There was a section of the locker room I was in with Walt Garrison that was called ghetto row. It was all Blacks except for Walt. Robert Newhouse was there. Benny Barnes, Calvin Hill, Bob Hayes. We affectionately called ourselves ghetto row. It wasn’t any big deal.

Cowboys management under Tex Schramm and Gil Brandt was notoriously tight in those days. Did you ever feel whether or not a player was Black or white made a difference when it came time to negotiate a new contract?

Pearson: Haha. No.

Harris: That was never a Black or white issue. We were all in the same boat then, man.